Developing Effective Legislature : The Country Specific Approach to Assessing Legislative Power

The legislature has faced more challenges on its role and relevance in the constitutional era; the question to ask is how these challenges could elude the accusing fingers of critical scholarship. Developing Effective Legislature is a critical engagement on government as a study with a particular focus on the legislative arm. This book is an intellectual interrogation on the primacy of an often denigrated institution, and how to make it relevant and significant in political systems which lack power equilibrium among the three arms of government. This book adds to legal and political discourse on the need to strengthen the legislature and goes further to argue that the institution can be made effective through conscious efforts. It also critically analyzes legislative politics in Nigeria from where its case study is drawn just as it digs into the history of democracy and legislative development in the country. The uniqueness of this book is that it combines legislation, the Nigerian constitution, political system, politics and government in subjecting the role and functions of the legislature to a painstaking examination. It also evaluates legislative power through a novel model of analysis which contrasts the institution from the other branches of government.