Legislators and staff of the National Assembly of Macedonia focused on process rather than politics in a recent simulation exercise that demonstrated the use of public hearings to further the efficiency of committee work within their parliament.

Adversarial parties in Iraq recently achieved a major breakthrough – a negotiated end to the year-long Sunni bloc boycott of the Kirkuk Council. This significant development followed a multi-party, multi-sectarian, multi-ethnic symposium organized by NDI in late October.

High-level officials from nine legislatures around the world seeking to improve parliamentary research and administration in their lawmaking bodies came to Washington to participate in a two-week program put on by the House Democracy Assistance Commission (HDAC) in association with a number of organizations including the National Democratic Institute (NDI).

Mohammad Fahim Rostahi, a fourth-year student of political science and law at Kabul University, was impatient with the slow pace at which the government was developing its Code of Conduct. A parliamentary intern through a program run by the National Democratic Institute (NDI), he had been assigned to take minutes at the special committee appointed to draft the Code. Frustrated with the committee’s lengthy deliberations and lack of results, Fahim decided to draft his own Code.