Taking the pulse of a country’s democracy

Giving the citizens of a country the ability to assess their own democracy is a potent means of enlisting broad support for democratic reform. This is what the State of Democracy (SoD) assessment framework has encouraged in over 20 countries since its introduction ten years ago.

Take Mongolia: Mongolia chose to use the SoD in 2005–6. Its history suggested it was one of the countries least likely to move towards internationally accepted models of democracy. Yet, the results of the assessment provided the government with some clear indicators for improving democratic governance, which led to a commitment to adopt a broad agenda for improving democracy, human rights and anticorruption.

State of Democracy is an analytical tool that can be used by the citizens of any country around the world to probe, question and assess the quality of their governments and democratic institutions. Strengths and weaknesses can be identified for example, in the electoral system, or in the parliament, the role of the media, in political parties and so on – which can lead towards the development of an agenda for reform.

The SoD is the fruit of a partnership between International IDEA and the UK Democratic Audit. It was piloted in 2000 and guided by two basic principles: “popular control over decisionmaking” and “equality among citizens in the exercise of that control”. The methodology is adaptable to old, new and emerging democracies and allows for a broad spread of information to be gathered, making the assessments more useful than if they were only based on numbers.

Thus, in the case of Mongolia, the assessment team was able to customize the assessment methodology to make it relevant to the Mongolian context, and ensuring that the views of Mongolia’s nomadic population were heard alongside that of academics and others located within cities with greater experience of government. In fact, the Mongolian government incorporated the outcome of the audit and used it as a basis from creating an additional national Millennium Development Goal, MDG 9, focusing on democracy, human rights and anti-corruption (see page 28). Based on the SoD framework Mongolia continues to examine the status of these three elements every year, monitoring progress using indicators specifically developed for this purpose.

Today, International IDEA supports countries conduct their respective SoDs by providing training and technical support as necessary on how to conduct the assessments and coaching the national assessment teams. IDEA’s comparative knowledge resources – handbooks on electoral systems or political parties for example – are provided to assist those reviewing their democracy to make more informed judgments about their own situation.