This post is a summary of a book with the incomplete title above and published in 2009 at http://www.idea.int/resources/analysis/loader.cfm?csmodule=security/getfile&pageid=37959
When observing the democratic consolidation process of Latin America ( L.A.), legislatures are often understudied and neglected. A vital aspect of the quality of democracy is the increase of the performance of parliamentary institutions, in order to foster social-economic development. Parliaments are the primary institutions where oversight, representation and legislative functions should take place. L.A. legislatures tend to be viewed as ineffective for several reasons: institutional imbalance with the executive branch, high levels of fragmentation, technical and organizational deficiencies. These aspects hinder legislatures in performing their oversight function, and weaken the overall quality of democratic governance. Ongoing reforms have insufficiently addressed this issue. For this reason, the modernization of parliamentary institutions is key to the region's social and economic development, and is part of the challenges to improve the quality of democracy in the region. In order for the European Union ( E.U.) to become a better partner to L.A. democracy building, it should focus on strengthening parliaments, congress and national assemblies across the continent. Issues that should be considered include: parliamentary autonomy, technical capacity of parliamentary staff, and increased parliamentary transparency. Parliaments should be able to define their agenda and approve their own internal budgets without executive interference. Independent statistical and planning offices should be supported. L.A. should help strengthen parliaments' role in the budget process, not only in the adoption phase, but also in its elaboration and in monitoring spending. Improving the transparency and access to legislative information is therefore an important priority. A priority for L.A. parliaments is to rationalize their internal organization structures in order to monitor the executive. The committee system should be rationalized as possible, and at least one legislative committee should be assigned to every agency. Social and political dialogue is necessary so legislators can effectively take into account the needs of the population in a representative manner, but this should be channeled by formal institutional mechanisms. Participative and direct democracy mechanisms should also be institutionalized. O'Donnell defines democracy by several distinctive characteristics that include clean elections, the respect of civil liberties,the respect of human rights, and a legal system that establishes a rule of law. He argues that several levels of 'democracity' (quality of democracy) can be established when comparing countries, based on the degree of fulfillment of a set of initial conditions and criteria. Moreover, he argues there is strong connection between democracy, human rights and human development, affirming that a real democratic regime fosters a sequential extension of political and social rights. This minimalist and electoral approach of democracy makes it possible to analyze the necessary pre-conditions of democracy. However, from a more qualitative perspective, it does not answer the question of whether the political institutions effectively take into consideration the needs and demands of the population. Parliaments are vital institutions of the democratic systems of the region, since they are the marketplace of demands and interests of society that are channeled, represented, negotiated and trade off, and most important, where political decisions are made. Legislatures are expected to be reactive to the needs of citizens in their function of compiling interests, creating legislation to address societal problems, overseeing the implementation of these laws and controlling the government. Parliamentary effectiveness is therefore an essential aspect of the quality of democracy, since parliaments are the forum par excellence to translate social demands into public policy. The efficiency and stability of presidential democracies is greatly influenced by the manner in which the inherent tension between the executive and the legislature is resolved. Authoritarian governments and frequent situations of institutional deadlock have created the impression that legislatures in L.A. are irrelevant actors in the public-policy process, or even obstructionist. Critics have emphasized the relative lack of a capacity for positive action by the legislatures in the lawmaking and oversight process. The endowment of presidents with inordinate legislative powers has in some cases impaired developing the capacity of the legislature to engage itself effectively in policy making and executive oversight. Empirical research has shown that L.A. parliaments are generally constitutionally powerful and institutionally weak. Unilateral presidential measures have undermined the parliamentary institutions and their control capacity over the executive branch. Executive dominance is confirmed by every study but parliaments are still relevant actors, especially in situations of a divided government. Beyond the formal insitutional powers, central variables in explaining parliamentary effectiveness are the size of the president's contingent in parliament, the level of legislative fragmentation and the extent of party discipline. It affects the quality of the democratic system because it reduces the visibility of programmatic political parties. Low levels of parliamentary effectiveness can also be explained by a deficient internal organization structure and the lack of financial resources of parliaments to draft their own legislative proposals. No country abandoned presidential regimes in favor of parliamentarism or semi-presidencialism, but a few countries incorporated some semi-parliamentary or semi-presidential features, such as providing parliament with the power to remove ministers, and establishing the position of chief of the cabinet being partly accountable to the legislature. However, these reforms did not solve the imbalance, overall, presidents still control the legislative agenda and have considerable budgetary powers. Apart from the necessary work on improving the technical capacity, there are some structural conditions that need to be improved to increase the quality of parliamentary oversight. These conditions have to do with the necessity to strengthen their access to independent information sources, mainly statistical information. Too often, parliaments rely on the information provided by executive agencies, but this dependence does not allow them to properly investigate and monitor the executive. The professionalization of the public sector and the limitation of its politicization are a necessity. Technical quality of the public services should prevail over political interests. An important thematic priority is the support of decentralization process. The articulation of coherent national and local development policies is an important task that legislatures have to fulfill, since they are both the representatives. The concept of parliamentary autonomy concerns the ability of the parliament to operate free of interference from any other institutional power. Internal decision-making process in L.A. parliaments are not always democratic. The limited mechanisms for recording the votes within most parliaments makes it difficult to monitor their activity. Where technological instruments exist to record votes, they are not systematically used. Improving the transparency and access to legislative information is therefore an important priority. In many cases, systemized institutional information is not available. Therefore the importance of modernizing communication technologies used by parliaments to increase transparency and exchange of information. A close look at Western democracies could reveal that the challenges that their parliaments face are in fact very similar to L.A. parliaments. Therefore, exchanges between parliamentarians of regions could be mutually beneficial.
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