Parliamentary Control and Government Accountability in South Asia

A Comparative Analysis of Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka

Taiabur Rahman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780415404983
• eBook ISBN: 9781134136469
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Parliaments or legislatures are the keystone of democratic governance and they are critical in securing government accountability. This book presents a comparative analysis of the role of parliamentary committees in securing government accountability in the three largest and most important functioning democracies in South Asia: Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka.

The author compares the nascent democracy of Bangladesh with the stable and vibrant democratic system of India since its independence from the British in 1947 and Sri Lanka's longstanding and established democracy. He argues that in each country, parliament has been able to survive and perform the key parliamentary tasks of representation, legislation, oversight of the executive, conflict resolution and regime maintenance; concluding that parliamentary committees in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka do not perform as successfully as their counterparts in the Western world in controlling the government and holding it to account; however, their role in securing government accountability is not irrelevant.

Parliamentary Control and Government Accountability in South Asia will be a useful reference for studying third world parliaments in particular.

1 Introduction

The prime objective of this research work is to make a comparative analysis of the role of parliamentary committees in securing government accountability in the three largest and most important functioning democracies in South Asia: Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka.

Parliaments or legislatures are the keystone of democratic governance and they are critical in securing government accountability. On the one hand, legislatures are representative bodies: they reflect the sentiments and opinions of the populace. On the other hand, they are the prime source of law by which a country is governed. The union of these two features qualifies their significance in democratic polities (Olson 1994: 1). In fact for Lijphart (1991: Ix), “Legislatures should probably be regarded as the most important institutions in a democracy”.

Legislatures are pervasive: most countries in the world have one. They are resilient: once abolished they have a strong capacity to resurrect. They are also remarkable for their diversity. They vary in terms of structure, organization and function. Thus they differ in the consequence they have for their respective political systems. The fact that legislatures are so pervasive, diverse and resilient makes them a legitimate source of scholarly attention (Norton and Ahmed 1999: 1). What is of more importance is that legislatures, irrespective of government system, all over the world are the legitimate and representative institutions entrusted with securing public sector accountability.

In contrast to the false impression of a “decline of parliaments” which gave birth to an extensive scholarly literature in 1960s and 1970s, parliaments have in the past three decades become more influential bodies globally and this has been due particularly to their newly created or revived committee system (Strøm cited in Longley and Davidson 1998: 5). In general, parliaments are stronger in the 1990s than ever before. Commentators throughout the twentieth century bemoaned the decline of legislatures, yet the number shows no sign of declining: if anything the reverse. According to the IPU-Parline database, there were 180 national parliaments operating in September 2002. Today more than two-thirds of the world’s population lives in parliamentary democracies (Copeland and Patterson 1998).

A phenomenon of the 1990s was the worldwide emergence of newly democratic or democratizing young regimes with their new democratic parliaments, developments which brought fresh dimensions and challenges to parliamentary research (Longley and Davidson 1998: 15). Their prominence increased in the 1990s because of developments in Central and Eastern Europe. In other parts of the world including Southern Europe, military rule and dictatorships have variously given way to elected assemblies (Norton 1999: xi). The increased prominence of legislatures has prompted a greater scholarly interest in their existence and functions (Norton 1998: xi). Norton (1999: xii) has drawn two principal conclusions on legislatures from his own observations. The first is that legislatures are worthy of study. Their sheer number and historical persistence deserve some attention. The second is that such study has to be undertaken on a cross-national basis.

Parliaments in Asia and particularly in South Asia hitherto have not been the subject of much cross-national study. That provides the rationale and basis of this study. Moreover, for the consolidation of democratic governance, the necessity of good institutions cannot be denied. Hence result-oriented parliamentary research concentrating on parliaments and their linkage to government on the one hand and to society on the other is of central concern for both understanding and promoting the process of democracy-building (Patzelt 1994: 431). Against this backdrop, it is worthwhile to examine parliaments in South Asia by engaging in comparative institutional analysis of the three largest and most important functioning democracies in South Asia: Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka.

Post-colonial transitions to democracy in these three countries of South Asia have mixed experience of parliamentary government. Despite belonging to the most impoverished nations of the world, democracy in these three countries had some success, contrary to the thesis that economic development is a prerequisite for democracy. In each case, a crucial aspect of the functioning of democracy has been the ability of parliament to survive and perform the key parliamentary tasks of representation, legislation, oversight of the executive, conflict resolution and regime maintenance. There has been a new beginning in parliamentary politics in South Asia since the early 1990s. Not only did parliaments provide a means of peaceful transition to democracy from authoritarianism in Bangladesh and Pakistan and monarchical rule in Nepal, but also they appear to have the potential to hold the government to account in several countries in this region (Ahmed 2001: 18).

