The spread of democracy worldwide has triggered a tremendous interest in the measurement and assessment of democracy and governance. This in turn has resulted in the production of a wide range of tools, frameworks, methodologies, ratings and indexes for assessing the quality of democracy. All have varying objectives, users and audiences that will also result in different outcomes. What they do have in common, however, is the aspiration to provide a means of producing a snapshot of the current status of democracies around the world. Monika Ericson is communications manager in the communications team at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA)
Mélida Jiménez works in the State of Democracy project at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA)
This article is a contribution to aninternational debate on democracy support co-hosted by InternationalIDEA and openDemocracy
Also published:
Vidar Helgesen, "Democracy support: where now?" (17 November 2008)
ReinMüllerson, "Democracy: history, not destiny"(25 November 2008)
The State of Democracy (SoD) framework, developed by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) differs from other assessment methodologies in one important respect. Moving away from the practice of ranking democratic performance and making external judgments, the comprehensive assessments produced as a result of applying the SoD framework are led and owned by local actors. The framework is intended for use by citizens around the world as a means of conducting a democratic health-check on their governments and institutions, and as a way of acquiring practical information that will in turn help to define priority areas for future policy initiatives and democratic reform.
The SoD framework was developed in 2000, in partnership with Stuart Weir and David Beetham, experienced scholars of democracy associated with Democratic Audit and the Human Rights Centre at Essex University, eastern England. To date the SoD framework has been applied in twenty countries around the world - including Mongolia, the Netherlands, Malawi, Australia, the Philippines and the United Kingdom. These assessment initiatives have all been motivated by a variety of factors, illustrating the fact that "democracy has many stories". Those seeking to apply the framework in their countries stand to benefit greatly from the experiences, lessons and insights shared within the State of Democracy Network - a community of practice involving those who have applied the SoD assessment framework in their countries and regions.
International IDEA is now launching the State of Democracy Network website.This website aims to serve as practical resource for anyone and everyone interested in assessing the quality of democracy in their own country. It is also intended to serve as a "home" for existing and future democracy assessment reports, and as an online meeting-place for participants in the SoD Network.
A tool for good practice
The website's main features include:
* Assessment framework This section explains the method, basic principles and mediating values underpinning the SoD framework as well as providing guidance on how to prepare for an assessment. It also includes all ninety search questions included in the overall framework. The online version of the assessment framework is now presented for the first time and it aims at making the tool as user-friendly and flexible as possible. This means, for example, that you can create a print-friendly customized framework of selected questions, or send a link to members of an assessment team wherever they are at the time.
* Assessment reports This section serves as a repository of assessment reports from around the world. The user can download country assessment reports or find information on the source and availability of the reports. All International IDEA's State of Democracy publications - including Assessingthe Quality of Democracy: A Practical Guide (written by David Beetham, Edzia Carvalho,Todd Landman, and Stuart Weir) - are downloadable free of charge. The aim is to create a home for these reports and make them accessible to all those interested in democracy assessment.
* Experiences and good practice Through audio interviews and presentations, assessment, team members share their experiences and lessons learnt and give advice to other teams. There is also regular input from teams currently carrying out an assessment in their countries. At the time of writing there are interviews with assessment team members from Mongolia, The Philippines, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Netherlands and Australia.
* Linking assessments to reform This section explains how democracy assessments around the world have led to a wide range of policy initiatives and reforms. A clickable world map leads to the different assessment countries and accounts of the results of assessment initiatives in each country. This section will be updated continuously as teams share their stories and experiences of the assessment process in their particular country. In this context it is important to bear in mind the fact that the work of conducting assessments and defining resulting reform agendas takes time. By assessing the state of their own democracy and using the information to strengthen institutional norms and frameworks, countries demonstrate a real commitment to democratic ideals and practices.
* State of Democracy Network The process of developing the assessment methodology, as well as its application in practice has led to the setting up of the SoD Network - a network of experts who have applied the methodology, and continue to contribute to its further development.
