Effects of Legislation Drafting Processes on Representation in Transitional Democracies: Theory and Cases

Abstract

Although legislative drafting processes have almost entirely escaped the attention that other features of legislative organization have received, they produce the text - and often the detailed substance - of legislation in ways that articulate some voices and not others. Comparatively, these processes range widely in their degrees of organization, centralization, and hierarchy, yet they do not vary along obvious lines of state organization or electoral system. What accounts for this variation? And does it matter in developing democracies? Drawing on a number of theoretical traditions, I argue that legislative drafting processes are shaped by three broad sets of determinants: institutional persistence, the interests of the legislature and its members, and the structure of social organization. In particular, I focus on the costs and benefits that constitutional framers and legislators in the first legislative sessions during democratization anticipate in seeking out the preferences and knowledge of various national and extra-national constituencies during the drafting process. As a result, legislative drafting processes privilege some constituencies and overlook others, shaping the effects of these processes on the responsiveness of legislation and the quality of governance and democracy. This preliminary study analyzes three case studies as part of a larger quantitative analysis.