Antecedentes

Elections are one of the most important ways in which citizens participate in decisions that affect their lives and hold their representatives accountable for results. For all countries – consolidating democracies, countries recovering from crisis, and established democracies – elections are not an end per se, but rather an essential step in the democratic process. Similarly, effective parliamentary institutions are critical to the establishment and consolidation of democracy because they empower ordinary people to participate in the policies that shape their lives as well as help to establish the rule of law, protect human rights, oversee transparent governance, and ensure national compliance with international obligations.
 
UNDP is the UN system’s provider of electoral assistance. It supports on average 30 to 40 countries annually to develop electoral laws, processes and institutions that strengthen inclusive participation and professional electoral administration, which in turn build real and perceived credibility. Because elections are about much more than what happens on Election Day, UNDP uses an electoral cycle approach to its work. This treats the election event as one of many elements that impact on the quality and magnitude of citizens’ participation including electoral system design, electoral law reform, voter registration methodologies, civic and voter education, building the capacity of electoral management bodies, political party behavior and the quality of media coverage of electoral issues. UNDP has just launched a Global Programme for Electoral Cycle Support (GPECS), which has global, regional, country and gender windows of assistance.
 
UNDP is a global leader in the field of parliamentary development. Working with more than 60 parliaments, UNDP provides support to parliamentarians and parliamentary staffs to ensure parliaments are able to effectively fulfill their core functions of law-making, oversight and representation. UNDP also has a Global Programme on Parliamentary Support (GPPS) that works globally with other partners and regionally in the Arab States and West Africa to support innovative work in the field and promote best practices amongst parliaments.
 
There are natural opportunities for UNDP to develop greater synergies between its work in electoral assistance and in parliamentary development. Indeed, this has already begun on a small scale, including through the biannual EC-UNDP-IDEA Joint Training in Effective Electoral Assistance which now includes a half day for a parliamentary development overview, and through UNDP’s work on political parties, which draws on examples from both electoral and parliamentary work. Given the fact that both electoral assistance and parliamentary development are impacted by the electoral cycle and the respective work is guided by the cycle, there are good reasons to look at where the two thematic areas can coordinate their work. Key donors in the area of democratic governance – including the European Commission and the Government of Spain – are also very interested in exploring more deeply the linkages between these two areas.
 
At the same time, there is a need to look carefully at the pros and cons of greater programmatic integration of UNDP’s work in these two areas (including whether these two areas have a particular relationship that justifies this integration more than other areas within democratic governance), as well as the incentives and disincentives that affect integration. UNDP’s programming framework, embodied in the Strategic Plan 2008-2012, notes that free and fair elections must go hand in hand with efforts to support all people in attaining the opportunity to participate in the decisions affecting their lives. At the same time, the Strategic Plan presents a challenge to UNDP country offices in terms of promoting programmatic linkages between electoral assistance and parliamentary development by identifying the former with inclusive participation (or the demand side of democratic governance), and the latter with responsive institutions (or the supply side of democratic governance), and perhaps unintentionally reinforcing separate design and implementation processes from the point of the Country Programme onwards.
 
To better clarify the conceptual linkages and potential programmatic synergies between electoral assistance and parliamentary development, UNDP’s Democratic Governance Group requires the services of a consultant to develop a Concept Note that builds on the backgrounder prepared by the UNDP Brussels Office and reflects all of UNDP’s interests in electoral assistance and parliamentary development, including the pros and cons of closer integration and the practical impediments and recommendations for doing so. This Concept Note will form the basis for further discussions and lay out a clear roadmap for future steps.

 

Deberes y responsabilidades

  • Review the relevant literature on UNDP electoral assistance and parliamentary development to summarize the conceptual foundations and approaches used.
  • Review relevant external literature of other democratic governance assistance providers and academics and summarize the conceptual linkages between the two areas.
  • Based on the above, offer conclusions about the extent to which there are strong conceptual linkages between electoral assistance and parliamentary development (stronger, for example, than between these respective areas and other elements of democratic governance, such as anti-corruption, local governance, public administration reform, etc.).
  • Based on the above, put into perspective the conceptual areas of convergence between parliamentary development and electoral assistance against the conceptual areas where there is no or almost no convergence; in this way clarifying which segments of the two areas can move closer to each other and which segments of the two areas should keep their own specificity.
  • Study the UNDP Strategic Plan and Results-Oriented Annual Report to codify examples of programmatic synergies and identify possible programmatic impediments that need addressing to facilitate greater synergies if this is identified as a desired outcome. These programmatic factors could include processes such as the UNDAF, country programme, country programme action plan, project cycle, project management arrangements and membership on steering committees, donor interests/agendas, etc.
  • Study the observations and conclusions made of the evaluation of the EC-UNDP Partnership and the Joint Task Force on Electoral Assistance in order to integrate relevant lessons learned and best practices developed by the partnership in the possible synergies between the two areas of practice.
  • Study country case examples of democratic governance programmes that have sought (successfully or otherwise) to develop synergies between electoral assistance and parliamentary development, and codify the lessons learned in this respect (possible cases to look at include Bangladesh, Cambodia, Tanzania, DRC, Benin). Endeavor to include a cross-section of country typology.
  • Draft a Concept Note capturing the above elements and proposing a road map that lays out some clear steps to be taken to promote greater coherence between the two areas, if this is assessed as a desired outcome.

Competencias

  • Good technical knowledge of the fields of electoral assistance and parliamentary development, as well as a general knowledge of cross-cutting democratic governance issues that are often addressed through electoral cycle or deepening democracy programmes.
  • Experience in monitoring, evaluation, results-based management an advantage.
  • Preferred experience with and understanding of UNDP’s programming arrangements at country level.
  • Excellent writing skills in English required.
  • Previous writing experience of UNDP publications, an advantage.
  • Excellent organizational skills.
  • Must guarantee timely delivery of deliverables.

Habilidades y experiencia requeridas

  • At least seven years experience in democratic governance processes, with demonstrated experience in and understanding of electoral assistance and parliamentary development.