* Ask an expert! The site is also fully interactive, with an "ask an expert" feature. Here users can ask SoD Network member experts about democracy assessments and browse previous and frequently asked questions. In this way the experiences and knowledge acquired from work with SoD assessments can be made more accessible to website visitors, and serve as a support for those undertaking or planning to undertake an assessment in their own countries.
Democracy building, as Vidar Helegesen and Rein Müllerson have in different ways argued, is a long and complex process. State of Democracy assessments are just one of the ways for enhancing the quality of democracies. The findings of assessments must be shared broadly with as many stakeholders as possible; to facilitate in-country debate and dialogue for democratic reform.
Comments
I have given time to understand Monika Erickson & Melida Jimenez. They are not ignorant of the academic technicalities: frameworks and methodologies, both of which are at center for those seeking to understand democracy and governance either in 'general' or 'particular' terms. People who do so are those, I still believe have not given up respect for "liberal" education: a-one- time tool to buttress understanding.
In the interest of both concepts: democracy and governance; and also the claims of their insignia's transformative mission, I would however not hasitate to raise these questions, before I go on further with my comments. The questions are: (a) is this paper a marketing venture? (b) Is it a mark of resenting the "guru": Freedom House on the issues proclaimed to drive their framework and reform approaches? (c) Should it be the case, what in the Freedom House approaches and values are they resenting? Or (d) Is it that they are seeking to replace its institutional approaches and values, or else how are those who understand this-whole-thing more deeply to interprete them - for as it is, the effort looked at historically within the frame of what the paper shows - cannot be to complement Freedom House endeavours?
Is it a sheer case of duplication in the face of teaming-up or is it that of critically distancing from what otherwise seems like the established origin? Short as this paper is, it could have been more informative to at a glance see whether the work of Stuart Weir and David Beetham, with the results attached in any sense derives directly or indirectly from that of the Freedom House. A brief account of that kind for those with right trace of the history, would have alleyed fears and made some of the questions raised uncalled for.
This is of concern to me and I guess also to very many others, because although in "science", we will always have dead stars and blackholes as a result, act of not accounting for all even in briefest senses inevitably leaves room for questions good to avoid. My fear is there is nothing that search for employment and recognition will not engineer under present conditions - the more reason to be cautious, especially if we claim to want to understand and engineer sustainable progress and changes.
A real issue as can be constructed also is: the science of knowledge creation - be it in the technical or social fields is one of the most intricate. Steps and processes to reduce that knowledge into practice is no less intricate too. Sciences are different but their academic research approaches would always remain basic and mission-oriented in various degrees and forms. Democracy and governance belong to the social spectrum, caught-up in both but for practical reasons of basic human institutional needs, are soaked more by applied knowledge with increasingly unimaginable creativity, now with development studies changing its phases. The Freedom House [though much criticized] is also well loved and situated in both processes. What does IDEA really capitalize on?
The claims of this paper, with success story narrated using the samples: Mongolia, the Netherlands, Malawi, the Phillipines and the United Kingdom - among others, might have their empirical rationality, yet short of getting to understand the whole picture with all problems of democracy and governance world-wide. Situations like this, make one unable to stop seeing knowledge proliferation and processes of its creation as challenging and more so-so, when matched with the claims of success not just statements of success as the objective of inputs - efforts]. A big risk here is trying to sound more contemporary hence play-out the predecessor-stages in that creation of what becomes the contemporary. Another perhaps latent risk is intensification of compartmentalization unhelpful for harmony, coordination and unification of efforts, which though plurality is necessary in some well-thought-out cases, could eventually be harmful.
In a world fraught by poverty, inequality, financial problems, environmental constraints and undisciplined human nature, democracy and governance conflict potentials are unending. How do we understand and reduce these to rateable or index variables observable in a single or plurality of systems so as to make claims of sustainable successes? Now that the incoming US team talks of change, we must truly take the pains to see that we understand and appreciate what it is all about otherwise we as individuals and the world at large will be deceiving each other, for things to turn eventually worse and worse. Our world is not in need of smart and dead-souls but living ones to make the difference needed - what we all want. Surely this is no attack of IDEA, but just contributing so that we all see what we see right with the heart of peace, respect and love.
Post new comment