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Power shifts at the expense of parliaments?

The Asia and Pacific Department of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation took these discussions as an opportunity to investigate in its project region whether shifts in power to the detriment of parliaments could be observed in the course of the pandemic response, or whether the people's representatives were involved in decision-making in accordance with their political significance and constitutional role. To this end, we selected nine countries and asked legal scholars, on the basis of a list of questions, to analyze the legal basis of pandemic control, how it came about or was adapted, the distribution of powers between national and, where appropriate, regional executives on the one hand and between the executive and legislative branches at the national level on the other, and finally the participation of the respective parliaments in their countries.

The selected countries differ according to several criteria, including state organization or system of government. Most important, however, seemed to us to be the degree of consolidation and quality of democracy and the rule of law. With Australia, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan, our sample includes six democratically fully developed countries. While two of the other countries are also democratically constituted, there have been irregularities with respect to democratic principles and the rule of law in recent years, causing these countries to either stagnate or slip slightly in the international ranking of democracies. In our sample, this is true of India and Indonesia. The Philippines are among the democratically unconsolidated transitional countries in which violations of democratic principles and occasional authoritarian traits can be observed repeatedly.

To illustrate the main findings of the study and to specifically discuss the case of India and the Philippines, the Multinational Development Policy Dialog (MDPD) of KAS in Brussels will organize a background Discussion with selected experts from EU Institutions and the region.

Guiding Questions to be discussed during the dialogue:

Have national parliaments (in both countries) been involved in the decisions to contain the pandemic in accordance with their constitutional role, or have there been shifts within the system of separation of powers to the detriment of parliaments? What would this mean for democracy or the constitution/political constitutionality of the country in question? What implications can be derived from this for the EU/KAS/international organizations parliamentary cooperation and support?