Democratic Audit
Democratic Audit is a consortium of scholars, lawyers, journalists and others. We conduct original research into the quality of democracy and political freedom in the UK and countries around the world. We monitor democracy and freedom in Britain through a series of democracy assessments, reports and commissions, and through evidence to Parliament and official bodies. In conjunction with the Rowntree Reform Trust, we have continuously checked public opinion on democracy issues as they arise.
Our academic home is the Human Rights Centre, at the University of Essex. Scholars from Essex make a major contribution to our work. But scholars and experts from all over Britain and the world also work with us on our projects and reports.
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Assessing democracy
The Audit's most important contribution so far has probably been the methodology that we have developed for assessing the quality of democracy in the UK or any other country. In 1991, we published a paper by David Beetham, setting out a first draft of this methodology for criticism and improvement. This methodology has since been developed for universal use through the inter-governmental body, International IDEA (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance). We set out a full description of the current methodology under Auditing Democracy, along with a DIY audit section. For our 1996 audit of civil and political rights in the UK, Francesca Klug and Keir Starmer also developed a Human Rights Index based on the European Convention on Human Rights and other international human rights instruments, and their jurisprudence.
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Research
We work to academic standards of accuracy and objectivity in all our work. Our primary aim is however practical: we produce reports, articles and guides to improve democracy and political freedom on behalf of ordinary citizens in the UK and abroad. We are guided by the two governing principles of our framework for auditing democracy, popular control and political equality - that is, that the people of any country should ultimately control governments and decision-makers, and their decisions; and that everyone in that country should be equal in the exercise of that control. These principles shape all our research and consultancy work.
We also try and make everything we do transparent and easy to understand.
Our work so far
Our activities can be put into three main categories:
- developing the cause of democracy assessment across the world;
- conducting analysis of the quality of democracy in the UK; and
- undertaking consultancies and training exercises on request, in the UK and overseas.
1. We have developed the cause of democracy assessment worldwide
- developing the assessment methodology with International IDEA and pioneering its application in cooperation with local teams of assessors in eight different nations: Bangladesh, El Salvador, Italy, Kenya, Malawi, New Zealand, Peru and South Korea;
- developing a parallel citizen-based assessment programme for the Department for International Development with a test-run in Ekiti, Nigeria
2. The Audit has conducted two major audits in the UK on civil and political rights (1996) and democratic arrangements (1999), followed by a full-scale update audit in 2002, Democracy under Blair.
3. We have also pioneered study of
- quangos, or para-statal organisations, and their accountability and have worked with the Public Administration Select Committee on two major reports on quangos and quangocrats in the UK;
- the voting system for the UK Parliament and alternative voting systems for the UK, creating a methodology for comparing the results of actual elections for the House of Commons with simulated results for alternative electoral systems;
- The Audit has also published expert analysis of AV-Plus, the Lib-Lab compromise electoral system, which was to have been put to the electorate as the alternative to first-past-the-post in a referendum
We are currently preparing a book on economic and social rights in the UK, for publication in 2004.
4. udit workers undertake consultancies with DFID, the World Bank, the European Union & other international agencies on projects and have acted as consultants with parliaments and others in Indonesia, Namibia, Macedonia and Zimbabwe. We have also advised assessor teams in Australia, Canada, Ireland, the Philippines and elsewhere. The Audit has organised training courses and seminars at Essex, and in London and Budapest, in democratic governance and assessment.
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History
Democratic Audit is the brain-child of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and was put out to tender by the Trust in 1991. The Trust chose a joint bid from Charter 88 and the Human Rights Centre from among four bids, but Kevin Boyle, then Director of the Centre, and Stuart Weir, founder of Charter 88, who were the prime movers in the enterprise, very soon invited David Beetham, who had submitted a bid on behalf of the University of Leeds, to become a partner in developing the project. The Audit began life as "the Democratic Audit of the UK", but very early on assumed a more universal role.
As the project developed, Charter 88 withdrew and the Trust gradually assumed an unusual pro-active role in its progress. The Audit was soon jointly managed by the Centre and Trust; and full recognition should be given to the contributions made by key figures at the Trust, Grigor McLelland, former chair and chair of the Trust's Democratic Panel, Lord Shutt, his successor as panel chair, and Heather Swailes, Steven Burkeman and Stephen Pittam who had direct responsible in turn for overseeing the Audit's progress; as well as to the body of trustees. The Trust wholly funded Democratic Audit over its first 12 years, though the Audit also received funds for particular projects from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the European Union, DFID, IDEA, the Rowntree Reform Trust, the Arthur McDougall Trust, the British Council, and Unison.
The trustees and authorities at the University of Essex have agreed that Democratic Audit should become a free-standing research unit at the University's Human Rights Centre. The Trust is making a tapering grant available to the Human Rights Centre to meet the Audit's core costs during the transition to a self-funding body. The University has agreed conditions to guarantee the continued independence and ethos of the Audit, and in particular its ability to draw upon contributors from other universities and elsewhere. The Trust owns the title, "Democratic Audit", as a trade-mark.
