Development Aid in Stable Democracies and Fragile States

251 Pages·2019·2.76 MB·English

by  A. H. Monjurul Kabir

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Development Aid in Stable Democracies
and Fragile States
‘Dr. Monjurul Kabir has drawn on his extensive knowledge and experi-
ence as a development scholar and practitioner to navigate the vexed area of
“Parliamentary Development Support”, through development assistance, in
a targeted number of countries. He succeeds in his intention to challenge the
“neutrality” of Parliamentary Support and the need to ensure that it is responsive
to the specific context. This read is useful for development practitioners, scholars
of regional politics and politicians’.
—Geraldine J. Fraser-Moleketi, Chancellor, Nelson Mandela University, Chair of
the Committee of Experts on Public Administration, UN ECOSOC, and Former
Minister of Public Service and Administration, South Africa
‘There has been a long and ongoing debate on the effectiveness aid as an instru-
ment for promoting democracy. The opinion is divided. This book will fill a
critical gap in knowledge and empirical evidence on effectiveness of democracy
assistance. Focusing on how parliaments in both stable democracies, transition
and fragile states can be revitalized, the book essentially assessed the political
economy of development aid. Dr. Monjurul Kabir breaks a new ground here
following a blended approach of theory, evidence base, and actual development
project examples. The book will interest a large audience globally at both policy
level and academic circles’.
—Gowher Rizvi, International Affairs Adviser to the Prime Minister, Bangladesh
‘Beyond elections, democracies are strengthened by inclusive and effective parlia-
ments which represent all the people and hold the powerful to account. Alas in
many developing states worldwide, these institutions remain rubber stamps una-
ble to check the executive, riven by conflict, undermined by corruption, failing
to reflect the interests of all sectors of society, lacking the professional capacity to
scrutinize budgets and write laws. This account provides important insights into
the efforts of the international community to build legislatures—and why techni-
cal assistance by itself is insufficient without the political will to share power. The
book—Development Aid in Stable Democracies and Fragile States—by Monjurul
Kabir would be an essential volume for understanding recovery in fragile states,
international development, and pathways to democracy’.
—Pippa Norris, Professor, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
University, USA
‘A valuable addition to the literature on both parliaments and international
development assistance…based on first-hand experience of the author, both as
a technical expert and a senior manager of development assistance programmes,
I cannot think of an author better placed to elicit lessons from experience than
Monjurul Kabir’.
—Ramaswamy Sudarshan, Professor and Dean, Jindal School of Government
and Public Policy, India
‘Under international law, people have a right to take part in the conduct of
public affairs. In an era when confidence in democracies appears to be unrav-
eling, Monjurul Kabir explores a promising avenue for the right to participa-
tion to be realized in practice by demonstrating the value that development aid
to Parliaments can have in boosting people’s participation both in stable democ-
racies and fragile states’.
—Marcia V.J. Kran, Expert member of the UN Human Rights Committee
(2017–2020), Canada
A. H. Monjurul Kabir
Development Aid in
Stable Democracies
and Fragile States
A. H. Monjurul Kabir
Kabir Foundation
New York, NY, USA
ISBN 978-3-319-92173-0 ISBN 978-3-319-92174-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92174-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018943627
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To Amina and Ahnaf, mother and son, for being an integral part of
‘perhaps an audacious journey’.
And to my beloved parents who prepared me for this.
P
reface
As a political scientist with a curious legal mind, I was always interested
in how public participation is played out through the representation
functions of legislative and other constitutional bodies. Effective rep-
resentation is a key to ensure public confidence in democratic govern-
ance. My own country, Bangladesh, was established following a historic
struggle for national liberation and pledging high ideals of democracy
and other key elements. That is not something unique to Bangladesh, it
appeals to many other nations and countries in all regions.
Democracy is founded on the right of everyone to take part in the
management of public affairs; it therefore requires, as the Universal
Declaration on Democracy 1997 reiterates, ‘the existence of representative
institutions at all levels, particularly, a Parliament in which all segments
of society are represented’. With the requisite powers and means to
express the will of the people, parliament can make the democracy work
and give it the true meaning of public participation in governance. While
parliament and government have different prerogatives, parliamentary
oversight is an essential feature of a system of checks and balances in a
democracy. Without effective parliamentary oversight, it is extremely dif-
ficult to establish national accountability system with public legitimacy.
However, all these can only happen when there is national ownership of
such processes, when there is either political or institutional will to do so.
As the central institution of democracy, parliaments embody the
will of the people in government and carry all their expectations that
democracy will be truly responsive to their needs and help solve the
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viii PREFACE
most pressing problems that confront them in their daily lives. With
more countries preferring democracy over other systems of govern-
ment, parliaments and other legislative assemblies have become increas-
