Parliamentary Strengthening: Strategies and Successes

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1 Parliamentary Strengthening: Strategies and Successes Tuesday 1 May, PM Boothroyd Room, Portcullis House, Victoria Embankment, London SW1A 2LW K. Scott Hubli Parliamentary Development Policy Adviser Democratic Governance Group United Nations Development Programme Honourable Members Distinguished Guests It is an honour to be asked to speak at the ODI/Africa All-Party Parliamentary Group Series on parliamentary development, particularly on this panel. I have been asked to address essentially three questions: why donors have tended to neglect parliamentary development and the current state of donor support to parliaments; what strategies have been effective in parliamentary development; and how do you measure success in this field. DONOR SUPPORT TO PARLIAMENTS I am not sure it is still accurate to continue to talk about donor neglect of parliaments. I think the importance of parliamentary development is now well-established, although there remain issues of scale and strategy. Donor support for parliamentary development has been increasing since the mid-1990s. To take UNDP as an example: in the mid-1990s, UNDP typically had, at any one time, roughly four to six active parliamentary strengthening projects worldwide; currently the number is over 50. Under the UNDP s current multi-year funding framework, parliamentary development is one of the seven recognized service lines in democratic governance. The Global Programme for Parliamentary Strengthening has helped to promote the growth of parliamentary development throughout the UNDP, and is currently working to test innovative approaches and strategies in the area and to help provide more 1

2 uniformly high quality of programming in this area of parliamentary devleopment. (The GPPS program was recently evaluated and I have a number of copies here for those who are interested.) There is evidence to support the value of this increased emphasis on parliamentary development. In a recent analysis of the UNDP s performance under the multi-year funding framework (or MYFF) from , the parliamentary development service line accounted for some 2% of the expenditures on democratic governance, but accounted for over 10% of the reported results. There are a number of reasons for this relative cost-effectiveness: Limited cost given the limited number of beneficiaries. The number of MPs and parliamentary staff is limited relative to other development areas (for example, the number of parliamentary members and staff compared with the number of civil service employees, or the targets of a civic education campaign.) High-impact audience. Even when there is significant turn-over in parliament, former members often remain active in politics; investments in the development of MPS often continue to pay rewards even after they leave office; Entry point for addressing multiple development goals. Many priority development goals can be approached through parliament, e.g., developing political parties; achieving the Millennium Development Goals; delivering civic education; promoting gender equality; strengthening anti-corruption or human rights; etc. Parnterships. UNDP has over time, built a large number of partnerships, from both the North and South, which provide support to UNDP s parliamentary development, often on a pro bono or free basis. South-South inter-parliamentary collaboration has proven to be a particularly effective means and low-cost method of supporting parliamentary development. Importance of parliament in aid effectiveness. Donors agree on the need for increasing general budget support and for increased local ownership of development efforts. Many donors have noted that this requires strong domestic accountability mechanisms, such as parliament, with the capacity to provide constructive, effective political checks on the use of budget resources. 2

3 Despite these factors, there are a number of reasons why parliamentary support has historically been under-resourced as a target of development assistance. Many of the reasons why donors haven t focused enough on parliaments are obvious. However, it may be worth restating just a few: Parliament is complex compared to the executive branch. It is not as hierarchical. How do donors engage? With the speaker? With the relevant committee? With the relevant committee chair? With the leaders of the parliamentary groups? Parliament is often viewed as too political. The legitimacy of development assistance often depends on being viewed as apolitical and technical. Because parliaments may be viewed as too political, donors have provided more funding to civil society. This is ironic, because civil society is often no less political, but is often far less representative and lacks legitimacy of a clear constitutional role in policy development. Parliaments may have low standing as an institution. Public opinion of parliaments and political parties, both in developing and developed systems, may be low. In these cases, there may be incentives for donors to look for other targets of assistance. Donor staff may not understand parliaments. Until recently -- and still at some donors and multilateral institutions, donors may lack staff with a background in parliamentary service and parliamentary development. Executives negotiate donor assistance with executive counterparts, which may not have an incentive to prioritize parliamentary development. Pressure to show short-term results. There is pressure on many donors and development implementers to demonstrate short-term results this can lead program design to focus on easy, but perhaps less important, objectives. If a donor is under pressure to deliver results, parliaments may not be the partner of choice. In most parliaments, parliamentarians are overcommitted; developing parliaments have very weak support systems to assist members in carrying out their duties. It is often difficult to predict parliamentary schedules; meetings or events are necessarily subordinate to the parliamentary schedule and may be cancelled at the last minute. Parliamentary projects can sometimes be impacted by unrelated political issues outside the project s control again, sometimes creating disincentives for individuals 3

