Practical guidance for parliamentarians on the role of parliaments in development effectiveness

Who and what this guide is for


1. Parliaments and parliamentarians have a crucial role to play in ensuring that governments are accountable for the decisions that they make about how resources - including aid - are spent. The scope parliaments actually have to play this role varies widely. Some parliaments benefit from large resources and a legal framework that back them in playing their oversight and legislative role. Many other parliaments, especially in developing countries, lack resources or power to play an effective role in promoting development or the more effective use of aid. Parliamentarians themselves come from all walks of life and do not share the same knowledge on these issues, and there is no consensus among parliamentarians or across countries on the ways and means by which they can enhance oversight of development policies and how development resources are used.


2. This Guidance Note addresses some of these challenges and seeks to provide parliamentarians and those who work with them with a common understanding and clear guidance on what they can do to promote more effective and accountable use of aid in particular and of development resources in general. It is especially relevant for countries in which aid forms a significant share of total development resources, and where parliaments and parliamentarians must be involved in the discussion of aid resources and their appropriation as part of their role in promoting good governance and accountability.


3. The Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, held in Ghana in September 2008, highlighted the important role that parliaments can play in promoting faster progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by influencing national development strategies, aligning resources behind them, and ensuring these resources are used effectively and accountability. But how can this be done in practice?


4. This Guidance Note draws on concrete experience from countries across the world to provide some practical answers to this question, as well as signposts for further information. It is also intended to assist other development stakeholders who share a concern with reducing poverty and increasing public accountability, including those within the government bureaucracy, development agencies, civil society organisations and researchers.


5. Progress on achieving the MDGs and reducing poverty requires that countries make effective use of all the resources available for development, including domestic resources provided from taxation, revenue from state-owned enterprises, private investment, and aid provided by development partners. As the Inter-Parliamentary Union's 2008 Resolution on Parliamentary Oversight of State Policies on Foreign Aid makes clear, by holding governments to account for the use of aid and other resources, parliaments and parliamentarians can and should play a key role in ensuring that resources are spent effectively in support of their countries’ development priorities.

How to use this guide


6. This Note does not suggest a blueprint for how parliamentarians should engage in aid and development effectiveness, but aims to offer guidance on what might be possible in a range of contexts. The note is divided into five sections which can be read independently of each other. Section B, Parliaments and accountability for development, sets out why parliaments matter in terms of the effectiveness of aid and other development resources and outlines a simple three-stage model of the policy process, running from preparation, through implementation, to review. This section argues that effective accountability requires the engagement of citizens and their representatives across all three stages of the policy cycle, with parliaments and parliamentarians playing a central role.


7. Section C covers Parliamentary engagement in the policy process: what you can do, and sets out practical guidance for parliamentarians and parliaments seeking to engage at each stage of the policy cycle. For example, it looks at how parliamentarians have inputted into the formulation and preparation of policy through national development strategies, how they have helped to shape the implementation of policy through approving laws and budgets to implement national development strategies and how they have monitored and reviewed the impacts of policy, for instance by monitoring progress towards objectives set out in poverty reduction strategies or similar national development plans. In each country, the challenges and opportunities for parliamentarians to participate in these three stages will vary.


8. Section D, Parliaments in partnership: What you can ask others to do, sets out what parliaments and parliamentarians can expect from others, particularly their own governments and donors. In order to ensure that aid and other resources are spent effectively in pursuit of poverty reduction, and that parliaments are able to engage across the various stages of the policy cycle, parliaments need to work with others, and engage in donor-government coordination. This section offers some practical examples of how parliamentarians can effectively work with donors, with a focus on budget processes, transparency and access to information, as well as mutual accountability and support to strengthen parliamentary capacity.


9. Section E, Cross-cutting issues: Corruption and Gender, examines the contribution that parliamentarians can make to combating corruption and to improving gender equality, cross-cutting issues which are crucial to realising the MDGs and ensuring that aid and other resources are used effectively for poverty reduction.


10. Section F, Conclusions, summarises the key roles that parliaments and parliamentarians can play in ensuring greater aid and development effectiveness. This section sets out the key messages from the Guidance Note, structured around the three core stages of the policy process.


11. Ideas on further reading are given in Annex 2.