Domestic capacity: Numerous OSCE participating States have been undertaking legislative reforms for more than a decade as part of their transition to democracy. In cases where countries lack domestic capacity for drafting new laws, ODIHR encourages them to avoid working in a vacuum and, instead, to build upon the experiences of other countries - both developed democracies and countries in transition - and to try to gain a better understanding of international standards and their implications on domestic legislation.

Access to law: Legislators often operate in a narrow legal space, and their work is sometimes impeded by the scarcity of legal resources available locally. These constraints are compounded by the fact that most governments of the OSCE region now face challenges that require new legislation in interdisciplinary or cross-cutting areas of law (involving several components of the legal system, having a multinational/transnational dimension,etc.) where there are no or only poor precedents and where they have little to no experience. Also, incorporating relevant international instruments into domestic legal systems is still problematic, partly because of insufficient dissemination of international standards.

Legislative transparency: For democracy to function properly, laws have to be prepared, drafted, discussed, and adopted through an open and transparent process that involves actors outside the parliament and the government. Increasing the transparency of the law-making process can improve confidence in the legal system, and thereby the functioning of the government as a whole.