The legislature-civil society interface

CULLED FROM THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER

 The legislature-civil society interface

THE leadership of the Lagos State House of Assembly deserves some praise for creating a popular forum of interaction with the civil society. In a society where the civil society is often regarded in antagonist terms by state actors, this initiative is to be applauded. Military regimes and democratic rule are not the same. Elected representatives need to be constantly engaged by the people and civil society institutions as a process of legitimacy renewal. It is important to note that there is a relative weakness of the legislative arm of government in many transition countries with authoritarian hangover. Thus, policy advocacy work directed towards legislators thus becomes important if the goals of good governance are to be achieved. As representatives of the people, the legislators need to channel the views of their constituencies and translate them into concrete policies. An interaction between the legislature-civil society can help fulfill this goal. Let me throw some light on the role of these two bodies – legislature and civil society.

In a modern milieu, the legislature is theoretically the engine room of democracy. Indeed, Alan Rosenthal calls it, the “guts of democracy”. Traditionally, it is the arm of government saddled with law-making. And in a context where there are separated powers, it ought to act as a check on the executive in ways that ensure a degree of horizontal accountability. Within the dynamics of government relations, holding the executive accountable in these parts often take the form of oversight functions over the activities of the executive arm of government. Despite numerous challenges of the legislature in democratizing social formations, the legislator remains the chief policy maker by its sheer power of law-making. Both individual and executive bills must pass through the domain of the legislators underlining their role as them therefore as the transmission belt of policies in a democratic polity where powers are diffused and there is a habituation to the rule of law. The reason for the institutionalization of the doctrine of separation of power is to prevent the arbitrariness of one arm of government over the others.

As Baron Montesquieu, who theorized about this doctrine puts it: “When the legislature and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberality…Again, there is no liberty if the power of judging is not separated from the legislative and executive. If it were joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control; the judge would then be the legislator. If it were joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression. There would be an end to everything, if the same man, or the same body, whether of the nobles or the people, were to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executing public affairs, and that of trying crimes or individual causes.”

The principle of sovereignty or parliament sovereignty is vital to the legislature. This principle denotes that   acts of parliament are not subject to judicial review to the extent that they remain consistent to the basic law. Today, in our country, the National Assembly is the institutional expression of the legislative power and resources and therefore remains the quintessential site for policy delivery. This equally applies to state legislatures.

Contemporary discourse on civil society came in the context of struggles across the globe against authoritarian regimes and hence its definition as those forces that are counterpoised to structures and institutions of authoritarian formations. Earlier notion of the civil society equates civil society with the state but today it is seen as state-society bifurcation. In contexts where opposition forces transformed into forming government of the day as it happened in Poland under Lech Walesa, civil society became the state, a fact long acknowledged by Antonio Gramsci who saw the transitory dynamics of the civil society. We are again confronted with yet another dilemma. In Nigeria, civil society fought the military up to the point of disengagement from politics. We have a dispensation which some prefer to call civilian rule than democratic. What should be the attitude of the civil society towards this type of political dispensation? Influencing policies under this situation demands a paradigm shift to partnership from the antagonisms of the military era. It is only in the context of this appreciation that we can formulate ways of interfacing with the legislature to influence policy process to the good of the society.

In their work, “Promoting Good Governance through Civil Society-Legislator Linkages,” Nicholas Jones and Fletcher Tembo calls “attention to the diversity of linkages between different sub-sectors of civil society – from think-tanks and policy advocacy-focused non-governmental organisations (NGOs), through to community-based organisations (CBOs) and non-traditional civil society, such as faith-based groups, grassroots organisations and private sector associations.” The duo emphasize the point “that any effort to forge new spaces for policy engagement between CSOs and elected officials needs to take into consideration the full range of civil society groups – more elite think-tank and policy advocacy NGOs as well as non-traditional civil society groups. In the same vein, there is a strong need to recognise the value of the different types of knowledge that these respective groups are able to bring to the policy negotiating table – quantitative, qualitative and participatory.”

While taking cognisance of the fact that the policy community goes beyond the legislators, as Jones and Tembo rightly noted, “a more nuanced understanding of the policy-making process is vital for more strategic civil society influencing strategies and tactics.” Nonetheless, our main focus here shall be the interface between the legislature and the civil society. Thinking about this interface one is often drawn to the modern principle of engaging with modern parliament, that is, legislative advocacy. This is because “Legislators play a key role in policy decision making and evaluation, and theoretically in representing and listening to the voices of the electorate in the policy process, whereas civil servants often lead on policy formulation and implementation…”

Jones and Tembo have identified in the literature on the subject four types of methods of collaboration between the civil society and the legislators in the policy-making process and they include:

• Providing expert inputs;

• Promoting policy reforms through the profiling of civil society viewpoints in parliamentary hearings;

• Coordinating outreach activities to enhance grassroots participation in policy dialogues; and

• Securing longer-term agreements through alliances with political parties and/or securing a quota of seats in the legislature.

I believe the above typology is central to the thinking of the leadership of the Lagos State House of Assembly. The civil society will be playing a patriotic role if it assists the Assembly to improve the quality of governance in the state by making factual and evidence-based input to policies.

• Dr. Akhaine, a visiting member of The Guardian Editorial Board made this as an introductory remark at the Lagos State House of Assembly and Civil Society Interactive Forum held in Lagos recently.