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The State of Democracy: Democracy Assessments in Eight Nations around the World
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There is ongoing debate about how to assess democratic progress and the quality of democracy. What standards and norms should be used to chart democratic progress? It should be acknowledged that democratization is not a result of automatic social processes but rather a product of human agency. It is important that democracy building approaches should be grounded in local ownership including agenda and standard setting. Democracy is more likely to be sustained if targets for attainment and expectations of how governments should perform are formulated by those who live within the political system. It is in this context that IDEA does not subscribe to the notion of measuring and grading countries’ democratic progress using indices and other quantitative indicators. While it may be difficult to make universalistic claims about democratic principles and values, democracy can be defended through learning from comparative experiences from elsewhere in the world. IDEA promotes the development of methodologies and tools to assess democracy aimed primarily at catalyzing dialogue about democracy building at the national level and to contribute to the ongoing search for credible approaches to assess democracy.
In 2000, International IDEA inaugurated the State of Democracy (SoD) project, sponsoring the development of a new methodology for assessing the condition of democracy, or progress towards democratization, in any country around the world (see State of Democracy methodology below). The methodology was tested through pilot assessment in a number of developed and developing nations in different regions around the world to assess how robust, flexible and universal the methodology was. International IDEA recruited assessment teams in eight nations – Bangladesh; El Salvador, Italy, Kenya, Malawi, New Zealand, Peru and South Korea – each of which successfully concluded a democracy assessment, using the methodology.
In 2002, International IDEA published two major reports on the progress of the State of Democracy project. The first of these was The International IDEA Handbook on Democracy Assessment, which fully sets out the methodology; provides a databank of sources; list international standards and best practice for comparative purposes; and describes in detail processes for stakeholder and other consultative legitimisation, the use of opinion polling, and techniques for validation, publicity and dissemination. The second volume, The State of democracy: democracy assessments in eight nations around the world, provides a summary of the eight assessments; builds a comparative set of both qualitative and quantitative indicators; and draws a series of comparative conclusions.
Currently the project is promoting the application and use of the methodology by different users with the aim of catalyzing national dialogue about democracy. The University of Essex’s Human rights Centre will provide an institutional home for continued research and methodological refinement.
State of Democracy methodology - IDEA’s State of Democracy (SoD) methodology is a framework for assessing the condition of democracy and progress towards democratization.
- Its main purpose is to contribute to the process of democratisation through:
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- raising public awareness about what democracy involves, and public debate about what standards of performance people should expect from their government
- providing systematic evidence to substantiate citizens’ concerns about how they are governed, and set these in perspective by identifying both strengths and weaknesses
- contributing to public debate about ongoing reform, and helping to identify priorities for a reform programme
- providing an instrument for assessing how effectively reforms are working in practice
- The methodology seeks qualitative answers to a set of search questions complemented by quantitative data where appropriate
- The assessment is carried out by citizens of the country being assessed.
- The methodology is based on two basic democratic principles, i.e. popular control of public decision making and makers and political equality between citizens
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