With nearly 2 billion voters expected to head to the polls, 2024 has been dubbed a ‘super election year’. In fact, over the next 12 months, more than 70 countries will head to a presidential, legislative, or subnational election. Among them are seven out of ten of the world’s most populous countries, including India, the United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, and Mexico. Similarly, in South Asia, five out of its eight countries have held/are also planning to hold elections in 2024.
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New Zealand maintains a robust, long-established democratic system in the South Pacific. It enjoys a reputation for integrity and is generally ranked among the world’s top countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. The outbreak of Covid-19 and the consequent first postponement of an election since World War II failed to mar that status.
The European Union’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) covers six countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Republic of Moldova and Ukraine. The Covid-19 pandemic put a strain on fledgling democracies in the EaP region, aggravating pre-existing concerns, such as the weak rule of law, insufficient accountability of executive branches vis-à-vis legislatures and fragile media freedoms (see International IDEA 2022).
International IDEA and the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development (CIPDD) organized a conference in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2005 on constitutional and political reform in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. It was dedicated to the exchange of information about the reform process in the three South Caucasus countries and the prospects for their European integration.
This study from 2002 was one of the first to use International IDEA’s State of Democracy Assessment Framework.
The Framework is different from other methodologies because its assessments are led and owned by local actors, and move away from the practice of ranking democratic performance and making external judgements.