A new website that closely tracks the status of democracy and human rights around the world was launched on Thursday by the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, or IDEA.
On the basis of more than 100 indicators, including the conduct of free and fair elections and fair access to justice and civil freedoms, it will offer monthly analysis and statistics on 173 countries.
It documents what is happening in a country through the lens of democracy, as well as why and how it is being impacted, according to Seema Shah, leader of the Democracy Assessment team at IDEA.
“It’s one thing to say, ‘oh, well, the democratic health of country X is weak right now because they just had a flawed election’. But it’s another thing to really dig into that election and see what happened that made it flawed. Why should that matter to the overall health of democracy?”
The website will provide the population, form of government, and head of state for each country being tracked.
But it also contains analysis that aims to provide tools for policymakers and others worldwide to evaluate and comprehend the standard of their democracies.
Data from IDEA shows that while it does not rank countries but rather compares patterns within a country over time, democracy is declining in 25 of them while only 11 have made improvement.
“What we’ve seen is that democracy all over the world has been declining for at least the last decade, if not more. And all the interventions that have been created and all the policy recommendations that are circulating out there so far haven’t been able to stem the tide,” said Shah.
She stated that IDEA believes having more timely data would enable decision-makers to use the most current information available to make more strategic judgements.
The information is derived from the Global State of Democracy indices, which serve as the foundation for IDEA’s yearly Global Report on the State of the Democracy.
