Ahmed A. Saif - A Legislature in Transition: The Yemeni Parliament

First published 2001 by Ashgate Publishing

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Copyright Ahmed A. Saif 2001

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Saif, Ahmed A.

A legislature in transition : the Yemeni parliament
1. Yemen. Parliament 2. Yemen - Politics and government
I. Title
328.533

Library of Congress Control Number: 2001089068

ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-1702-0 (hbk)

Legislatures are fascinating and associated with democratic polities, though their existence per se does not necessarily guarantee democracy. They have flourished with the wave of democratisation in the last decade of the twentieth century. Consequently, scholars have begun to research them after a long period during which other state institutions were the focus of interest. Nonetheless, most attention is paid to legislatures in the developed countries and far less to those of third world countries. This book, therefore, targets the unexplored and long-forgotten legislatures and adopts the Yemeni Parliament as a case study.

This book analyses the development of Yemens legislative body from its establishment for the first time by free multi-party elections following unification in 1990. It explores the workings of the parliament which has functioned since 1990, and evaluates the degree of efficiency and autonomy with which it has operated within the countrys social structure and the politico-legal framework.

The state in Yemen lacks adequate power and wealth for a successful social transformation and has failed to implement sustainable development. The state is therefore characterised by the politics of survival. Yemeni society is not being penetrated and regulated by the state, nor, because of its multiple divisions, is it capable of forming sufficient organised power to exert pressure towards national interests. Parliament, by virtue of its nature, is formed from, and affected by, these components. The political, legal, and socioeconomic frameworks have been set up for the transition to democracy, but parliaments role is constrained by the ruling establishment, whose continuing control and socio-bureaucratic patronage networks continue to reproduce characteristics of the old regime. Because of poverty and mismanagement of resources, the state has become the main source of wealth and power, and violent competition for authority between rivals decreases the possibility of resolving political disputes through systematic institutional processes.

Given the environment in which it performs, the book aims to explore how parliament functions and how it has benefited from the weakness of the state and the relative strength of Yemeni society. This book also reveals how and why the individual parliaments have performed their roles differently and highlights the interactions between their internal characteristics and changes in their external environment.

However, although Yemens parliament is relatively new, it has had limited experience, and still reflects an external environment which largely determines its capacities. A degree of slow and steady institutionalisation can be seen, a margin of autonomy over different issues is maintained, and over all it has functioned reasonably well considering the role parliament plays in transforming the system from authoritative to a democratic one.

Ahmed A. Saif
Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies
University of Exeter, England
June 2001