The structural and policy suggestions presented here are four-fold.

1 - A Standing Committee in the National Assembly on Armenian-Diasporan Relations needs to be formed. Armenia’s National Assembly has 11 Standing Committees, ranging from Defense, to European Integration, to Territorial Administration. Standing Committees display a broad range of important powers in the legislature, and considering the supremacy of the legislative branch in parliamentary political systems, a Standing Committee on Armenian-Diasporan Relations will solidify and address all pertinent issues that a Diaspora Ministry is/was suppose to undertake. Unlike ad-hoc committees, which are temporarily formed to either inquire or research specific salient issues, or to formulate legislation on such issues, a standing committee is permanent, and as such, its legislative drafting powers, policy formulation, and scope of magnifying or popularizing important Armenian-Diasporan issues will be quite effective. In this context, a Standing Committee on Armenian-Diasporan Relations will be far more impactful, efficient, and powerful than the previously-existing Diaspora Ministry. Whereas a Ministry is a department within the executive bureaucracy that implements laws passed by the legislature (with the executive’s/Prime Minister’s approval), a Standing Committee on Armenian-Diasporan Relations will actually be able to conduct research, consult experts, undertake public hearings, and draft legislation that takes into consideration, not only the interests of the Republic, but also the interests of the Diaspora. In this context, members of the Diaspora can and will have much more influence in effecting legislation, contributing to research, and offering public testimony as experts on pertinent and salient Diasporan issues.

From an efficiency perspective, not only will a Standing Committee provide for legislative effectiveness, it will also be less resource-intensive than maintaining an entire Ministry. While the Diaspora Ministry was quite small in relation to other ministries in government (encompassing approximately an 80-person staff), its effectiveness could not be compared to the potential scope of activities that a Standing Committee of Parliament could undertake. A group of Members of Parliament that make up a Standing Committee are a far powerful collective of policy actors than a ministry with mid-tiered bureaucrats; there remains a robust qualitative difference between the two institutional structures.

2 - Considering the fact that the Ministry of Diaspora in the last 10 years has not conducted any cogent fact-finding missions, government-funded research, or programmatic approaches, Armenia has very little empirical knowledge of the various Diasporan communities. Aside from general anecdotal evidence, or ad-hoc data produced by the Diaspora itself, the Republic of Armenia does not have substantive statistical or qualitative data on the Diasporan communities. In this context, the Standing Committee shall undertake a fact-finding mission (in conjunction with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and consult Diasporan scholars and experts on the following areas:

a) An assessment of the configurations of the major Armenian Diasporas.

b) Demographic, financial, cultural, and political resources of each community must be quantified.

c) Policy propositions must be coordinated and formulated between Standing Committee members and representatives of each of the respective Diasporan communities.

d) Contingent on the size and resources of the given Diasporan community, policies by Standing Committee lawmakers may accommodate, to the best case possible, the demands and requests of the Diasporan communities.

e) All these endeavors need to be publicized for both transparency as well as to promote public discourse, both within Armenia and the Diaspora.

3 - The above specified-suggestions aim to produce the following outcomes:

a) The Diaspora will develop a sense of efficacy; instead of assuming that only their money matters for Armenia’s government/society, they will rather develop a closer attachment to the Republic, noting that they have direct involvement in policy-making.

b) This notion of their voices being heard not only increases their potential involvement and contributions to Armenia, but also allows them to apply their intellectual, technical, and in general, constructive capabilities to Armenia.

c) This creates not only an increase in the involvement of Diasporan Armenians on issues concerning Armenia, but also encourages them to contribute their human capital as an extension of Armenia’s human capital.

d) The important resources of the Diaspora may be more efficiently and surgically applied to areas of Armenian society that require it the most; that is, instead of having loose coordination of Diasporan assistance to select aspects of Armenian society, we can form cogent policies and substantive issue-areas to which the Diaspora can actively contribute.

4 - Through these mechanisms of institutional cooperation, the issue of offering Diasporan Armenians political capital may be synchronized into a mutually beneficial structure: the voices, visions, and resources of the Diaspora will be incorporated into the policy-making and legislative process through its consultative and contributory work with the Standing Committee. Furthermore, and in a broader symbolic sense, since Armenia’s National Assembly, in constitutional terms, is the representative governmental body of Armenian citizens, this concept of having some form of representation may be extended to the Diaspora, where Diasporan Armenians can identify their interests as also being represented in Armenia’s legislature.