4 who want to make an impact, but whose performance may be judged against logframes and Gantt charts that don t easily accommodate the realities of parliamentary life. Despite these challenges, however, the tide seems to have turned in terms of recognizing the importance of parliamentary development. While UNDP once struggled to use the term good governance as an objective of development assistance; now the term good governance has been replaced with the term democratic governance. Indeed, democratic governance is the largest practice area within UNDP, with more than $1.4 billion in expenditures last year. Parliamentary development programs (of some shape or size) exist in more than a third of the countries where UNDP has a presence. The nature of parliamentary development has also broadened over the past 10 years. An initial emphasis on infrastructure and procurement (of libraries, voting systems, Hansard systems, etc.) shifted to an emphasis on staff development and training. There is now an increasing level of comfort on topics which would have once been considered too political: assistance to members on constituency relations; training for women parliamentary candidates; support for reform of the parliamentary rules of procedure, support for the effective functioning of party groups, etc. UNDP currently has produced a handbook on assistance to political parties a topic which would have been considered strictly off limits 5 to 10 years ago. I was also requested to discuss some of the main types of parliamentary assistance being offered. There are a few documents available that do a decent job of describing some of the main types and actors in the area of parliamentary assistance including the ODI study. The evaluation of SIDA s parliamentary development assistance, which I co-authored, also provides a break-down of SIDA s parliamentary development portfolio by type of assistance. While just a profile of one donor, it also provides a sense of the main approaches to parliamentary strengthening. In the interests of time, I would like to now turn to the second issue I have been asked to discuss: what strategies work. 4

5 EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES FOR PARLIAMENTARY DEVELOPMENT As the literature on parliamentary development begins to grow, I think there is a growing consensus on what works and what doesn t on parliamentary development. Much of this consensus is captured in the ODI paper, although there are a few things that I might disagree with slightly. (Perhaps, the more interesting question is why these lessons learned in the field aren t always applied which has a lot to do with aid architecture and capacity in this field.) Let me just touch on a few of the most important effective strategies for parliamentary development: Political Contextualization. Some approaches to strengthening parliament have treated parliament much like a ministry or other organization. Parliaments are political organizations, and the starting point must always be an understanding of the political system in which they operate. What are the incentives of MPs in terms of their careers? What are the incentives of staff? What place does parliament play in the political system? Where are the champions for institutional strengthening? Put simply, you can t effectively assist a parliament or a political culture that you don t understand. This often requires talented national staff members with political savvy, who are also politically impartial, and respected something that is difficult to find in some environments. While this seems very basic often parliamentary programs lack this political contextualization for a number of reasons. Some donor organizations do not necessarily value political experience in hiring staff to work on democratic governance programmes (relative to economic development or academic expertise). Treat the Causes, not the Symptoms. Often parliamentary development projects have treated the symptoms of weakness, rather than their causes. For example, some parliamentary development projects have provided support for equipment procurement, even in countries that have significant resources, rather than addressing the question of why parliament does not assert itself in budget discussions to obtain needed resources from the national budget. Often parliamentary development projects spend resources training MPs on oversight techniques, without first examining the incentive structures that influence parliamentary behaviour on oversight. Underlying issues, such as parliamentary salaries, or 5

6 budgetary independence of parliament, may be the appropriate focus of parliamentary development efforts -- rather than treating the symptoms of a lack of parliamentary independence. Local Demand for Assistance. Externally driven approaches, or approaches based on conditionality, tend not to be sustainable, relative to approaches that, in UNDP language, accompany development partners. The Global Programme for Parliamentary Strengthening s regional program in the Arab States demonstrates the success of a programme based on local demand. Although there are international perspectives and inputs incorporated into the GPPS regional programmes, if you go to you will see that most of the documents and contributions are from scholars and parliamentarians from the region. We are trying to do a better job of translate more of the material into French and English, since much of it has value beyond the region, but the vast majority of the materials are produced in Arabic. The regional programme includes a series of parliamentary working groups composed of MPs region, dealing with fairly sensitive issues such as political party legislation and parliamentary oversight of the security sector. MPs from the region set the agenda for these working group sessions, as well as help to define the research to be commissioned in these areas. Ability to Base Program Design on the Political Context. Even if the political context is well understood and local demand for support, these issues need to be incorporated into the programme design. Here, UNDP sometimes faces challenges, since programs of assistance are negotiated with the program country government, who may not want to prioritize parliamentary development. The Global Programme for Parliamentary Strengthening, as a global program, provides extra resources to countries wanting to strengthen parliaments, so it is not viewed as being at the expense other UNDP projects. However, as there is a push toward greater core funding for UNDP (rather than assistance earmarked for particular programmes), it is important to understand the distinction between national ownership and government ownership and to understand that governments often do not fully understand the value of a strong parliament. This is true in developed as well as developing countries. 6

