Audits worldwide

(Credit: woodleywonderworks, CC by 2.0)

Development of the Democratic Audit Framework

Democratic Audit first developed the framework for use in the UK. The Audit’s pioneering work on democratic auditing has since been developed through the inter-governmental body, International IDEA (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance), Stockholm.  With IDEA’s support, we re-designed and expanded the framework to create a universal tool for assessing the condition of democracy in any country in the world. An international panel of experts agreed the framework after exhaustive discussion and International IDEA published a full guide to the assessment framework in 2002:The International IDEA Handbook on Democracy Assessment (David Beetham et al, IDEA/Kluwer Law International). The Handbook describes the whole process of taking on a democratic audit. We used the full framework for the 2002 Audit of the UK, Democracy under Blair.

From 2002 to 2004, a team drawn from Democratic Audit and the Centre for Democratisation Studies, University of Leeds, worked with IDEA to pilot the framework in eight countries around the world. These countries were: Bangladesh, El Salvador, Italy, Kenya, South Korea, Malawi, New Zealand and Peru. A comparative guide to the eight pilot democracy assessments sponsored by IDEA was also published in 2002: The State of Democracy: Democracy Assessments in Eight Nations Around the World (David Beetham et al, IDEA/Kluwer Law International, 2002).

The democracy assessment framework has also been adapted for the UK Department for International Development to build democratic arrangements and human rights – including economic and social rights – in development programmes aimed at providing pro-poor services and empowering marginalised communities.

Democratic Audits around the World

In addition to the eight pilot assessments carried out from 2002–04, the Audit methodology has been applied in at least 15 democracies, including Australia, Austria, Ireland, Latvia, the Philippines and South Africa. A similar approach has also been adopted by the Democratic Audits of Canada, Russia and Sweden – although the Audits in these countries do not use the IDEA framework. In addition, a number of large-scale national ‘power and democracy’ studies have also been conducted in recent years, notably in the Scandinavian countries.

Basic details about all the democracy assessments we are aware of, with links to relevant information, are provided in the list of democracy assessments below.

Democratic Audits in Comparative Perspective: A Workshop

A workshop on ‘Democratic Audits in Comparative Perspective: Approaches, Results, Impact’ was held at Leiden University, the Netherlands from January 18-19, 2013. The event was organised by Rudy Andeweg (Leiden University) and Jacques Thomassen (University of Twente) and funded by the Dutch Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The papers presented at this workshop examined the approaches, key findings and the impact of democracy audits undertake in five countries. Additional papers considered democratic deficits from a comparative perspective (drawing on the findings of various national audits) and also the experience of adapting democratic auditing for the purpose of studying decision-making in the European Union.

WORKSHOP PAPERS (JAN 2013)

List of democracy assessments around the world