Key indicators of UK democracy

ILGWU Local 91 members vote at a meeting (Credit: Kheel Center, Cornell University, CC by 2.0)

UK Democracy at a glance: how democratic is the UK?

In 2009, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust kindly provided us with a major grant to produce the fourth full Audit of Democracy in the United Kingdom.  These periodic Audits are a major undertaking; the full Audit uses a comprehensive assessment framework and draws on a vast body of qualitative and quantitative evidence.

The new Audit was published in July 2012. For the first time we have opted for a web-based, rather than ‘big book’ format. The new Audit also makes extensive use of the large number of statistical datasets which are now readily available to evaluate long-run trends in the state of British democracy and to assess how the UK compares with a range of other democracies across a number of key democratic indicators.

Key Indicators of political participation

Sample findings from our analysis of these datasets are presented below, the first of which focuses on evidence about key forms of political participation.

Please note that these statistical indicators represent only part of our analysis of democracy in the UK – a fuller picture is contained in the full Audit.

Democracy in the UK: thematic overviews

To what extent is there evidence of improvement or decline in different aspects of UK democracy? And how does the UK compare to other established democracies? Our thematic overviews present a range of key indicators ‘at a glance’.

Thematic Overview 1: Trends in Political Participation in the UK (PDF)