On Sept. 5, 1774, the First American Continental Congress met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to deliberate the so-called Intolerable Acts, a series of severe royal decrees and laws in the U.S. Colonies passed by the British Parliament. The American men who gathered on that September day were a band of ragtags with varying backgrounds: farmers, teachers, craftsmen, woodmen, hunters and preachers. They probably knew little about politics or had any intention of becoming politicians, but they came together around an ideal notion of civic duty, which they saw not as a career but as an obligation to serve the greater good. They didn’t know it at the time, but those men set a precedent for generations of Americans, who would look at public service in an entirely new way.
Part-time politics in the United States was not designed with lofty ideas in mind. It happened out of necessity because the fledgling federal government couldn’t afford to pay full-time legislators, but instead relied on their notion of public service as a civic duty. Thus was born a part-time Congress composed of citizens who showed up to carry their civic duties and returned to their farms and families as soon as sessions were over. The Congress of a future empire continued to operate with part-time legislators for almost 200 years. Politicians weren’t paid enough to stay in Washington and had to have second jobs in order to earn a living.
As late as the 1960s, legislators in the U.S. Congress still worked part-time and except for senior members, many, had no resources to stay in the nation’s capital. Most spent as much time in Washington as they spent in their own communities working and making a living outside their legislative functions. Today, U.S. Congress operates year-round, but at the state level, only ten States have full-time assemblies while 40 other States operate in part-time basis. State policymaking in the U.S. is dense and covers almost all areas of public life from education, commerce within borders, local law enforcement, prisons, libraries, roads, parks, etc. Part-time politicians in these States gather during a certain time of year where they write, deliberate and pass laws, form and disband committees, vote and abstain, and then when the session is over they all go home to their lives.
Part-time legislature is not a heresy found only in America. Switzerland – that beacon of precision and stability – operates with part-time politicians. The legislators at the Swiss Federal Assembly meet only four times a year, for three weeks at a time. During this time they do carry their legislative duties for which they have been elected and upon completing they return home.
This view subscribes to a concept of politics where being a legislator is not a profession and legislature is not an employer to get rich and fat, but to serve in the name of the greater good. Who could possibly argue with the Swiss and the way they run their country? Whatever Switzerland does or doesn’t do, it’s easy to see how its part-time legislators do a much better job than most other countries where career politicians vacation in exotic islands with taxpayers money.
Which brings us to Kosovo. Europe’s youngest country has a fully-staffed, full-time Parliament with 120 members. Unlike in Switzerland or say in one of the 40 U.S. States, to get elected to Kosovo’s parliament is a big deal. Financially, members of Kosovo’s parliament might as well be living in a relatively rich country, not in Europe’s poorest. In the 2014 budget, MP compensation averaged just over 3,000 euros per month, more than eight times the national average. The parliament as an institution has barely functioned or served Kosovars in 2014 while their representatives collected income that compared favorably with citizens of a relatively high-income European country.
This doesn’t make sense. The ratio of income of a member of parliament (MP) to GDP per capita figures in other European countries gives an idea of how overpaid members of the Kosovo assembly are. Pablo Onato of the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, compared several countries using the indicator and found out that Italy had the highest MP salary to GDP per capita ratio – over five times the average – while Sweden had the lowest ratio of 1.9. In the meantime, Kosovo compensates its legislators about eight times higher than the average income in the country. In United Kingdom and the U.S. the income ratio is 2.6 and 3.6., respectively.
Apart from this incongruous financial compensation that Kosovo legislators receive, it makes sense to wonder whether the country needs a full-time parliament at all. A part-time legislature, when designed with care, would fit the needs of the country much better and be both more efficient and effective. To begin with, employing part-time politicians would save Kosovo over 6 million euro a year. In addition, part-time, modestly compensated, service would attract only people with passion to serve the greater good without looking to get rich on public purse. This would mean a higher turnover with less experience, but such a model would also supply new and fresh ideas in policy making. Other benefits of a part-time legislature abound including reliance on central resources and non-partisan staff, which should be more functionally effective in serving legislators with research assistance and other legislative services.
Finally and perhaps the biggest benefit of a part time legislature would be to reduce the power of incumbents and weaken incentives for entrenched corruption. This would also lead to a revamped notion of public service not as a career, but as a civic duty where a select number of citizens come together once or twice a year to serve the public and upon finishing the session they all go home where they should have regular full-time jobs. Those politicians wouldn’t be as loathed and the entire political atmosphere would probably be less toxic.