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Critics of donor-funded democracy promotion claim that these programs are frequently designed to reproduce social and governmental models drawn from developed countries and imposed on the recipient country without regard to local conditions, with experts parachuted in to provide guidance based on international 'best practices.' The critique focuses on first-generation development with a neutral, technical focus, whereas democracy promotion has evolved toward a more politically engaged approach to programming-what we label as second-generation and, more recently, third-generation development practices. We apply this distinction to the area of legislative strengthening (LS) by describing its history from the post-World War II period to the present and provide examples of LS projects to support the argument. The challenge is to combine valuable insights from best practices from decades of experience while adapting them through political engagement with local partners and with bilateral donors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strengthening the budgetary powers of legislatures through nonpartisan budget offices adds to the capacity-building repertoire of development donors. Budget offices are supposed to provide legislatures with information and analysis independent from the executive. The United States Agency for International Development believes that strengthening the legislature's power of the purse improves governance. We highlight USAID-funded legislative strengthening projects implemented in Jordan, Kenya, Morocco, and Afghanistan to show how these budget offices function. There is a significant potential for these units to assist members of parliament in understanding the budget process, the broad fiscal challenges facing government, and expenditure control and budgetary trade-offs that affect present and future spending. These cases demonstrate the challenges of creating and sustaining a parliamentary budget office. Finally, in an effort to make budget offices effective and sustainable, we outline several key steps that we believe are important both for donors and the legislative bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]