This Practitioner’s Guide provides practical advice for how to design, implement, and evaluate legislative strengthening and engagement projects. As discussed below and illustrated with project examples throughout this guide, strong and engaged national parliaments, assemblies, congresses, and legislatures serve as key foundations for democracy and socioeconomic development.
Primarily addressed to USAID officers involved in programming decisions, the guide draws on USAID’s extensive experience as well as lessons learned across the international community. USAID is one of the most active bilateral donors worldwide supporting national-level deliberative bodies, having funded more than 110 multiyear legislative projects in more than 70 countries worldwide since the late 1980s.
The guide begins with a review of the importance of supporting legislatures, trends in legislative programming, and how the field fits within USAID’s DRG Strategy (Chapter 1). Next, it presents a framework for assessing the context for legislative programming (Chapter 2) and the types of legislative projects, strategies for design and implementation, and lessons and recommendations for conducting effective projects (Chapter 3). Lastly, the guide provides guidance for monitoring, evaluating, and learning for legislative programming (Chapter 4). In addition, Annex A contains useful resources, links, and index indicators, and Annex B contains links to reports and/or evaluations to all the projects mentioned in this guide.
