Engaging the Demand Dynamic: Budget Support as Driver of Legislative Development

Since the 1980s, donors have increasingly recognized the importance of an effective legislature within the broader framework of promoting democracy, good governance and economic development. The difficulty, as all donors have recognized, is that institutional development requires personal and institutional buy in. Development happens when those within the organization want that development and are willing to commit the time, effort and resources under their control necessary to support it. Donors, in designing their implementation programming must find ways to engage and/or support this will for development. Over the years, a general strategy for legislative development has emerged in which the will for development is enlisted in one or more of three ways: mapping (the identification of willing partners for reform); incentivizing (creating institutional incentives for reform); and creating demand (empowering outsiders to hold legislators accountable). Program implementation is described as a combination of local partnership matched with developmental activities leading to reform. Programs are work-planned by planned activities and so long as willing development partners are located, the activities can succeed. This analysis, however, ignores the reality that legislative strengthening programming takes place over time, that legislatures are adaptive organizations, and that they can be – should be, and often are learning organizations. Accordingly, effective programming can and should have an institutional affect and not just an activity effect. What I want to suggest is that in this gap between activity implementation and broader institutional impact, successful activities not only improve individual practices, they breed demand for further reform/development activities. Legislators whose efforts in supporting a reform, where that reform generates either intrinsic or extrinsic rewards, will in turn be more open to engaging in other development efforts that can be shown to also offer potential rewards. Second, given the dynamic interactive character of a legislature, there is no reason to suppose that impact of success will necessarily be restricted to only those involved in the activity. Success demonstrated by one legislator or a group of legislators invites imitation by others seeking similar intrinsic or extrinsic rewards. Third, while this imitative effect may be most clearly seen where the supported activity is specifically replicated by other legislative groups, for example, where one committee’s success in using public hearings leads other committees to also seek similarly adopt public hearings, it can also promote cross over where an implementer can promote the adoption of practices different from the original motivator activity but having a similar reward profile. Finally, the degree of incentive provided by any intervention will correspond with the immediacy and degree of the reward offered by the results of that reform. Thus, an intervention in a high profile activity of the legislature in which the activity generates a high level of positive attention or other rewards will have a greater impact than an activity that may takes years to produce results or where the results generate little public attention.To illustrate this process, I will use a USAID funded project to support the Afghanistan National Assembly.