LEGISLATIVE DEVELOPMENT IN ASIA: SOME TRENDS AND ISSUES

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LEGISLATIVE DEVELOPMENT IN ASIA SOME TRENDS AND
ISSUES

• Policy Dialogue on Legislative Development

By Sheila Espine-Villaluz The Center for
Legislative Development Philippines November
20-22, 2002 Brussels, Belgium
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OBJECTIVES

• Identify recent and emerging trends in
  legislative development in the Asian region

• Share important lessons learned from trends in
  legislative development work

• Share regional perspective based on experience of
  the Center for Legislative Development (CLD), a
  Philippine-based non-academic organization
  working with parliaments and civil society

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EMERGING TRENDS AND LESSONS LEARNED
I. Need for strengthening oversight capacity

• Regional Forum on Legislative Oversight for
  Transparency and Accountability held last
  December 2001 in Manila identified need for
  strategies for strengthening oversight
• Increasing the legislatures budget authority
• Strengthening political parties including
  opposition parties

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EMERGING TRENDS AND LESSONS LEARNED

• Developing professional budget staff
• Strengthening oversight committees
• Involvement of supreme audit institutions
• and ombudsmen in effective oversight
• Support for media and civil society
• organizations to participate in oversight
  for
• activities of parliaments

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II. Assistance for capacity building of members
and staff shifting from national to sub-national
legislatures
EMERGING TRENDS AND LESSONS LEARNED

• Shift reflects recent trend towards increasing
  donor support for decentralization initiatives in
  the region
• Sub-national legislatures given more
  responsibilities through constitutional and legal
  reforms to translate national program mandates
  into concrete government services for the
  grassroots

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EMERGING TRENDS AND LESSONS LEARNED

• Examples
• Passage of the 1991 Local Government Code in the
  Philippines increased involvement in capacity
  building of local legislators and staff in
  lawmaking
• Study tours and orientation seminars for
  legislators and government ministry experts from
  Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan on roles and
  functions of sub-national legislatures in
  effective local governance

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EMERGING TRENDS AND LESSONS LEARNED

• Current initiatives represent only a small
  component of donor-assisted programs primarily
  focused on decentralization programs
• Future programs must focus support for
  sub-national legislatures and capacity building
  for lawmaking, representation and budget
  oversight

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EMERGING TRENDS AND LESSONS LEARNED
III. Need for capacity building of professional,
in-house parliamentary policy analysis and
research services

• Historically, in-country and regional capacity
  building programs for members and staff for
  effective lawmaking focus on legislative agenda
  setting, drafting bills, policy research, and
  strengthening committees
• Examples
• Technical assistance in setting up the Office of
  General Research and International Affairs
  (OGRIA) of the Secretariat of the Cambodian
  National Assembly

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EMERGING TRENDS AND LESSONS LEARNED

• Capacity building for committee staff of the
  Vietnamese National Assembly on understanding
  open market economy issues and developing
  legislative information services
• Significant dependence of legislature on the
  executive branch and external stakeholders (think
  thanks, academic institutions, media) for
  information and inputs to legislation continue to
  exist

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EMERGING TRENDS AND LESSONS LEARNED

• Future programs must put greater assistance to
  building professional, in-house capacity for
  policy analysis within parliaments
• Building systematic and reliable research and
  information services

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EMERGING TRENDS AND LESSONS LEARNED
IV. Support for regional legislative support
networks emerging as one approach to strengthen
parliaments policy analysis capacity

• Setting up and capacity building of networks of
  parliamentary and nongovernmental support
  organizations providing analysis and research
  across the region
• Example creation of International Legislative
  Support Services Association (ILSSA) ---
  legislative needs assessment projects in Cambodia
  and Vietnam, parliamentary study tours and
  resource sharing

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EMERGING TRENDS AND LESSONS LEARNED

• UNDP PARAGON plans to create a policy analysis
  network composed of parliaments and policy think
  tanks, NGOs and academic institutions in
  Mongolia, Pakistan, Thailand, China and the
  Philippines including ILSSA and CLD
• Strategic activities of the policy analysis
  network include
• exchanges and study tours to foster sharing of
  experience across the region between policy think
  tanks and parliament in developing parliamentary
  policy analysis skills

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EMERGING TRENDS AND LESSONS LEARNED

• setting up of a parliamentary policy analysis
  resource center to share training modules, and
  case materials for policy analysis
• technical assistance to parliaments of newly
  emerging democracies in building competent,
  professional, in-house policy research and
  analysis capacity

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EMERGING TRENDS AND LESSONS LEARNED
V. Increased attention to engendering
legislatures as a means to strengthen parliaments

• Involves capacity building of women legislators
  and women in political parties and NGOs to attain
  gender parity balance in parliaments
• Examples
• training for Indonesian women MPs and women in
  political parties and NGOs to run and win
  elections, negotiation and advocacy skills, and
  understanding of gender issues to advance womens
  agenda in parliament

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EMERGING TRENDS AND LESSONS LEARNED

• agenda setting and advocacy training for networks
  of women NGOs to pass landmark legislation, e.g.
  anti-rape legislation in the Philippines and
  property rights for women in Nepal
• public consultation workshops involving
  parliamentarians and womens group to produce a
  draft bill and policy brief on 50/50 strategies
  for attaining gender balance in political
  representation in the Philippines

• Future programs must include capacity building of
  legislators to develop, review and pass national
  government budgets that are gender responsive

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CONCLUSION

• Successful legislative strengthening programs
  must link institutional capacity building and
  citizen participation in legislative
  decision-making.
• Institution and process framework makes two
  sides of an equation -- developing skills and
  knowledge of legislators and staff at the same
  time developing civil societys capacity to
  participate in the legislative process

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Thank you.