The Everyday Democracy Index
Measuring empowerment in everyday life across Europe
What are the most democratic countries in Europe? How would we find out? We could look at electoral turnouts. But while elections matter, Demos doesn’t believe that democracy is something that should start and finish at the ballot box.
That’s why we’re developing the Everyday Democracy Index (EDI). EDI is a tool for assessing the democratic health of European countries across many different dimensions. That includes the formal dimensions of democracy, like procedural rights and election turnout. But it also includes more everyday features of democracy – how important democratic principles and practices are to the cultures of workplaces, to people’s community life, to the way they interact with public services, and even to the way they talk to their friends and family.
Can the EDI go Latin?
Posted by Sian Jones
at 5:34pm on Tuesday, 22nd April 2008
At the end of March we had an unique opportunity to explore the comparative potential for the Everyday Democracy Index (EDI). In conjunction with the Avina Foundation we held a workshop on the The Everyday Democracy Index: Implications and Applications which brought together Latin America academics, index experts and NGOs.
During the day and a half workshop we were able to look again at the Everyday Democracy Index for Europe and to explore what implications different cultures of democracy would have on extending the Index.
A very hardworking group of LSE students, as part of the Capstone project for their MPA programme, presented their work on trying to translate the EDI Europe to Latin America. Paul Skidmore was beamed in from Princeton, to interogate their findings and discuss the methodological concerns about the Index.
During the afternoon, we switched to trilingual mode as the Avina representatives led the discussion on what benefits an EDI in Latin America would bring. Gilberto di Palma (Instituto Ágora de Defesa do Eleitor e da Democracia) and Guillermo Worman (Participación Ciudadana) delivered presentations about the work of their organisations and the potential benefits of an EDI in their particular areas.
What became clear as the workshop progressed is that the look of an EDI for Latin America would very much be dependent on what it was intended to do. This became the focus of the discussion on the second day as the group considered how an Index could be applied to the region and which indicators would be required.
To get a taste of the workshop we have put together a very short video. If you are interested in getting involved in the next stage of the work on the EDI or finding out more about the workshop please contact sian.jones@demos.co.uk
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