Democratic Audit

Auditing Democracy

The idea of the democratic audit, or democracy assessment as it is also known, is a very simple one. A democratic audit is a comprehensive and systematic assessment of a country's political life in order to answer the question: how democratic is it and how well are human rights protected?

The point is to enable citizens in any country to assess the quality of their democracy and to identify what reforms are needed to democratise their country further. A democratic audit can be a valuable starting point for empowering oppressed peoples or marginalised communities.

Our assessment methodology is based on the two basic principles of representative democracy - popular control and political equality: that is, how far do the people exercise control over political decision-makers and the processes of decision-making? And how far is there political equality in the exercise of that control?

From these two principles we derive the democratic framework of audit, or "search" questions, which enable people thoroughly and systematically to examine the quality of their democracy, human rights and public services.

Audits of democracy in the UK

The first three major Audits of UK democracy were published in book format between 1996 and 2003, as follows:

• Francesca Klug, Keir Starmer and Stuart Weir (1996) The Three Pillars of Liberty: Political Rights and Freedoms in the United Kingdom, London: Routledge.

• Stuart Weir and David Beetham (1999) Political Power and Democratic Control in Britain, London: Routledge.

• David Beetham, Iain Byrne, Pauline Ngan and Stuart Weir (2003) Democracy under Blair: A Democratic Audit of the United Kingdom, London: Politico's (second edition).

We are currently in the process of researching and writing the fourth audit of UK democracy, which will be published in a web-based format during 2011.

Core areas of expertise

Since 1991, we have undertaken detailed studies of a number of specific aspects of democracy in the UK, including the accountability of quangos, options for electoral reform, and parliamentary oversight of foreign and security policy. 

Elections provide a key focus for our work. We are regularly asked to provide comment on not only the results of elections, but also all aspects of the democratic 'quality’ of elections, such as levels of turnout, the completeness and accuracy of electoral registers, incidences of electoral fraud, and the influence of money on electoral outcomes. In 2010, we published a series of three General Election briefings examining specific aspects of the campaign from a democratic perspective.

Our most recent work programmes have been concerned with the options for party funding reform and with the implications of the coalition government’s proposals to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 and equalise the electorates of all but a few parliamentary constituencies.  During 2010, we also played a key role in forming a coalition of organisations which lobbied in support of the proposals for House of Commons reform put forward by the Wright report. 

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 2002-04, a team drawn from Democratic Audit and the Centre for Democratisation Studies, University of Leeds, worked with IDEAto 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 eightpilot 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 these studies, with links to relevant information, are provided below: