The German contribution to the modernization efforts of the State Duma

Abstract

Departing from the EU-TACIS Project to Improve the Efficiency of the State Duma Administration, the author describes some basic characteristics of the Russian and the German Parliament. In this context, he also reports on the project's organization and lists the conclusions drawn from the cooperation between several Parliaments, having an administrative reform as its objective. This form of analyzing a parliamentary administration and proposing reform seems unique, at least in its dimension. It has fostered a new form of co-operation based on the association of national specialists who - in their own environments - are largely confronted with similar problems.

In the particular case of this TACIS project, the following aspects played a key role in the discussions: a) whether the solution to be reached should be a purely administrative one or one of constitutional policy (which would have been considered a "political solution"), b) the role of the political, scientific and managerial actors in Parliament and the division of labor between them, c) the division of labor - not only of powers! - between the staffs of the executive and the legislative branch, d) the code of ethics for the civil servants and their attitude towards politics, e) the antinomy between centralized and decentralized approaches.

This work provided a professional enrichment for all of those who participated: Russian parliamentary civil servants and French, German and Spanish civil servants and consultants. In seeking to understand the problems of Russian parliamentary administration, all have found themselves obliged, with a concerted effort of adaptation and imagination, to go beyond their own national experiences and find new ways of thinking about their day to day duties.