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CDI Activities

By Country/Region
Asia-Pacific | Fiji |
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Indonesia | Papua New
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Guinea | Solomon Islands |
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East Timor | Vanuatu
By Sector
Political Party Development
Parliamentary Strengthening
By Type
Training Projects
Research
Programs - Publications - Workshops - Conferences
Events
Program Development & Further Activities
Cross-cutting Themes
Gender & Political Leadership

Parliamentary Strengthening

Democratic parliaments are representative institutions whose role is to develop and review legislation and to maintain popular accountability over executive government and institutions of state. Each successive election produces a new set of people’s representatives, but parliament as an institution is sustained by a set of agreed principles and a host of written and unwritten rules handed down from earlier generations. Parliamentary staff assist in the work of the people’s representatives and provide advice about the application of the rules and procedures.

CDI’s targets for parliamentary strengthening are therefore threefold: members of parliament, parliamentary staff and the principles and rules that underpin parliamentary practice.

  • CDI delivers a range of programs designed to strengthen the capacity of MPs to carry out their representative, legislative and oversight duties. For example, Public Accounts Committees (PAC) and parliaments’ role in scrutinising the expenditure of public money is a particular focus. We deliver training courses for PAC members in our target countries and sponsor cross-country and regional cooperative activities.
  • We are developing new initiatives to assist the development of more effective committee work in Pacific parliaments and to foster emerging leaders in legislative institutions in Indonesia.
  • The training of parliamentary staff has been a major focus for CDI since its inception. We sponsor staff visits and exchanges between national and state-level parliaments in Australia and their counterparts in our partner countries. We give special attention to supporting the research and analysis functions of parliamentary secretariats because of the critical importance of information and policy advice in a modern parliament. A consistent theme is the creation of good working relations between parliamentary staff and the members they support.
  • CDI promotes efforts to make parliamentary procedure and practice more effective and consistent with the principles of transparency and public accountability. This includes areas such as supporting the development of comprehensive standing orders in small Pacific parliaments and of committee inquiry practices in all our target institutions.

Many of our activities properly combine our two major and related sectoral concerns of Parliamentary Strengthening and Political Party Development. Accordingly, listed below are all our activities which both focus primarily on, or include significant elements of, Parliamentary Strengthening work:
2012
Building the role of Indonesia’s 2nd Chamber - DPD Workshop on the role of Senates | 3 April 2012 | Jakarta
PPS 2012/01 | Christine McMurray - National Elections and Women Candidates in Solomon Islands: Results from the People’s Survey
     
2011
Projects
From Accounting to Accountability in the Indonesian Parliament - BAKN Practice Development Workshop | Bandung | 19-20 October 2011
Research: Programs – Publications – Workshops – Conferences
Leading International Scholar Joins CDI-IPD Roundtable on Electoral Reform in Indonesia | Canberra | 14 November 2011
Program Development & Further Activities
CDI-PD | CDI Sponsors IPD Organisational Development Adviser | Bali | 2011-12
     
2010
Projects
Legal Analysis Training for Timor-Leste Parliamentary Research Centre & Trainee Legal Drafting Staff | Dili | 3-7 May 2010
     
Research
     
Events
The 2010 CDI Annual Address | Dr José Ramos-Horta, President of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste on Democracy in Timor-Leste: Challenges and Prospects
Further Activities
CDI Assists Bougainville Parliament with Committee Publication
     

 

 

The Australian National University
Crawford School of Public Policy
ANU College of Asia and the Pacific
The Centre for Democratic Institutions (CDI) is a government-funded body that supports the efforts of new democracies in the Asia-Pacific region to strengthen their political systems. It provides training, technical assistance and peer support for parliamentarians and emerging leaders in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, with a particular focus on Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji.

The Australian Government established CDI in 1998. It is funded primarily by the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID). One of the primary ways in which CDI works to promote democracy is through strengthening parliamentary governance and political parties. The Centre focusses on parliamentary and political party development, and conducts flagship training courses and policy-relevant research on these subjects.
© Centre for Democratic Institutions, The Australian National University. Please direct all comments to cdi@anu.edu.au. Last modified 9 May, 2012 CRICOSProvider Number: 00120C Web Counter

 

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