The study of the effects of the Legislative Yuan’s Staff and Support Systems on the Agenda Efficiency: A case study of the Budget Center

• Main Authors: LO, WEI-HAO, 羅偉豪
• Other Authors: CHOU, YU-JEN
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/63924165252499220820

碩士 === 國立臺北大學 === 公共行政暨政策學系 === 93 === The congress exercises political power on behalf of all the people, and is able to reflect the preferences of public opinion. It can be considered the organization which represents the will of the citizenry the most. The common functions and powers of the congress include enacting laws and making strategic decisions, examining and approving budgets, and supervising government administration. In addition, any important government’s policies have to be approved or ratified by the congress before they can be executed. In other words, a true democracy can be examined through the performance of the congress. According to the Five-Power Constitution, the Legislative Yuan shall be the supreme legislature of the state. After the seventh constitutional amendment on June 7, 2005, the Legislative Yuan has become the sole legislative chamber and our nation has therefore turned into a unicameral system. From the past history, we can observe that the Legislative Yuan has gradually strengthened its powers and functions. Under this great change of situation, the nation and the people rely on the Legislative Yuan to meet their needs more and more. This makes the Legislative Yuan become “a monster of constitution”. The administrative department has been trending powerful for various reasons since the twentieth century. Moreover, the Legislative Yuan has been tending to have more complicated affairs to deal with and its powers and functions have been expanded gradually. Therefore, the legislators may not have enough legislative professionalism to perform their functions; they then rely on their staff to help the legislative process running. During the policymaking process, the legislative staff plays the critical role to provide information and suggestions to the legislators, and the sources direct influence on the quality and quantity of policies. This leads to the demand to develop the Staff and Support System immediately. In the western countries, several researches and data collections have been devoted to the study of the relation between the legislative staff and the agenda efficiency for many years. This demonstrates the necessity and importance of the research on this issue. On May 20, 1988, the Legislative Yuan amended the organization law to add the “Legislative Counsel Center” to help the legislators perform their powers; this also established a foundation of the Staff and Support System. The Legislative Yuan further amended the organization law on January 12, 1999 and referred to the rules of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) of the United States to create the Budget Center, which was then separated from the “Legislative Counsel Center” to become as a department of the Legislative Yuan. The aim of the amendment was to enhance the Staff and Support System, to smooth the operational mechanism in the legislative process, to manifest the legislative powers and functions, and to increase the efficiency and the quality of the policymaking. The purpose of this paper was then to focus the study on the Budge Center and followed the theory and concept of the new institutionalism to investigate the influence of the Budge Center on the agenda efficiency in the Legislative Yuan. We attempted to observe the changing of the political environment during the transition of ruling party and view the issue from the perspective of the Staff and Support System. We also made some remarks on the parliament system and its innovation for those being neglected or seldom studied before. We apply the methodologies of paper analysis, comparative study, and interview to investigate the impact assessment of the relation between the agenda efficiency and the Staff and Support System. The results of our findings are as follows, 1.The Budget Center indeed affects the budget-approving process. 2.The political influence on the Budget Center is limited. However, the changing of the political environment influences the role and the stage that the Budget Center plays. 3.The Budget Center increases the agenda efficiency certainly. However, the critical factor is determined by the legislators’ choices and preferences. 4.The minority government is the most favorably political environment for developing Budget Center.