Celebrating 10 years of the Common Principles for Support to Parliaments

In too many countries, democracy has failed to deliver fast or fair enough. Progress against the UN’s sustainable development goals has slowed, or even gone into reverse. Under such circumstances, citizens lose faith in democratic institutions, and the ability of democracy to deliver. They are persuaded by the siren calls of populists, extremists, and authoritarians too.

For parliaments, this democratic backsliding is a serious challenge. Parliaments rely on democratic norms and processes to function effectively. And when these norms are eroded, parliaments lose their ability to provide oversight, represent all their citizens, and even legislate effectively. This blocks socioeconomic development and further weakens public trust, creating a spiral of mistrust and failure to deliver.

We – the world’s parliamentary community – must find ways to support our parliaments, strengthen their ability to deliver, and set them back on a virtuous cycle of trust and delivery. To be sure, we already have a powerful model to do so. For more than a decade, the Common Principles for Support to Parliaments – better known as “the Common Principles” – have provided a pragmatic framework to guide this parliamentary development. 

This short brochure outlines some of the benefits that the Common Principles have provided over the years. However, we should not be self-congratulatory in any way. Today’s challenges are such that we do not have time to rest on our laurels. Rather, we should be intensifying our efforts to support and protect our precious parliamentary democracies, providing more support, more effectively, and helping them to deliver for their peoples. After