The Influences Of The Triangular Actors In Enhancing Parliamentary Oversight Capacity And Holding The Government To Account:Ethiopian Parliament

In its primary function of oversight,Parliament keeps the government accountable to the public to ensure the successful execution of government laws,actions,and decisions are consistent with public needs.Moreover,parliamentary oversight is also essential to the government’s regulation of excesses.This dissertation is a case study of the Ethiopian Parliament.It attempted to study and assess challenges,approaches,and instruments that increase the Parliamentary oversight capacity to improve the powers conferred on it by the constitution.Based on the available evidence,the study has explored the influence of the triangulated actors to enhance the oversight capacity and its implications for the Ethiopian Parliamentary oversight function.The researcher interweaves the accommodative theory of the principal-agent and institutional theories to address critical issues in the analysis.This study employed and relied on multiple sources of information from both primary and secondary in triangulating the information,such as in-depth interviews,informant interviews,focus group discussions,and hard materials like archives,documents,journals,reports,and web sources.The study employs qualitative methods and descriptive data analysis techniques.The lack of members of parliament capacity,institutional capacity,poor engagement of civil society,and excessive party influence aggravated the parliamentary oversight challenges.The study’s findings also indicated that the problems of parliamentary oversight activity are multifaceted and interdependent and that the solution must focus on the influences of triangulating actors(civil society,MPs,and the secretariat office),as well as the interaction of contemporary parliaments,institutions,and civil society,which cast a shadow on the practice and efficiency of the oversight role.The result of the oversight notion creates a new reciprocal concept.According to the concept of reciprocity,three actors are the source of both the problem and its solution at the same time.Therefore,these findings serve as a tool to improve oversight capacity and hold governments accountable.In addition,the findings reveal that the long legacy of historical currents that lead to challenges to Ethiopian parliamentary oversight has a major impact on shaping the performance of laws and institutions today and help build knowledge to understand how the tripartite actors influence challenges to parliamentary oversight,its consequences,and prospects.In addition,it provides a new analytical tool;composite indicators measure the performance of parliamentary oversight in all aspects,which can be used as a parameter to qualitatively measure the effectiveness of parliamentary oversight.