Resources for Parliaments: Indicators for Democratic Parliaments
BY BEATRIZ REY
Parliaments now have a tool to measure their own level of commitment to democratic standards. Last week, the Inter-Parliamentary Union launched the Indicators for Democratic Parliaments, a self-assessment instrument designed to help legislatures evaluate their capacity and practice. The initiative was developed in partnership with other organizations and input from more than 100 people in 50 parliaments.
The indicators are grouped into seven targets:
effective
accountable
transparent
responsive
inclusive
participatory
representative
Each goal is broken down into several dimensions, setting out aspiring goals for parliaments to pursue. For example, the transparent target is broken down into three dimensions: transparency of parliamentary processes, parliamentary communication and outreach, and access to parliament.
Parliamentarians will find tools to place their institutions in relation to each dimension. For instance, “access to parliament,” one of the dimensions above, is comprised of physical access to parliament, access for persons with disabilities, and media access to parliament. For this dimension, parliamentarians will find assessment blueprints such as the one below, which evaluates whether parliaments have legal frameworks for public access to all venues where proceedings take place.
All indicators are accompanied by assessment guidance in English, Spanish, and French. These were not developed for parliaments to rank themselves. Rather, the IPU and partner organizations’ goal is to empower parliaments to evaluate themselves.
Beatriz Rey is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of São Paulo and a Fellow at POPVOX Foundation where she she runs the Comparative Legislative Strengthening Project, an information exchange on legislative modernization and an international network of legislative innovators.
