PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY - Inter-Parliamentary Union

116 I PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
quality of a country’s democratisation, but the power and effectiveness of
its legislature. This is because stronger legislatures serve as a weightier check
on executives, and provide a stronger stimulus to party building. ‘The strength
of the national legislature may be a – or even the – institutional key to democratization,’
the survey concludes, ‘….In polities with weak legislatures,
democrats should make constitutional reforms to strengthen the legislature a
top priority.’ (M. Steven Fish, ‘Stronger Legislatures, Stronger Democracy’,
Journal of Democracy, 17.1, Jan. 2006, pp.5-20).
The present chapter will consider what makes for a strong or effective
parliament as regards: parliamentary facilities and self-organisation; ways
of improving the legislative process; effective oversight of the executive;
procedures for budgetary oversight and financial control. A final section will
examine parliament’s wider role in promoting national integration through
democratic processes.
Parliamentary facilities
and self-organisation
All the evidence, including that provided by returns from parliaments for
this study, points to a wide gap in resources and facilities available to parliaments
between developed and developing countries. This is hardly surprising,
given the enormous pressure of other development needs on limited budgets
in the latter countries. Yet it is clearly a matter of serious concern to the
parliamentarians themselves.
A well resourced parliament, such as is typical in developed economies,
will have, inter alia:
■ sufficient expert staff to provide impartial support to members across
parliament’s whole range of work;
■ a comprehensive library and information service;
■ office facilities for individual members, with their own secretarial and
research support;.
■ dedicated facilities for the main opposition party or parties.
In most developing countries these facilities are insufficient and patchy, due
to lack of resources and staff with the appropriate expertise. Even in a large
country such as South Africa, where the parliamentary service has grown
considerably since 1994 (for example, from 10 to 169 committee staff
members), parliamentarians still say that the insufficiency of support staff and
the skills of the available staff is a ‘limitation on their effectiveness’.