No. 39

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Fundamentals of Good Administration as the Reform of a Member of the Riigikogu

05 June 2019

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RiTo No. 39, 2019

  • Alar Kilp

    Alar Kilp

    Lecturer in comparative politics, University of Tartu

The Resolution of the Riigikogu “The Fundamentals of the State Reform and Good Administration”, adopted on 20 February 2019, sets out seven general principles that primarily the members of the Riigikogu should keep in mind when initiating draft legislation in the Riigikogu in the future.

The benefit of the list of fundamentals depends on whether they will be taken into account in practical (Riigikogu) work, and whether it will become a routine practice to consider all the principles and find a balance between them. It is also important that non-adherence to one or several principles should not be justified by following some other principle. Qualitative change in draft legislation, in the quality of governance and administration will not emerge from a document itself, but from the extent to which the habits and attitudes of the members of the Riigikogu will change.

Good administration will not replace party politics, the competition between political parties for better rating, or the changes and unpredictabilities that result from the change of government coalitions. At the same time, good governance is inevitable for finding a working balance between democracy, management and practical efficiency. If the practice that the correspondence of a bill to all good governance principles is discussed and assessed should become rooted in the work of the Riigikogu, such a habit of defining political choices may become transferred to everyday defining of politics, and to a certain extent also change the usual ways of how the political parties compete with each other and conduct their election campaigns.

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