7 Using Issue-Based Approaches to Parliamentary Development. Some of the earlier parliamentary development programmes focused just on parliamentary process and institution-building, rather than combining institutional and process-strengthening with support on issues that parliament is currently facing. Abstract or generic seminars on parliamentary ethics or committee structure or parliamentary administration often do not rank high on the priority list of MPs or parliamentary staff; they are often already overworked and may not have time for things that are not directly linked to their day-to-day parliamentary work. A parliamentary development programme is more likely to be successful if rather than holding an abstract or generic seminar on the MDGs the program instead tries to combine process strengthening with work with relevant committees that are working specific aspects of a national poverty reduction strategy or MDG plan. It is crucial, of course, when using an issue-based approach to parliamentary strengthening, to maintain politically impartiality. A Relationship of Trust and Confidence between the Development Partner and the Parliament. While almost anyone can procure computers or voting systems for parliament -- achieving real results in parliamentary development almost always involves dealing with politically sensitive issues. Particularly in recent years, support for democratic governance has come under a cloud of suspicion regarding the motives of certain development partners. If parliamentary development is viewed, even by a significant minority of those in parliament, as a mechanism for advancing the foreign policy interests of the donor, the assistance is unlikely to have the intended impacts. This is a comparative advantage of the UN system; while there are some countries that you could cite as exceptions to this general rule -- the UN system continues to be viewed as an honest broker. As I noted earlier democratic governance is UNDP s largest practice area, and I think this is in part because program country governments trust UNDP to be politically impartial in program implementation in an era where bilateral assistance can often be viewed as advancing the donor country s national interest. Multilateral approaches to parliamentary strengthening need to be reinforced. Individuals Matter. In my experience, an additional element of program success is the individuals who work on program implementation and their counterparts in the parliament. 7

8 Individuals matter although this is often difficult to quantify and is in part a question of personality. I have seen some very junior, bright, knowledgeable individuals with experience as political or parliamentary staff, be far more successful in program implementation than some far more senior and qualified individuals. One of the issues that the Global Programme for Parliamentary Strengthening looks at in determining program countries is staff in the country office team who will be implementing the program Do they have a political ear, without having a political agenda? Do they listen to their parliamentary counterparts? Are they flexible and creative? Do they work well in the political culture? Are they easy to get along with? Some of these things are intangible, but in my opinion are often key to program success. Timing and Sequencing. It goes without saying that timing is crucial. However, I do see many parliamentary development programs that are not well- timed or sequenced either in terms of a political transition or in terms of the electoral cycle. There are lots of issues to discuss here but perhaps I will mention just one aspect: In post-conflict transition environments, there is often an very strong focus on the transitional elections, relative to support for post-election governance and parliamentary development. Transitional elections must not be viewed through an exit strategy lens by the international community. To some extent, the international community got this right in Afghanistan -- in part because of delays in the electoral process. The UNDP SEAL program (Support for the Establishment of the Afghan Legislature) was a multi-donor project of roughly $15 million over two-years. The program, while not perfect, did start the preparations for the parliament over a year in advance of the first session of the parliament. The program worked with the government to establish a parliamentary secretariat, recruit basic staff, develop a draft set of parliamentary rules, put the infrastructure in place, and support the costs of parliament for an initial period. The parliament was able to begin functioning relatively well after the elections, despite extreme challenges. The relative success of the program was possible because it was multilateral in approach (with France in the lead, but with Italy, the EU, Sweden, Germany, Demark, Canada, and UNDP core resources, making significant contributions), because it had sufficient advance preparation and lead time, and because it was viewed as being impartial. 8

