Tools for the public, backed by research
In January 2020, the Chicago Center on Democracy began a multi-year project to develop a set of publicly available tools to shed light on key areas of democratic functioning. This project, entitled “Developing a Global Early-Warning System for Democratic Erosion,” has led to the creation of three publicly accessible tools to allow all interested parties to study, track, and predict democratic erosion in countries around the world. The tools in the system cover three areas of democratic functioning: 1) tracking global democratic performance, 2) analyzing the rhetorical strategies of politicians, and 3) understanding the role of referendums in healthy democracies.
The tools can be accessed on our Democracy Tools visualization site. Please allow up to 20 seconds for the site to initially load, given the data and visualizations on the site.
The three key areas of this project
This project addresses a gap in the availability of tools that track improvements in and regressions of democratic performance. In particular, the project focuses on insufficiencies in three interrelated areas of cross-national tracking of democracy:
1. Global measurement of democratic performance. Various societal actors have a need for accurate tracking of national democratic health. These include civil society organizations, multilateral organizations, governmental foreign ministries, journalists, and others. Yet existing democracy indices are extremely complex, use simplistic aggregation methodologies, and have difficulty explaining why scores change year to year. Each of these stakeholder groups can benefit from a simpler, more transparent democratic performance index. CCD’s index is a companion to existing indexes—such as Varieties of Democracy and Freedom House—intended to be simple enough that non-technical individuals can understand it.
2. Rhetorical strategies of populist leaders. A growing number of elected leaders come into office through democratic means, but then proceed to threaten democratic institutions without overly violating the law. How are voters and watchdog groups to know that such politicians represent a threat, before they come to power? With the right type of analysis, the campaign statements of politicians can provide clues. By using a machine learning approach to analyze the campaign speeches of politicians across a dozen countries, CCD has created a tool that allows us to begin to see rhetorical patterns within and across speeches from politicians around the world.
3. The role of referendums. Referendums are often considered a tool of “direct democracy,” in that they provide the voting population a direct say in matters of policy importance. However, many questions are unanswered about referendums, such as why they are initiated, the role of special interest groups, and why the results are often considered suboptimal. CCD has created a publicly available database of national referendums from 1960 to present, organized by category, country, results, and other variables. This tool is intended to be a starting point for those involved in designing or campaigning for referendums to understand how they can be structured and implemented most effectively.
Funding from the United Nations Democracy Fund
We are grateful to the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF) for their funding and support in helping make this project happen. UNDEF is a Trust Fund under the authority of the United Nations Secretary-General, which strengthens democratization efforts around the world by supporting projects that strengthen civil society, promote human rights, and encourage participation in democratic processes. It is the only UN entity solely dedicated to supporting democracy.
Out of more than 2,300 proposals from 141 countries submitted in this funding round, UNDEF funded just two percent of the projects, fewer than 50 projects in total. Each of these projects has gone through a rigorous vetting process. The 2,300+ proposal submissions are first reviewed by UNDEF’s Advisory Board, which is composed of representatives from 14 UN Member States. This board creates a longlist of about 300 of the most promising proposals. The board then consults with a variety of individuals and organizations. These include the UN Resident Coordinators (a position with the same rank as Ambassador within the UN system) and entities such as the UN Development Programme, UN Women, and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Through this consultation process, the board arrives at a shortlist of proposals, which are then reviewed by the Permanent Missions of the relevant countries, and finally reviewed and approved by the UN Secretary-General.
Since its creation in 2006, UNDEF has disbursed more than $170 million through more than 800 projects across 140 countries. It is funded through contributions from governments, having been supported by more than 40 governments to date.
Share your thoughts
This project has been a collaborative effort of countless individuals over a multi-year period, and we are interested in continuing to hear views of anyone who has something to share. Please sign up for our center’s mailing list to stay updated on our center’s activities, or reach out to Kevin Kromash with any ideas or thoughts.