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Audits Worldwide

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: