How to assess democratic governance

This section addresses the need to better understand various methods and approaches to assess and measure democratic governance and its links to pro-poor planning, budgeting, and delivery of the MDGs. It aims to help in analysing the viability of various approaches in terms of the implications for participation, consultation, accountability, transparency, representation, deliberation, and decision-making for democratising the institutions, rules, and overall governance.

Citizen-driven government performance

J. Banning / Panos Pictures

This paper addresses such issues as how can we foster citizen participation in managerial decision making in government? Will citizen participation improve managerial decisions in the public sector? Can we develop performance indicators to ensure that managerial decisions in government reflect the interests of the citizenry?

Latest Additions

Rwanda joint governance assessment report: monitoring progress: ( A. Duncan (ed);G. Williams (ed);T. Sheehy (ed) / Local government of Rwanda , 2008); This report is an assessment of governance in Rwanda and is aimed at establishing a common understanding of governance progress, problems and priorities on the basis of agreed indicators and benchm...
Are international index rankings reliable?: ( B. Hoyland;K. Moene;F. Willamsen / Research Programme on Democracy (Democracy as Idea and Practice) , 2009); This paper considers International index rankings and determines that they are perhaps too persuasive. The authors stress that these rankings emphasise country differences where simi...
Governance assessments and domestic accountability: how can donors aid the process?: ( S. Meyer / Fride , 2009); This paper follows on from recently completed research that investigated the impact of donor harmonisation on domestic processes of democratisation. The aim of this research is to further info...
Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) as an aid criterion: ( J. Müller-Goldenstedt / International Cooperation for Development and Solidarity , 2009); This paper analyses the use of the World Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) rankings by bilateral and multilateral donors in their aid allocation and other related decisio...
Problem of measuring the quality of democracy in Latin America.: ( D. Altman;A. Perez-Linan / Rollins College , 2002); This article explores the problem of conceptualising and measuring the quality of democracy in Latin America. The study constructs summary measures of the quality of democracy in several ways, and sho...

UNDP Governance Assessment Portal

GAP network on governance assessments

These how-to pages bring together various methods and experiences in a step by step guide to governance assessments at the country level. It constitutes a live document and a continously growing repository of knowledge on practices of governance assessments. More...