Foreign Policy Blogs

Legislative Strengthening Takes Patience and Persistence

Last week I was pleased to meet with a delegation of Members of Parliament and staff from the Parliament of Ghana, who were in town as part of a USAID-supported legislative strengthening visit coordinated by the SUNY Center for International Development.While in Albany, NY they spent the week meeting with state legislators, staff from the legislative and executive branches, and scholars of public policy.  After their week here they left for Canada, where they are spending a week with the Ontario Legislative Assembly (coordinated by the Parliamentary Centre of Canada).  Their meetings focused on learning more about budget processes, budgetary oversight, and the work of finance committees and legislative research offices.  Ghana is a hybrid parliamentary-presidential system (although it operates much more like a parliamentary system than its constitution would indicate), so getting a comparative perspective in the US and Canada makes sense, as does doing so on the state/provincial level (which is closer in size to Ghana).

Ghana is doing very well in terms of economic and political development – and it is no accident that President Obama chose to visit Ghana earlier this year and to give a speech in the parliament.  But enhancing the capacity of legislatures is a never-ending process that requires patience and persistence.  It takes a long time to build the capacity and culture that can support a robust legislature willing and able to carry out some level of oversight of the executive.  Also, legislative institutions are not well understood anywhere.  As legislatures become more involved in governance things slow down; they are supposed to be deliberative, sometimes adversarial, and their work results in complex compromises rather than definitive solutions.  That is the nature of the legislative process – but it can be seen as inefficient and unsatisfying to the public.  This is true in Canada and the US as well as in Ghana.  But there is much that these visits can teach all involved and the meeting of MPs and staff across borders creates connections that endure.  Substantially strengthening a legislature cannot be accomplished is a few years (like the life of a USAID contract) and cannot be taken for granted once real gains have been made. The only solution is to persist in the effort and to create connections between and among legislators and staff that give then the best comparative examples as to how best to enhance their own institutions.

 

Author

James Ketterer

James Ketterer is Dean of International Studies at Bard College and Director of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs program. He previously served as Egypt Country Director for AMIDEAST, based in Cairo and before that as Vice Chancellor for Policy & Planning and Deputy Provost at the State University of New York (SUNY). In 2007-2008 he served on the staff of the Governor’s Commission on Higher Education. He previously served as Director of the SUNY Center for International Development.

Ketterer has extensive experience in technical assistance for democratization projects, international education, legislative development, elections, and policy analysis – with a focus on Africa and the Middle East. He has won and overseen projects funded by USAID, the Department for International Development (UK), the World Bank and the US State Department. He served on the National Security Council staff at the White House, as a policy analyst at the New York State Senate, a project officer with the Center for Legislative Development at the University at Albany, and as an international election specialist for the United Nations, the African-American Institute, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He is currently a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Association and has also held teaching positions in international politics at the New School for Social Research, Bard College, State University of New York at New Paltz, the University at Albany, Russell Sage College, and the College of Saint Rose.

Ketterer has lectured and written extensively on various issues for publications including the Washington Post, Middle East Report, the Washington Times, the Albany Times Union, and the Journal of Legislative Studies. He was a Boren National Security Educational Program Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and in Morocco, an International Graduate Rotary Scholar at the Bourguiba School of Languages in Tunisia, and studied Arabic at the King Fahd Advanced School of Translation in Morocco. He received his education at Johns Hopkins University, New York University and Fordham University.

Areas of focus: Public Diplomacy; Middle East; Africa; US Foreign Policy

Contributor to: Global Engagement