ingly pertinent. In broad terms, everybody agrees on what the functions
of a parliament are. These bodies make laws, hold the executive branch
accountable and represent citizen interests. Achieving democratic gov-
ernance, therefore, requires the existence of a strong, effective and effi-
cient parliament or legislative body.
The book highlighted the specific challenges parliaments face in per-
forming such crucial role, particularly fulfilling its oversight mandate.
This becomes more daunting where parliaments and legislative bodies
are not considered credible or trustworthy institutions, or do not enjoy
the support from executives. Many parliaments and the likes are chroni-
cally understaffed and ill-informed. More often than not, they are sorely
under-resourced, and vital research, legislative drafting and other capac-
ities are often in short supply. That is why parliaments in most emerging
democracies look to the international community for support, as do civil
society organisations. Support to ‘parliaments and parliamentarians’ is a
relatively new, but rapidly growing area of development aid provided by
different donors, development partners and international organisations
to representative institutions.
The book attempted to accomplish three things: Firstly, it offers a
framework that linked a set of specific democratic and aid effectiveness
principles to the institutional means by which democratic and parliamen-
tary institutions are supported. As part of this, it provides a compilation
of practices [good practices, lessons learned] whereby parliaments seek
to put these principles into effect with international assistance, known as
Parliamentary Development Assistance (PDA). This is an integral part of
‘development aid’. In fact, a clear and consistent set of lessons and rec-
ommendations about how international development and parliamentary
actors can improve their assistance has emerged over the past two dec-
ades in both stable and fragile democracies. Secondly, it explores whether
this results into any distinct approach to parliamentary oversight. It
examines whether the PDA demonstrated capacity to promote sub-
stantial changes to the parliamentary oversight mechanisms to address
the challenges of corruption and maladministration better. Thirdly, the
book sheds light on the nexus between technical support and political
environment—often expressed through political will—and ‘political
economy analysis’ ignored too long in the name of ‘neutral technical
PREFACE ix
support’. Highlighting the contextual differences between stable and
fragile democracies, the book reinforces that political behaviour and cul-
ture cannot be changed quickly. This requires long-term engagements,
informed policy making, and calls for enduring commitment and collab-
oration.
Hence, the book identified distinct gaps in the literature of studies of
the impact of development aid, particularly the PDA. It considered the
work of international organisations, research institutions and donors with
the parliaments of different countries and developmental situations in
terms of their capacity to make a difference to the strengthening of par-
liamentary development and oversight work. Donors, development part-
ners and international actors will need to make a durable commitment to
programmes based on robust local and political analysis, and reduce the
number of short-term interventions, quick fixes and small-scale projects.
My work with governments, parliaments and parliamentary bodies,
national accountability mechanisms, international organisations includ-
ing United Nations, political parties, think tanks and civil society organ-
isations has deepened this belief that no amount of external support is
enough to trigger behavioural change in politics unless there is an inter-
nal appetite for change and willingness to back this up with concrete
actions. Changing political behaviour and democratic culture requires
long-term engagements, consensus building and targeted collaborative
efforts backed by informed choices, and political will.
Finally, I need to make a disavowal. Over the years, I have been work-
ing on public policy, international advocacy, governance programmes,
and policy development with international organisations both as a senior
staff and an expert. The views in this book do not represent the views of
those organisations. The opinions expressed herein are entirely my own.
New York, USA A. H. Monjurul Kabir Ph.D, LL.M
March 2018
a
cknowledgements
As I am writing this note of acknowledgements in early March 2018, this
perhaps completes ‘a cycle of journey’. The journey unfolded over a few
years in several cities: New York, Johannesburg, Paris, Dakar; London,
Hull, Oxfordshire, Bratislava, Vienna, Dhaka, Belgrade, Bishkek, Kabul
and finally ended again in New York.
I wish to extend my sincere appreciation to an extensive list of col-
leagues from both UN and non-UN international agencies and academic
institutions for their collective and individual contributions to this book.
Professor Cristina Leston-Bandera deserves particular thanks for her
excellent advices and feedback. Special thanks go to Lord Philip Norton,
who highlighted the importance of digging deeper in my quest for
assessing effectiveness of international development aid to constitutional
and political institutions.
A similar gratitude is extended to the elected representatives—
Members of Parliaments—officials in the sectoral ministries, secretari-
ats of the parliaments, parliamentary bodies, specialised think tanks and
civil society organisations of a host of countries including, among others,
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia and Ghana, for their
invaluable inputs, clarifications they made and the interviews and access
they granted. For whatever reasons, almost everyone I contacted shared
time with me to help shed light on the complex nature of relations
among democracy, parliaments, political parties, international actors and
technical cooperation. I owe them an enormous debt.
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