UNDP practice note on democratic governance assessments

UNDP’s support for country-led democratic governance assessments is a key element of the organisation’s broader agenda on democratic governance to: foster inclusive participation, strengthen accountable and responsive governing institutions, and ground governance in international principles of human rights, gender equity and integrity. This approach to democratic governance and the role of assessment therein, is included in the approved UNDP strategic plan for 2008-2011.

This Practice Note is based on the experiences of selected Country Offices and outlines the principal
objective for UNDP’s engagement: to support national ownership and capacity development of national
partners to be able to undertake and use governance assessments to enhance democratic governance. UNDP has been at the forefront in the international discourse anddialogue on governance assessments, stressing that such assessments bemore actionable and useful to national policymaking, as well s promoteand strengthen national and local level engagement and ownership. The paper's findings include:

• UNDP has not developed a governance index that ranks countries, akin to the Human Development Index.
• Comparative indexes on democratic governance may be catalytic in the 'naming and shaming' of countries that are identified as performing poorly, but this is not a role for UNDP, whose focus is rather on helping national stakeholders within Member States identify governance problems that need to be addressed, and to have the means for assessing the effectiveness of policy reforms to address those problems.
• For UNDP, the value of a country-led governance assessment is that it serves as a critical accountability and transparency mechanism for governance performance. Democratic governance is more likely to be sustained if targets for attainment and expectations of how governments should perform are formulated by those who live within the political system. When local actors participate in the assessment process, it stimulates their demand for governance information and a demand for greater accountability from government.

The Practice Note defines four key areas for UNDP support:

• promoting multi-stakeholder participation
• aligning governance assessments with national development plans
• promoting pro-poor and gender-sensitive governance assessments
• strengthening evidence-based policymaking.

The paper provides a number of lessons, including:

• For country-led assessments to provide more depth into a particular policy issue, UNDP emphasises that they must integrate a focus on marginalised and vulnerable groups. Country-specific and disaggregated indicators will help identify specific institutions and practices that perpetuate unfair and sub-standard provision of services to these groups.
• A key role for UNDP Country Offices is to support national partners in developing, undertaking and using contextualised assessments that conform to global standards, that are grounded in local ownership and that enable all stakeholders to monitor governance performance, especially its impact on vulnerable groups, within their country over time.