Parliamentary transparency is a key element of well-functioning democracies, but democracy is in decline in the Asian region.
A 2024 report by Freedom House found that freedom declined in the Asia-Pacific has declined, with electoral integrity being undermined as a record number of countries prepared for polls this year. Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index highlights a lack of progress on corruption in Asia over many years.
How healthy is parliamentary transparency in Asia and how effective are efforts to improve it?
Dr Herlin Chien is a Professor at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology in Taiwan; and head of the Taiwan Charter of the Asian Civil Society Research Network. She spoke with Melbourne Asia Review’s Managing Editor, Cathy Harper.
What is meant when we talk about parliamentary transparency?
Parliamentary transparency is all about information and disclosure because knowledge and information is power. Parliamentary monitoring organisations are the main institutional arrangement in each country to ensure parliamentary transparency. These organisations provide the public with information about parliament and its decisions either simplifying the information or visualising it; or collecting data not previously disclosed; and then analysing and distributing information to the wider society and advocating the necessity of transparency for improving democracy and empower the legislature and citizens. American poet Robin Morgan has said that keeping secrets can be an act of tyranny. A democracy having too many secrets is not healthy. Civil society, and in particular, the Parliamentary Monitoring Organisations (PMOs), are key to providing and exposing information. Transparency is about making information available to the public.
Transparency is so important, because if we don’t have transparency then we as citizens, who vote for someone to represent us, don’t know whether our interests are being well represented by those who are elected. We need information, such as who is lobbying those who represent us. Transparency helps avoid corruption. Corruption occurs more when there are grey zones between politicians and business, for example, and that erodes trust between the government and citizens. We can help ensure the sustainability of a democratic system when we have transparent parliaments. When citizens lose trust in government then good governance is lost. Open government is about helping the government govern better and reduce conflict and uncertainty; which is a win-win for most stakeholders.
Transparency is not unlimited. There are many national interests such as national security, or diplomatic strategy, that can’t be disclosed to the public. But apart from that there are so many issues such as labour rights or air pollution that are very tied to the everyday citizen. The public needs to know how decisions are made, or not made, in relation to many issues like this; and whether the interests of corporations, including multi-national corporations, are being served by the government rather than the interests of the people.
Perhaps you can talk a little more about what parliamentary transparency actually looks like? For example, which countries have high levels of parliamentary transparency and how have they achieved that?
In Asia, parliamentary monitoring organisations represent democratic consolidation and the openness of democratic society to allow a non-governmental organisation to monitor individual members of parliament or parliament as a whole. The existence of PMOs then, in turn, improves parliamentary processes in emerging democracies.
We see fewer PMOs in more established democracies, such as in Europe, the USA and Australia, which have parliaments that are well-designed in terms of checks and balances within the political system. These elements watch each other. These nations have strong opposition parties, and well-functioning civil society and the media to watch over governments. But in Asia and in Latin America, where democracy is not so consolidated or where democracy is a new idea we need PMOs to help our parliaments be transparent, to help our governments govern better, and ensure that democracy doesn’t go in reverse.
In emerging democracies, such as Taiwan, which was democratised in 1996 with the first direct presidential election, we are still very much developing our democratic history. We need more civil society groups and citizens to watch over our government and help it act transparently. PMOs focus on Members of the Parliament and parliamentary staff, providing evaluation guidelines for transparency and monitoring how well they perform and represent the people. We also need PMOs to engage citizens physically or electronically and communicate with our elected representative expectations of the Parliament.
Established democracies such as in the US or in Europe don’t have organisations defined as PMOs that only monitor the performance of the legislator or the parliament itself. The typology of the PMO is like a pendulum, because depending on the result of an election, the composition of a parliament in any given year, the political culture, the socio-economic context, or even the geopolitics or international pressures, the quality of PMOs can fluctuate just like the quality of democracy, described as like a wave by political scientist, Samuel Huntington. In Asia, we see some countries with no PMOs at all, such as Thailand and Cambodia, where there is very restricted space for civil society and citizens and even prohibited by law. There are some countries with very limited PMOs, which disclose some parliamentary information, such as in Japan and South Korea, and we see countries with very active PMOs, such as Taiwan. In Taiwan we have consistently monitored and evaluated legislators for the past 15 years.
How is India faring in terms of parliamentary transparency?
In India, there are so far no PMOs working with us and we have not been able to identify any there yet. India is growing its democracy, but it’s inclined to have strong leaders who are tied to religion. I think they might need a stronger civil society in the future. It is very large and diverse and it may be difficult to govern with many different political parties and without a strong leader. In Asia it’s very much an expectation of the people to have strong leaders, but we need other institutional arrangements or civil society to watch over and monitor the performance and behaviour of these leaders to make sure they don’t go beyond the interests of the people.
How would you rate India’s institutional parliamentary transparency? They have a judiciary, they have constitutional separation of powers between the legislature, executive and judiciary, and they have opposition parties and active media…
They have some civil society space, but we haven’t seen a mature civil society institution that can function in India. We’re hoping to help with Taiwan’s experience. We are trying to start an Asia Pacific PMOs network. We want to invite more countries even if they do not have any PMOs because we want to exchange our experience and knowledge and help them. I think India has a lot of room for growth in terms of consolidating their civil society voice and make sure that voice can have better interaction with their governance system. India is a bit like what Taiwan used to be, for example, Taiwan used to have a lot of information that wasn’t disclosed, so we’ve pushed for the live broadcast on TV of parliamentary discussions. The government started to open up the General Assembly’s discussion, and for the past decade slowly open up the discussion of the committees as well I think it might be the same in India. Also, in terms of the parliamentary minutes, they do have some transcribed, but usually the transcript is not very detailed, it’s only a summary of meetings, so they have a very long way to go.
