Last Friday the New York Times ran an editorial offering ideas on how to begin serious reforms in New York State government, particularly the New York State Legislature. Leadership challenges in the state senate paralyzed the operations of government at a difficult time in the state’s economic situation (many of the states in the US are suffering in this downturn – see the Rockefeller Institute of Government’s excellent analyses on this). The Times editorial notes that a good place to start with serious reforms includes areas such as campaign finance, ballot access and redistricting.
What does this have to do with global engagement? What struck me in reading the Times’ editorial – as well as two earlier reports from the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law that take the New York State Legislature to task – is that these reform ideas and efforts read very much like a USAID needs assessment for a legislative strengthening project. Such projects seek to build the capacity of legislatures to be more effective in the areas of representation, lawmaking and oversight. Many legislative bodies in the developing world lack the resources, trained staff, experience and political incentive to fulfill the functions required of a well-functioning government. In the US, state legislatures also faced the same lack of capacity until reforms were carried out in the 1960s and 1970s. But then reforms in the US stopped. Over the last 20 years, the main focus on creative experiments with legislative reform have been in Latin America, Africa and to some extent in the Middle East and Asia. So the best ideas that have been generated to help make legislatures work better, largely with US Government funds, have been outside the US. And some of those ideas could very well be tried here – even if they have to be adjusted to fit cultural, historical, political and economic circumstances (just as they should be adjusted in the developing world). Issues such as legislator pay, partisan vs. non-partisan staff, the role of parties, committee operations, budget oversight, the use of technology, earmarks (or “member items” as they are called in New York) – all have been addressed in USAID’s legislative strengthening projects. Why not apply some of those lessons learned to our own states? As I have said in previous posts, development should be a two-way street, carried out as a true partnership; neither side has a monopoly on knowledge. USAID once had a program called “Lessons Without Borders” that sought to do this but little of that focus was put on US political institutions and that program appears to have been ended during the Bush administration. USAID, groups like the National Conference of State Legislaturesand the Brennan Center, as well as scholars of legislative studies, would do well to carry out more comparative analyses of legislatures and to bring more of the lessons learned overseas back to the US where it is needed at the moment. Not every idea tried in Africa will work in New York or California but it’s worth a hard look. In addition, the more USAID lessons applied to problems in the US, the more Americans will see tangible benefits from foreign assistance that often seems distant and irrelevant.