9 Long-Term Support. Short-term interventions - one-off study tours or seminars often have no measurable impact (and often distract parliamentarians from their work as parliamentarians). This is particularly true when activities are not integrated into a larger, longer-term comprehensive program. Parliamentary development involves the strengthening of a democratic parliamentary political culture; and cultural change takes time. Sometimes, I think that donors too easily forget the shortcomings of their own parliaments or the challenges that their parliaments faced in reaching their current state of development. I sometimes have heard donors criticize a low public opinion of parliament in a developing country, without an understanding of what the comparable figures are in their own countries. Parliamentary development is fundamentally different than many other development projects, which may more easily lend themselves to short-term quantitative measurable results, such as childhood vaccination or increasing the availability of clean water. This brings me to the last point: BENCHMARKS AND PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT The approaches of some countries to democracy promotion have caused some people to criticize all efforts to strengthen democratic governance as interventionist, or as exporting a Western political model. In this context, how progress on parliamentary development is measured is a political, as well as technical, issue. Benchmarks and performance measures must not only make sense technically, but must also be based in a framework that the country has committed to either at the national, regional or international level. Let me just offer a view suggestions of how this can be done: Linking Program Results to a Parliament-Approved Reform or Development Plan. Multi-party parliamentary reform committees can be extremely useful from a number of perspectives. These committees often provide external actors supporting parliamentary reform with an institutionalized, multi-party interlocutor. Rather than the donor just liaising with the Speaker or Secretary General, a multi-party reform committee can help develop a more broadly-based set of parliamentary development priorities to guide donor efforts. Such committees can also improve the transparency of parliamentary development by providing information about parliamentary development activities to all the main political tendencies; they can also be helpful in promoting a degree of donor coordination. Measuring results 9

10 against a parliament-developed reform plan can minimize criticisms that a program is responding to externally driven priorities. Regional and International Standards. Some areas of democratic governance have well-established international norms elections and human rights, for example. There is a fairly clear international conception of the elements of a democratic election, although the existence of these elements may be in dispute in a particular election. The human rights field has gone even further in terms of codifying international norms in treaties and conventions. Parliamentary development has not traditionally used a rights-based or standards-based approach to development, although this may be starting to change. It is essential that any standards-based approach come from a true international consensus, rather than a donordeveloped set of standards. The Inter-Parliamentary Union has developed a handbook of best practices for democratic parliaments that draws on the experience of its member parliaments. I was one of the members of the advisory group, which reflected a wide range of perspectives from parliamentarians and other members of the parliamentary development community. This handbook was part of the discussions of the parliamentary pillar of the International Conference of New or Restored Democracies in Doha, and elements of the handbook were included in the declaration of the parliamentary pillar. UNDP has also supported a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Study Group on benchmarks for democratic parliaments. While the study group was just an initial step in helping the CPA define for itself what effective, democratic parliaments look like the issue of benchmarks will be the subject of one of the plenary sessions at the next CPA meeting in New Delhi this September. The SADC Parliamentary Forum, which has played a leading role in electoral standards in the region, has also expressed an interest in looking at parliamentary standards in the region, and this is something that UNDP hopes to support. The African Peer Review Mechanism and similar mechanisms provide one approach to measuring progress in this area, but will be more effective if there is greater international consensus on democratic parliamentary norms. While this is still at an early stage, I believe these efforts need to be supported. UNDP has often played a strong role in facilitating international dialogue and can play a strong role in promoting this dialogue around international norms for democratic parliaments. 10

11 Focus on Program Quality, rather than Short-Term Results. I would also like to close with a quick remark on the limits of results-based management frameworks and performance measures and indicators. If applied overzealously they can lead to program which achieve clear, monitorable results but which also ignore the tough issues. This is not to say that donors should write a blank check or be unconcerned with results however, parliamentary development does require a long-term vision and commitment, and it may mean that, in the short-term, results-based management should greater qualitative evaluations of program quality, strategy and outputs -- rather than a focusing on the existence of short-term program results and quantitative impacts. * * * * * * * * * * Parliamentary development is a growing field, and, in historical terms, is relatively new. I have tried to provide a few perspectives on the three main questions presented: 1) the current state of play in the field, 2) what works and what doesn t, and 3) how you measure results. These are, however, very broad questions, however, and, in the time allowed, I have just been able to scratch the surface. I look forward to your questions and to a healthy discussion on the topic. 11