Excellencies,
Excellencies,
Russia’s war of choice has wrought enormous infrastructural and human damage across Ukraine. The international community broadly accepts the necessity of providing significant financial and technical assistance for reconstruction in Ukraine, but equally vital is the provision of concomitant support for Ukraine’s work to preserve and reconstruct its democracy and democratic institutions on its own terms.
International IDEA’s Annual Review of Constitution-Building series provides a retrospective account of constitutional transitions around the world, the issues that drive them, and their implications for national and international politics.
The recent postponement of the local polls in Karachi, Pakistan due to the extreme weather (Khan 2022) is an example of how natural hazards can affect an electoral process. To date, the floods have submerged a third of the country, destroying critical infrastructure and killed more than 1,000 people.
Increasing authoritarianism in some countries, such as Russia, coupled with gradual democratic erosion around the world, poses an exceptional threat to a rules-based global order, and consequently to peace and prosperity. The invasion of Ukraine is the most blatant and tragic realization of this threat.
For more than a decade, a majority of Europe’s established democracies have seen the quality of their democracies stagnate—or even decline—rather than improve. Some show the clear erosion of democratic processes and fundamental rights; several have deteriorated to the point where they can hardly be qualified as democracies any longer. The arrival of the Covid-19 global health crisis has added to the strain.
When elections take place in countries transitioning from authoritarianism to democracy, from deep political crises to stability, or from war to peace, their significance is greater than usual.
Significant progress has been made in democratizing politics and governance in Haiti during the past two decades. Several challenges however, including extreme poverty, wide economic inequalities, weak democratic institutions and a polarized political landscape remain. Opposition political parties and citizens often express their frustrations through protests, which regularly degenerate into violence.
For democracies to thrive, a vibrant and actively engaged citizenry and civil society are essential. Civil society can monitor and hold the state to account, it can infuse a greater diversity of voices into the policy process, and it can act as a force for democratic reform or provide resistance to democratic backsliding.
This year’s International Women’s Day’s theme, “Be Bold for Change”, is a call to forge a better working world - a more gender inclusive world. In particular, it calls for groundbreaking action that truly drives the greatest change for women.
Electoral management bodies (EMBs) need to become more professional if they are to retain the trust of voters.
This Handbook was developed for electoral administrators and those involved in reforming EMBs. It provides comparative experience of and best practices on EMB structures and funding models, as well as means for evaluating performance.
Politicians tied to a set of policies provide people with actual choices.
They attract like-minded activists, campaign in more focused ways, and build an attractive party label. Last but not least, they are more likely to succeed in public office.
Political parties in many countries are struggling to shift from personality-based or clientelistic-focused approaches—to more programme-based strategies as they reach out to voters.
The State of Local Democracy (SoLD) assessment framework is designed to facilitate a citizen-led and -owned approach to assessing the quality of democracy at the local level.
It is a practical resource for citizens to conduct self-assessments of democratic life in their locality, identify democratic strengths and weaknesses, and translate these into reform agendas for further broadening and deepening of their local democracies.