Legislative Stakeholders: Building a Stronger Civil Society

Today's Zaman colunnist Klaus Jurgens raised an important question a few days ago when he wrote of the importance of formally involving stakeholders in Turkish policymaking. Looking to some European countries that have legally mandated a consultative process with civil society groups occur as part of the legislative process, Jurgens writes that such consultative decisionmaking is beneficial to effective lawmaking and building a strong civil society. Though the government carries out regulatory impact assessments on new pieces of legislation, it rarely consults civil society stakeholders, and certainly not in the formal, mandated sorts of processes of which Jurgens writes.