What about China? Obviously, it’s not a democracy but it’s a huge country with several levels of government. Is there any scope for PMOs in China?
China is a very interesting case. I’ve visited China several times and I talk to professors, and we do talk to some governments. I have a sense that China has their own version of democracy—they try to convey to us that their system is based on the people and the people’s needs. China has very successfully helped their population to get out of poverty and to have a better life. It’s important to give credit to the government’s efforts. The size of China, like India, is not comparable to other democracies so they might need a different version of democracy to run their countries. My Chinese colleagues think democracy is a very slow evolving process. We cannot jump into democracy just with rebellion, like the French Revolution. Even though French Revolution did bring an end to the aristocracy very suddenly, they have had five Republics and democracy took a very long time. I think it’s fair to give China more time to sort out their best way of governing such a huge country. It’s amazing for me coming from Taiwan to say so, but Taiwan is a small country with a small population and we have a very different historical background. We’ve been through different colonisations and we have different circumstances that have turned us into the very active democracy that you see today. In China, they have internal competition within the Communist Party—democracy is all about competition between different stakeholders, between different political parties. Although China has a one party system, they do have political competition which is the best way to help the system to move forward with a better ideas and policies. I think there is room in the future for China to be more open, not only to their own people but also more open to the world, economically and politically. They are on the way, but we need to give them more time.
In terms of civil society in China, we do see some publications talk about civil society in China and I interact with some civil society groups in China, particularly environmental and conservation groups. The United Nations has a lot of cooperation with international organisations that have strong links with NGOs in China. For example, in biodiversity and forest conservation, China is doing very well. When we look at their data, they are planting more forests to help to reduce carbon emissions and the reforestation is of entire ecosystems—the animals, the land, the water et cetera.
That’s really interesting and it’s a bit off topic, but it does prompt to the question whether a non- democratic system can better deal with long term environmental issues, such as climate change, better than democratic systems?
As far as I can see, China is doing much better because they can make decisions very quickly and once their direction is set they can confiscate private land for ecosystem restoration, because they have very strong political powers. In a democracy, we have to have long negotiations with different stakeholders. On the other hand, non-democratic systems are at great risk of being beholden to the decisions of one leader and if that leader changes, policy can completely change overnight, which is dangerous especially in decisions relating to war, for example. Waging a war in a democracy is very difficult, because a President has to get the consensus of Parliament, and they have to take into consideration different political powers. A democratic system is the best of the choices and it has lots of challenges, but it’s better have an institutional system based on the rule of law than the rule of one person.
Your area of expertise is in relation to Taiwan. Can you talk a little more about the Taiwan situation and its strengths and weaknesses?
We had our first elected president in 1996 and, so far, we only have two very strong parties, with some smaller ones. In the election we had this year there was an emerging third party, but it is fairly weak. Our politics is still at an experimental stage and our democracy is fragile. We are facing international instability and threats to our system, such as disinformation that might disturb free and fair elections. Our Minister of Defence does not only focus on our hard power but also our soft power, including utilising Artificial Intelligence systems and ensuring digital security. It’s important because disinformation and misinformation can destroy the trust between the government and the people, and between people. We have diverse voices, including in relation to Taiwan’s relationship with China, but we don’t want a divided society.
Our democracy is less than 30 years old. It has grown from an authoritarian regime to multi-partisanship and our civil society has grown to help us open up to perhaps a fourth party. Civil society is playing a very important and vibrant role in Taiwan. In terms of PMOs, Citizen Congress Watch (CCW) was established in 2007 and I participated from the beginning. We were initially seen as a threat to the governing system, and legislators resisted when we asked for information because they were not used to being asked. Every year we ask for information and every year there are some who refuse to collaborate and provide data. But we keep trying and we disclose which members of parliament refuse to provide us with information, or even a whole political party. Every year we also acknowledge legislators who have performed well–we rank them. In the past few elections there are legislators who have used the fact that they have won recognition from Citizen Congress Watch to show their good parliamentary performance.
We used to show people videos of parliament and for many people that was the first time they had seen their members of parliament performing in parliament—we are educating the public. We are also sending a message to members of parliament that someone is watching them and expecting them to perform better on the public’s behalf. We look at the parliamentary minutes and follow up on what members proposed and what they achieved. The Open Government Partnership (OGP) network has also helped Taiwan further democratise. When Taiwan has elections the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL) sends election observers to Taiwan and we are sending a message that this is universal. It’s not just CCW and a small number of people who do this work on parliamentary transparency. Eventually our parliament even created an Open Parliament Committee within the legislature. I think that’s a big step–that the government realised that civil society does not stand in opposition to government but are partners.
Even though Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations in 2015 we have joined the United Nations Convention Against Corruption. It has become the foundation of our anti-corruption policy and law, for example, having a requirement that for a period of time after a member of parliament steps down from politics they cannot take up other positions in business that are a conflict of interest. Those kinds of laws are helping us be a better democracy. There have been some set-backs—in 2012 our parliament issued a law which will decriminalise some acts of legislative representatives, for example, if they have used public funding for personal use. This goes back to President Chen Shui-bian who was charged with illegal use of special funding. We opposed this and continue to oppose it.
CCW has also created a platform for the 22 cities and counties in Taiwan, each with a council, and we want local city councils to be monitored. We want to better use technology to engage the public more. We work with an NGO called G0V who use technology to visualise our government’s performance on budgets and policy making.
In short, PMOs are key players for emerging democracies to catalyse and ensure a healthy and corruption free system with transparency of information. What is more, the work of PMOs can be more effective and credible if more citizens are willing to engage in monitoring activities. Therefore, if your democracy is in reverse, there is always something that you and your fellow friends can do.
Image: A busy street in Taipei. Photo by Jimmy Liao
