Global State of Democracy: Tools for Strengthening Civic Education

Democracy can have many very different manifestations, depending on a particular society’s history, culture and set of priorities.

Learn how we measure the extent to which a country has realized various aspects of democratic ideas along Representation, Rights, Rule of Law and Participation, which we consider integral to democratic growth and form the core categories of the Global State of Democracy (GSoD) framework.

Our analyses based on the GSoD data have served a wide array of audiences, being referenced by stakeholders ranging from the heads of states of Moldova and South Africa to government officials from Finland, Sweden, and USA, as well as officials from the European Union and United Nations. GSoD data and analysis have also been used by civil society actors as diverse as a German multinational company, the British Medical Journal, the Electoral Institute of Mexico City, as well as researchers and students from universities in Australia, Ghana, Italy, Mauritius, and Spain.

In this NECE campus training, hosted by the CIVICS Innovation Hub, we’ll present to you the “Democracy Tracker” (monthly-updated qualitative dataset that monitors democracy and human rights-related developments in 173 countries) and “GSoD Indices” (annually updated quantitative dataset that measures the quality of democracy in 173 countries), what they tell us about how participation is fairing across the world, and how they can be used as tools for civic educators to assess and promote democracy.

Facilitators: Dr. Seema Shah, Head of International IDEA’s Democracy Assessment Unit and Atsuko Hirakawa, Project Coordinator of the Democracy Tracker, International IDEA