Bangladesh is a nascent democracy. After experiencing over one and a half decades of military and semi-authoritarian rule, it started its painstaking journey towards democratization in 1991. Since then, three parliamentary elections have been held under Caretaker Governments¹ and considered largely to be free and fair. Since early 1991, in an attempt to strengthen the role of parliament vis-à-vis the executive, some reforms had been brought into the formal arrangements of parliament in general and the committee system in particular in Bangladesh. These include a broadening of the jurisdictions of standing committees which are empowered to deal with legislation and oversight simultaneously, the establishment of an independent parliamentary secretariat and of an Institute of Parliamentary Studies (IPS) for research support, the introduction of Prime Minster’s Question Hour and the replacement of ministers as committee chairs by backbenchers.

India has been a stable and vibrant democracy since its independence from the British in 1947. Parliament has played a significant role in nation building and uninterrupted continuation of democratic governance (except the brief authoritarian interlude of the 1975–1977 national emergency) in India. Although India has met almost all the requirements associated with a mature and resilient democracy, it could not live up to the expectation of people in terms of providing effective governance. Lack of government accountability is thought be a key factor responsible for weak governance in India. Institutionalized financial committees had been in place to ensure executive accountability from the start of parliamentary democracy in independent India. In order to further strengthen the committees and secure administrative accountability in a far more effective manner, 17 departmentally-related standing committees (DRSCs) were introduced in 1993. Moreover, minority coalition governments were commonplace in the 1990s. The implications of these institutional changes in a new political framework provide a key context for government accountability.

Despite its ethnic conflicts, Sri Lanka has been a longstanding and established democracy in South Asia since it got its independence from the British. In 1947, the new parliamentary system, which came to be created on the traditional Westminster model, contained a traditional system of committees, which functioned effectively and served the intended purpose largely because of the fact that the parliament reigned supreme until it was devalued in 1978 by the introduction of executive presidency in the constitution. Since then, no major parliamentary reform for rationalizing or strengthening the committee system had been undertaken in Sri Lanka. However, 17 oversight committees (small in size and to be headed by the opposition MPs) were proposed by the Ranil Wickremasinghe Government in the fifth parliament (2002–2003). This proposal could not materialize due to the premature dissolution of parliament by the president, which put an end to Wickremasinghe regime. However, the debate over strengthening committees goes on and the proposed reform has a wide appeal still today. The role of the parliamentary committee system in holding the government accountable in a semi-presidential system is thus in prospect too.

Legislatures as a whole have been a relatively unexplored spectrum of research for the social scientists on South Asia. Very few authoritative research works have been conducted in the arena of parliamentary politics and development. Comparative legislative studies on South Asia are almost non-existent. A single article by Ahmed (2001b) is available on South Asian legislatures. This article is too general to grasp the role of parliamentary committees in holding the executive to account. However, there are some good works on parliament in individual countries. For instance, Ahmed’s book (2002) is an excellent piece of scholarly work on the nature and working of parliament of Bangladesh in the 1990s. Likewise, a book edited by Malhotra (2002) is a comprehensive compendium on the working of Indian parliament for the last five decades. Warnapala’s (2004) book examines the relationship between the parliamentary financial control and government accountability in Sri Lanka.

Ahmed (1997a, 1997b, 1998a, 1998b, 2000, 2001a, 2001b, 2003) has published widely on different dimensions of Bangladesh parliament. Two scholarly articles (2000, 2001a) and one monograph (2001c) are available on the parliamentary committee system in Bangladesh. These are excellent reviews on the role of committees in making the government behave. No substantial survey/interview of the committee members or committee staffers was carried out earlier other than one by Rahman (2000) and another by Ahmed (2001c) to recognize their opinions regarding the functioning and efficacy of parliamentary committees in Bangladesh.

A volume of articles presented mostly by the MPs of the seventh parliament to a conference on the parliamentary committee system (BJS 1999) reports exclusively the formal arrangement of committee system in Bangladesh. Several articles (Norton 1998; Rubinoff 1996, 1999; Inter-parliamentary Union 1986; Kashyap 1973, 1979, 1997, 2000; Bhardwaj 1995, 1998; Malhotra 2000; Jain 1988, 1991, 1998; and Shastri 1998) on the role of parliamentary committees in India are available. However, the scope of the available articles is too general and broad to grasp the role of parliamentary committees in securing government accountability. The functions and role of committees are sketchy and cursorily depicted in almost all the articles.

