Measuring Democracy - Relevant Projects of the International IDEA - Artur Victoria Studies

The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance is one of the most interesting, if not the most useful, possible sources in the area of democracy research. Though at the moment they have nothing that could be used as a source of data for measuring democracy, they have few projects that may be very useful potential sources in the future.

International IDEA was created in 1995 by 14 countries for the purpose of promotion and advancement of democracy and improvement and consolidation of electoral processes world-wide. Today, the Institute has 19 members and four associate members. These are Australia, Barbados, Belgium, Botswana, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Denmark, Finland, India, Mauritius, Namibia, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, and Uruguay. The following international non-governmental organizations are associate members: the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights (IIHR), the International Press Institute (IPI), Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA) and Transparency International. As it can be see in it from the name of the institution International IDEA is focused mainly on issues of advancing democracy and creating sustainable electoral institutions and processes. Institute has international staff and is based in Stockholm.

Some IDEA projects have regional focus and some of them are limited in duration and in number of countries included. The institute currently does not have a project operational that could be used for the purpose of the measurement of democracy, or for that matter, for data collection that could be used for measuring democracy. But among many projects there are three interesting projects that could potentially be useful as a source of information or have other interesting elements that could be used for the measurement of democracy. Those projects are Administration and Cost of Elections project (ACE), the Electoral Process Information Collection project (EPIC) and the State of Democracy project.
The ACE project is joint project of IDEA, International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA). The goal of the project is to produce a comprehensive and user-friendly collection of comparative information on electoral management, administration and costs. This information is currently available online at www.aceproject.org.

The main goal of the project is to provide complete and systematic election information to those who are dealing with elections, designing of electoral systems, administration of elections and to people who are monitoring electoral process. The ACE database provides large amount of information about almost all aspects of electoral systems and management of elections. The topics are dealt with in a way that is accessible to the peoples that are not too familiar with the details of electoral systems and with the management of electoral process. The ACE database, apart from general information about typology of electoral systems and descriptions of different forms that electoral systems and electoral administration, is also providing a large sample of original material about elections, electoral systems, electoral regulations, management of the elections and materials used in the electoral process. The data are divided into topic and are presented according to them. Topics included in the ACE are Electoral Systems, Legislative Framework of Elections, Electoral Management, Boundary Delimitation, Voter Education, Voter Registration, Voting Operations, Parties and Candidates, Vote Counting, Media and Elections, Election Integrity and Elections and Technology.

Another project is the EPIC project. The goal of EPIC project is to collect all data that might be available on elections in a large number of countries and to make them easily assessable to everybody that have an interest in it. The data that will be collected will be mainly raw data about the different aspects of elections. The data will be divided into following topics:

1. Electoral Systems
2. Legislative Framework
3. Electoral Management
4. Boundary Delimitation
5. Voter Registration
6. Voter Education
7. Parties and Candidates
8. Voting Operations
9. Vote Counting
10. -Elections and the Media
11. Elections and Technology
12. Electoral Integrity

The first phase of the project is planned to be completed by the end of 2002 when the data about 60 countries will be available on the EPIC site (http://www.epicproject.org). According to the plan the data for 30 were supposed to be available by the end of 2001, but so far this is not the case. The second phase should include finding partners in different regions of the world and establishment of 6-7 regional centers for data collection.

From the point of view of measuring democracy the most interesting, if not very useful, is the State of Democracy project. The project’s goal is to develop a democracy assessment tool that can be used for any country in the world, regardless of the level of economic development, social characteristics and other peculiarities. (IDEA 2002a: 6). Several arguments in the justification of the questionnaire are offered (IDEA 2002b: 1). The argument that justifies the use of common analytical tool is that democratization is a process that is never completed and democracy is not all or nothing, or present or absent state, it is more a matter of degree. Because of that the advancements or retreats in the levels of democracy can be measured. The argument that continues itself on previous argument is that the idea of democracy is a common for all social settings, and can be disaggregated into a set of indicators and indices that could have general applicability on a large number of countries regardless on their differences (IDEA 2002b: 1).

According to the authors of the assessment questionnaire the best people to do assessment of democracy are the citizens that live in each country that is assessed. The purpose of the project is to provide research framework for that can be used by country experts. The actual job of deciding what criteria are important for the assessment, and what value should be assigned to them is left to country specialists to decide.

The project intention is not to produce ranking, to place countries in it and to compare it, but it rather focuses itself on the progress and setbacks that took place within one country and aims to compare countries with themselves, or to be more precise to measure advancement or retreat of democracy.

The concept of democracy that is used in this project is based on two principal elements. First element is popular control over public decisions and decision-makers and the second one is the political equality. In order for these principles to be realised in practice a set of institutional and societal components is (IDEA 2002b: 1).
Those components are:

1. A guaranteed framework of equal citizen rights, including access to justice and the rule of law, as well as the freedoms of expression, association and assembly, and the basic economic and social rights to enable citizens to exercise these freedoms effectively.

2. Institutions of representative and accountable government, including not only free and fair elections to provide the means for popular choice and control over government, but also procedures to ensure the continuous accountability of officials, elected as well as non-elected, to the public.

3. A civil or democratic society, including free and pluralistic media of communication, and the civic associations, consultative processes and other forums necessary to ensure popular participation in the political process, and to encourage government responsiveness to public opinion and the more effective delivery of public services.

The principles of equality and popular control are realised in practice through mediating values of participation, authorization, representativeness, accountability, transparency, responsiveness and solidarity.From observance of these values democratic institutions derive their democratic character. Each of these mediating values also has set of requirements that need to be fulfilled in order for them to be effective, and they also have institutional means of realization that need to be present.