Reforming Legislative Process in Poland: What, How and Why?

1. Reforming Legislative Process in Poland: What, How and Why? Dr Radoslaw Zubek Potsdam University, Germany rzubek@uni-potsdam.de October 2006

2. Key Areas for Legislative Reform Key areas for reform: • Legislative agenda-setting • Policy formulation & legal drafting • Parliamentary passage

3. Agenda-setting: What? • THE PROBLEM: Many actors with right to initiate and low thresholds for initiating legislation: • Inside executive • Relatively easy to bypass cabinet legislative plan, • Limited requirements to justify legislative initiatives, • No competition for legislative slots. • Inside parliament • Relatively easy to initiate deputies’ bills, • No priority for government bills.

4. Agenda-setting: Why? • Regulatory inflation • Legislative interventions are undertaken even though they are not necessary; • Legislative instability • Policies (laws) are likely to change a lot if (i) agenda-setters are many, (ii) policy issues are multidimensional and (iii) preferences are heterogeneous.

5. Agenda-setting: How? • Cabinet Legislative Planning Committee • Committee agrees a cabinet legislative plan for 6-12 months; • A pre-determined limit on the number of bills creates competition among ministerial bids; • No initiatives allowed outside plan; the Committee includes new bids on a „one-in, one-out” basis. • Parliamentary Agenda-setting • Higher numerical limits and more stringent information requirements for deputies-initiated bills; • Explicit hierarchy of bills in parliament.

6. Policy Formulation & Drafting: What? • THE PROBLEM: dominance of legalistic over problem-oriented approach to policy making: • Legislative process often starts from drafting a legal text; • Alternative solutions are rarely considered and compared in a systematic manner; • Costs and benefits of regulatory action are rarely, if ever, estimated and quantified; • Limited attention is paid to ensuring preconditions for effective implementation.

7. Policy Formulation& Drafting: Why? • Frequent inconsistencies • Frequent inconsistencies occur because the legal text itself changes many times as it makes its way to cabinet; • Costly legislation • Legislative interventions are undertaken even though they entail more costs than benefits; • Poor implementation • Legislation is a ‘dead letter’ due to lack of preparations for implementation.

8. Policy Formulation & Drafting: How? • Quality Checks on RIA • Establish ministerial RIA units to assist with minor laws; • Central RIA unit in PM Chancellery to assist with major laws. • Policy formulation separated from legal drafting • Terms of reference, not legal drafts, to be used in pre-cabinet consultations; • Major bills to be drafted by the Government Legislative Centre, and minor bills by ministerial legislative units, before submission to cabinet.

9. Parliamentary Passage: What? • THE PROBLEM: extensive parliamentary powers to amend bills, combined with weak party discipline: • Parliamentary committees can rewrite, split and merge bills; • Subcommittees play a dominant role in shaping legislation; • Executive has limited levers to defend legislation against amendment; • Party discipline is weak, coalitions are incohesive and members of parliament can pursue individual law-making strategies.

10. Parliamentary Passage: Why? • Unpredictability of legislative outcomes • If policy issues are multidimensional, preferences are heterogeneous, and decisions are made by majority rule, almost any amendment (within reason) can succeed; • Frequent inconsistencies • Legislation drafted in sectoral committees is often inconsistent with legislation in other policy areas; • multiple referrals and joint committee sessions help, but also add to the problem of unpredictability.

11. Parliamentary Passage: How? • Restrictive rules: • Parliamentary committees to report amendments separately after first reading, subject to approval by plenary; • ‘Package vote’ whereby government can set aside committee-proposed amendments; • Confidence votes • Government to be able to link a confidence vote with a vote on legislation.

12. Conclusion • Two key directions for legislative reform: • A much closer involvement of the centre of government in the legislative process inside the executive; • A much stronger procedural position of the executive in parliament.