No major scholarly article on the parliamentary committee system in Sri Lanka is available. However, two books, one by Warnapala (2004) and the other by Wijesekera (2002), are available on the Sri Lankan parliament and its role in securing government accountability. Both the books have covered committees but major discussions are confined to formal institutional arrangement. These books lack theoretical discussion and empirical data too. Not a single article on the comparative review of the role of committees in holding the government accountable in South Asia is available.

Hence, an in-depth analytical study on the role of parliaments and particularly parliamentary committees is in order and merits our attention to comprehend the implications of these new institutional arrangements and political developments in ensuring government accountability in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka.

Accountability which is complex and ever-changing is the core concept in this study. Likewise, it is possible to analyze parliaments from many different perspectives. The one that this book finds more interesting is the role of a parliament in general and its parliamentary committees in particular in securing government accountability. Accountability incorporates several typologies, dimensions or components, which are also inexorably intertwined and interdependent (Paul 1991: 5). Likewise, accountability has several aspects: financial accountability, transparency, responsiveness, regularity, participation, empowerment, decentralization, combating corruption etc. (Turner and Hulme 1997: 122–123; World Bank 1994: 14, 1996: 65; Dwivedi and Jabbra 1989: 6; Rosen 1989: 32–34, 1998; Uhr 1999). However, the focus of this study will be on financial accountability, regularity, transparency and the responsiveness aspects, for these dimensions cover in one way or another the remainder of the mentioned dimensions. In the following chapter, we have operationalized committee as an instrument of public accountability taking into account typology and aspects of accountability and its involvement in various stages of securing executive accountability.

In this research accountability has been analyzed from two broader perspectives: formal/institutional and informal/societal. Institutional/formal aspect of accountability is concerned with prevailing institutional rules of public organizations while societal/informal accountability emanates from the accountability values/norms of a society in which public organizations are nestled. A culturalinstitutional approach that draws on broad cultural/institutional theory is adopted in this study as an analytical lens to address the issue.

Now it is imperative that the utility of parliamentary control of the executive and parliamentary committees’ role in holding the government be established. In a democracy, there are three different branches of government: the executive, the legislative and the judicial. All these three branches are interlinked and interdependent. The power of these branches should be based on checks and balances. The executive branch has a management system of its own which is based on some principles of administrative science such as hierarchy, rules, division of labor and impersonality. These formal principles are not practiced by the bureaucracy in South Asia. Society in South Asia is mainly hierarchical and patrimonial where the application of institutional rules is not universal. Formalism, heterogeneity, overlapping (Riggs 1964) are widely prevalent in politics and administration in this region.

In a parliamentary system of government, power is fused between the executive and the legislative arms of the state. Even a considerable portion of the frontline members of legislative branch become members of cabinet and lead the executive branch. For instance, in the current Bangladesh parliament (the eighth), the ruling coalition has 220 members in a 300-member House. The present ministry size is 60 – so at least 60 – treasury bench MPs (who are ministers) are formally part of the executive. It may be assumed that many other government members aspire to hold one of those cabinet positions and hence more than 60 out of 220 government MPs are oriented to the executive in the legislative/executive dichotomy (Wiltshire 1982). Additional institutional devices must therefore be put in place to keep a watchful eye over the executive and hold them accountable for sins of omission and commission. Moreover, the executive usually dominates the legislative outputs while the bureaucracy dominates the legislative inputs by playing a determining role in preparing legislative bills in a parliamentary form of government. This contention holds that the executive in fact is not in control of all vital areas of public administration and therefore parliament must intervene and step in where executives fear to tread (Uhr 1982: 27, 1999; Evans 1982). The intention by parliaments to extend their ability to oversee, or scrutinize the government and ministers, is a major – perhaps even the central – factor explaining the increasing use of committees in parliamentary democracies (Longley and Davidson 1998: 4).

The main rationale for empowerment of parliamentary committees is the prevailing imbalance of power between the executive and legislative branches. To cope with the demands of modernization and complexity of society, the executive branches have expanded their departments and personnel. Thus the executive’s possession of an expanded workforce with sophisticated technical and specialized knowledge has enabled the executive to become the dominant player in the governance system. In the legislatures, on the other hand, the number of members rarely rises. The result has been the steady decline in the ability of the legislature to fulfill its prime functions of legislation and oversight of the executive. This decline, coupled with rise of disciplined political parties, meant that the balance of power in most parliaments shifted decisively in favor of the executive. The only response the legislative branch can offer in order to effectively influence, scrutinize and control the executive is to improve the efficiency with which its membership is utilized. This includes the use of staff and experts but more significantly it means to rationalize and empower committees (Hazan 2001: 77–85; Mezey 1998: 791; Shaw 1998: 229).

