Question

Briefly describe the function of legislatures and the main difficulties they may experience in carrying out these functions. Could those difficulties be overcome by structural changes.

Answer 1

Answer:

The main function of the legislatures is to make laws and establish guidelines  and other statutes that would establish peaceful co-existence among the peoples.

Explanation:

The main difficulties often experienced by legislatures when carrying out their functions are numerous, beginning with public criticism both positively and negatively, down to the diffferences that may arise in terms of reaching a consensus on any particular bill proposed by a legislator to the House.

Also, the idea of incompetency cannot be overlooked because some members of the House of legislature when assigned to a specific and unique functions are sometimes unable to deliver results as expected by the House and the people who elected them to this function.

Structural changes is one means to this challenges, if it is so necessary. As cited in the instance above, an incompetent legislator or committee should be reviewed, reenacted and competency implied in the appoint to such functions. By so doing,the functions of the legislature will experience less challenges and difficulties.

Answer 2

Answer: The changes in the constitution

Explanation:

The legislature is the second arms of government in a democracy. It is made up of men and women of integrity who had been elected by the people to represent their constituencies in the parliament. The functions of legislature ranges from making law for the good governance of the nation, serve as check and balances to the other arms of government, perform an oversight functions on the executive, approval of annual budget, approval of nomination of executive, impeachment of the executive for allegation of misconduct and so on. In carrying out these functions they face the following difficulties

Parliamentary autonomy : Apart from the parliament of most of the developed countries, the parliament of the developing countries of the world still face the problems of parliamentary autonomy. In most of these countries the executive still exercise some form of control on the parliament in areas such as the financial autonomy most of them still run to the executive to get funds for their activities. Also they cannot recall their members whenever the need arise.

Personnel : The parliament in most of the developing countries apart from the developed countries lack the expert staff who are well trained to provide support to members in the performance of their legislative duties to members of their constituencies.

Resources : The parliament in most of these countries also lack the resources needed to perform their legislative duties effectively. They lack the resources such as library and information communication technology needed to facilitate their legislative duties effectively. In addition , there is no enough office facilities for individual members of the parliament which stands as an obstacle in the performance of their legislative duties.

However, these difficulties can be overcome by structural changes which simply means change in the way they performed most of their functions as well as changes in the system to enable them performed better. Most of these difficulties had their root cause in the lack of parliamentary autonomy which emanate from the defect in their constitution . With a view to overcome these difficulties, there is need for the amendment of the constitution in a such a way that it will guarantee the legislature autonomy particularly in the areas of financial autonomy such that their funds will come from the first line charge that is from the consolidated revenue fund, so that the parliament will no longer be going to the executive to asked for funds to perform their legislative duties, because as the saying goes he who plays the piper dictate the tune.

As soon as the issue of financial autonomy is sorted out, they will be able to organize a capacity building programs for their staff, bring in expert from the various field such as the academia to enhanced their legislative duties, provide themselves with the necessary resources such as the building of library and information communication technology, as well as the provisions of office facilities to individual members of the parliament to enhance their legislative duties.