Authors: Greg Power, Sue Griffiths, Llinos Madeley (Global Partners Governance)
International parliamentary assistance aims to support legislatures in fragile or developing states to increase their effectiveness, but has a patchy track record. Traditional approaches have largely focused on structural and institutional ‘quick fixes’, with the underlying assumption that with the right rules, training and resources, things are bound to improve. This rarely happens. More recently, international donors and implementing agencies have begun to consider the underlying causes of governance and political problems and the need to address patterns of behaviour and institutional norms, not just structure and process. Over the past decade, Global Partners Governance (GPG) has designed and delivered projects in parliaments around the world that actively engage with the incentives, interests and politics that influence institutional reform. But measuring the effect of our interventions on parliamentary effectiveness remains a challenge. To begin to address this, GPG has developed a design and monitoring tool, KAPE, which supports our behavioural approach to increasing parliamentary effectiveness. KAPE uses qualitative and quantitative indicators to monitor emerging pockets of good practice, which we then seek to replicate more widely, creating an institution-wide effect that alters the processes, behaviour and performance of the institution as a whole.
This paper will be delivered as part of our academic panel on “Parliaments in Comparative Perspective”, between 10.00am and 11.30am.