Excellencies,
Excellencies,
Russia’s war of choice has wrought enormous infrastructural and human damage across Ukraine. The international community broadly accepts the necessity of providing significant financial and technical assistance for reconstruction in Ukraine, but equally vital is the provision of concomitant support for Ukraine’s work to preserve and reconstruct its democracy and democratic institutions on its own terms.
Increasing authoritarianism in some countries, such as Russia, coupled with gradual democratic erosion around the world, poses an exceptional threat to a rules-based global order, and consequently to peace and prosperity. The invasion of Ukraine is the most blatant and tragic realization of this threat.
For more than a decade, a majority of Europe’s established democracies have seen the quality of their democracies stagnate—or even decline—rather than improve. Some show the clear erosion of democratic processes and fundamental rights; several have deteriorated to the point where they can hardly be qualified as democracies any longer. The arrival of the Covid-19 global health crisis has added to the strain.
The Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Constitutions Assessment Tool helps users to analyse a constitution from the perspective of indigenous peoples’ rights.
For democracies to thrive, a vibrant and actively engaged citizenry and civil society are essential. Civil society can monitor and hold the state to account, it can infuse a greater diversity of voices into the policy process, and it can act as a force for democratic reform or provide resistance to democratic backsliding.
Electoral management bodies (EMBs) need to become more professional if they are to retain the trust of voters.
This Handbook was developed for electoral administrators and those involved in reforming EMBs. It provides comparative experience of and best practices on EMB structures and funding models, as well as means for evaluating performance.
Politicians tied to a set of policies provide people with actual choices.
They attract like-minded activists, campaign in more focused ways, and build an attractive party label. Last but not least, they are more likely to succeed in public office.
Political parties in many countries are struggling to shift from personality-based or clientelistic-focused approaches—to more programme-based strategies as they reach out to voters.
The State of Local Democracy (SoLD) assessment framework is designed to facilitate a citizen-led and -owned approach to assessing the quality of democracy at the local level.
It is a practical resource for citizens to conduct self-assessments of democratic life in their locality, identify democratic strengths and weaknesses, and translate these into reform agendas for further broadening and deepening of their local democracies.