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The Human Rights Centre
The Human Rights Centre is a multi-disciplinary teaching centre for graduates and undergraduates from the UK and all over the world. It has links with the departments of law, government and sociology at the University. The Centre is well-known throughout the world for the contributions its staff make to securing and promoting human rights, providing direct legal assistance, training, research and manuals. Their ethos was recently defined as that of the "public intellectual".
Kevin Boyle, special adviser to Mary Robinson, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva in 2001-02, shared in the initial creation of Democratic Audit as Director of the Centre. He remained actively involved in developing and directing the Audit as joint chairman and academic editor until his move to Geneva.
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Future activities
The enduring role of the Audit is to monitor the quality of democracy and human rights in the United Kingdom over time. The point of the first two major studies in 1996 and 1999 was to lay down landmarks against which progress, or lack of progress, could be measured over time. Thus the 2002 audit Democracy under Blair was able to consider the Labour government's large programme of constitutional reforms against the past as well as against the performance of its European partners and best practice in other developed states.
But the Audit also engages in timely research into democratic issues as they arise, both to contribute to public debate in a principled, objective and properly-researched way and to build up material for its periodic general audits. The Audit's next major project is to conduct an inquiry into economic and social rights in the UK, to be published in 2004. We are also engaged on an analysis of the devolved elections under AMS, STV and List PR in the UK and comparative study of the use of AMS and STV electoral systems in other countries to give in evidence to the government inquiry into electoral reform.
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Audit people
A great variety of scholars, lawyers, sociologies and other experts have contributed to the ongoing work of Democratic Audit over the years. Their contributions are fully recognised in the publications to which they have contributed. For example, the four authors and editors of the latest democracy assessment of the UK, Democracy Under Blair, recognise 26 contributors to that work, several of whom wrote or researched major areas of democracy.
We should however mention several people who have made central contributions:
Professor David Beetham formerly of the University of Leeds, who created the original democratic auditing methodology and has overseen its development since.
Professor Francesca Klug at the LSE, who was the principal author of The Three Pillars of Liberty, the Audit study of civil and political rights in the UK, and her collaborator, Keir Starmer QC, of the Doughty Street Chambers.
Patrick Dunleavy, Professor of Government at the LSE, and Professor Helen Margetts, now Director of the School of Public Policy, UCL, who developed the methodology for simulating UK election results under alternative electoral systems.
Wendy Hall, who conducted most of the research for the audit's first reports on quangos in the United Kingdom.
Pauline Ngan who was the bedrock of research for the latest Democratic Audit volume, Democracy Under Blair.
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Audit structures
Currently Professor Stuart Weir is Director of Democratic Audit. David Beetham serves as Associate Director. The Audit is guided by two committees - an executive group and an advisory group. Stuart Weir reports on the Audit's activities to an executive committee made up on scholars and experts from the University of Essex and other universities and institutions. The Audit also receives advice from a wider advisory group.
Professor Paul Hunt, formerly Director of the Centre, is chair of the executive committee. Paul is the UN Rapporteur on Health and was formerly chair of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
The link to the inter-disciplinary Human Rights Centre (HRC) is of mutual advantage to both organisations. The HRC brings together scholars from the Law, Government, Philosophy and Sociology Departments of the University of Essex. The Centre cultivates the ethos of the "public intellectual" and has a tradition of human rights activism and training.
See, Human Rights Centre.
Three members of the Audit's executive committee must be external to the University, to secure the independence and ethos of the Audit. The three external members are Professor David Beetham; Professor Helen Margetts, Director of the School of Public Policy, UCL; and Lord Smith of Clifton, formerly Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ulster.
Professor Kevin Boyle, one of the architects of the Audit and formerly adviser to Mary Robinson, as the UN Commissioner for Human Rights; Paul Hunt; and Dr. Todd Landman, Joint Director of the Human Rights Centre are among those from Essex who serve on the executive committee.
There is overlap between the executive committee and advisory group. The current members of the advisory group are:
- Professor David Beetham;
- Professor Kevin Boyle;
- Dr. Sarah Bracking, Lecturer, Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester;
- Iain Byrne, Commonwealth Legal Officer, Interights;
- Tufyal Choudhury, Lecturer, Department of Law, University of Durham;
- Professor Patrick Dunleavy, Department of Government, London School of Economics;
- Professor Brigid Hadfield, Department of Law, University of Essex;
- Professor Paul Hunt;
- Dr. Todd Landman, Joint Director, Human Rights Centre, University of Essex;
- Professor Helen Margetts, Director of the School of Public Policy Research, University College, London;
- Professor Lydia Morris, Department of Sociology, University of Essex;
- Andrew Puddephatt, Director of Article 19;
- Meg Russell, Senior Research Fellow, Constitution Unit, University College, London;
- Professor David Sanders, Department of Government, University of Essex;
- Lord Smith of Clifton, formerly Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ulster;
- Professor Sarah Spencer, Director of Policy Research at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford, and Deputy Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality.
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