In order to evaluate the role of parliamentary committees in ensuring government accountability in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka, a number of key questions are raised. These will be addressed in the subsequent chapters. The questions are:

1. To what extent are the macro and micro political contexts of the parliaments in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka conducive to influence/constrain the business of government?
2. How far are the parliaments in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka institutionalized with respect to their roles and functions?
3. What are the formal institutional arrangements in respect of structure, function, procedures and power of parliament and parliamentary committees in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka and to what extent are the institutional rules for the committee system exercised to make the executive accountable?
4. What are the key factors that affect the control of the executive by parliamentary committees in these three countries?

2 Concepts, theories and methods

This chapter explores the core concepts, explains the major theories and discusses the research methods used in the study. It is organized into five major sections. The first embarks upon the conceptual discourse on accountability, elaborating the concept, dimensions, typology and so on based on the available literature. The second section delineates and rationalizes the use of a culturalinstitutional approach as a macro-analytical framework and its implications for the study. The third section explains the logic of adopting comparative analysis of a few cases. The fourth section reports the logic and method of case selection. The final section discusses about the data collection method of the study in a systematic manner.

Accountability

Accountability, which is the core concept in this book, is complex and everchanging. Its meaning, typology, dimensions, mechanisms and perspectives are critical for conducting any study involving accountability. A clear understanding about using specific aspects and mechanisms of accountability and its linkage to the institutions and actors that will enforce accountability is necessary to operationalize accountability as an agenda of research. Likewise, it is possible to analyze parliaments from many different perspectives. The one that this book finds most interesting is the role of a parliament in general and its parliamentary committees in particular in ensuring government accountability. Hence knowledge about how I will establish a suitable linkage between various aspects, mechanisms of accountability and the pursuit of parliamentary committees to call and hold the government to account will be the focus of this section.

Accountability is at the heart of good governance and has to do with holding governments responsible for their actions. Governance incorporates two distinct but intimately intertwined dimensions: one is political (and relates to the commitment to good governance), and the other is technical (and relates to the issues of efficiency and public management). Both must be addressed. Without political commitment little can be achieved even with efficient public administration. And without an efficient public administration, no government can be effective, however benevolent (World Bank 1991: 307).

Accountability is a chameleon word (Quirk 1997: 580). It does not lend itself to neat, self-contained definitions (Pyper 1996: 1). Public accountability involves the methods by which a public agency or a public official (both political and administrative officials) fulfills its duties and obligations and the process by which that agency or the public official is required to account for such actions (Dwivedi and Jabbra 1989: 5). But accountability is not confined to mere responsibility to provide answers; it connotes the possibility of sanctions being invoked in cases where answers are unsatisfactory or problematic (Behn 2001).

The concept of accountability is complex and multifaceted. The creation of accountability relationships seeks to satisfy a range of aims (Pollitt 1999; Wolf 2000; Behn 1901). Most notably:

• Control of abuse, corruption and misuse of public power.
• Assurance of well-performing public institutions and that public resources are being used in accordance with publicly stated aims and that public service values (impartiality, equality and fairness in citizen treatment) are being adhered to.
• Improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of public policies.
• The enhancement of the legitimacy of government.

The basic questions that must be taken into account in any elementary mapping of accountability are the following: accountability to whom? For what? How? The answers to these questions are not simple especially when administrators encounter multiple sources of legitimate authority and competing expectations for performance. The first question requires identification of the legitimate authorities for whom the relevant public officials work. The second requires clear specification of performance expectations. And the third entails identification of the various reporting relationships (institutional practice, procedures and strategies) that are available to hold public officials answerable for their performance (Romzek 2000: 416).

In the public sector, the public accountability process is largely determined by the legislation and the parliamentary system (Cameron 2004: 63). In a system of parliamentary democracy, the parliament represents the people and the government is accountable to the parliament. The government itself con...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface
• Abbreviations and acronyms used
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Concepts, theories and methods
• 3 Parliaments and accountability
• 4 Parliamentary committees and accountability
• 5 Parliamentary control and government accountability in Bangladesh
• 6 Parliamentary control and government accountability in India
• 7 Parliamentary control and government accountability in Sri Lanka
• 8 Conclusion
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography