Electoral management in the United Kingdom is decentralised and largely delivered by local authorities with local government is a strong feature of governance and democracy. The national Electoral Commission was established in 2000 to provide advice and guidance on election administration and to regulate the financing of political parties.
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This Discussion Paper reviews the performance of 16 lobbying registers according to 3 interlinked dimensions: (a) transparency; (b) regulatory capacity; and (c) interoperability. Under ‘transparency’, the paper examines the scope of lobbying information collected by the register in question, as well as how that information is administered and subsequently disclosed.
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.
As part of Meeting Minds 2023, Head of Division Professor Tim Power hosted the panel ‘Democratic backsliding: liberal democracy at risk’. The session was very well-attended, tempting a large crowd away from the glorious September sunshine.
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.
While the the United Kingdom is often considered to have one of the most transparent political finance systems, it is still unclear how more than 1 in every GBP 10 was spent at the last UK general election.
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.