 Hi and welcome to International Ideas presentation on what we call internally GSODI, the Global State of Democracy Indices. My name is Lisa Hogman. I work in the communications team and together with me here today I have Melida Jiménez who works in the democracy assessment and political analysis team. And behind the scenes we have Joe Nounen who will show us the website that we will be talking about. But Melida, why don't you start talking a little bit about the background. What is this a democracy indices sort of, tell us. So in 2016 International Idea embarked on this project which is called the Global State of Democracy project where we started to kind of develop the first large democracy assessment publication for International Idea and as part of that I want to show it of course because that's my role, I work in the communications team. So this is the big one. Yeah, that's the big publication and we also have overviews and translations in four different languages and a website and a beautiful website where we present the content of the report and we also have the Global State of Democracy Indices which was kind of developed as part of this project. So in 2016 we started to conceptualize and design International Idea's first quantitative democracy measurement. We have in the past worked with qualitative country democracy assessments and we have that is really based on this book and this is the second edition but this is really qualitative questions. Exactly. And these are kind of this framework, the framework of the state of democracy is designed for in-country qualitative analysis so we have to kind of make the journey from an in-country qualitative framework into a quantitative democracy measurement and we launched the democracy, the indices in November 2017 after two kind of hard years of working in the world. It's a long journey going from something qualitative into having numbers on all countries in the world. But what are you measuring? Could you say something about the topics that you're looking at in these indices? Yes. So first I just want to mention that the indices in its first edition covers 155 countries and it includes country data from 1975 to 2015 and what we measure is democracy through kind of international ideas own definition and this means that we look at the representative government, we look at fundamental rights, checks on government, impartial administration and participatory engagement. All of these attributes are kind of taken from the original state of democracy framework but adapted and modified in order to kind of fit this quantitative tool. And each attribute also has sub-attributes and so you can go further down and look at more specific. Exactly. So we, apart from the five attributes that I just mentioned, we cover 16 sub-attributes and underneath there we have 98 indicators with data from various sources. Okay. Very interesting. There are other indices around. You've talked a little bit and I can see how this is a bit different because you're looking at the broad definition. Some other indices have been criticized or accused of a Western bias. How do you handle bias? So we kind of, if we take it from the conceptual perspective, by having a broad definition and a broad understanding of democracy we hope to be able to capture kind of the democracy in its most diverse way. So as you know, no democracy is kind of like the other ones. So what we try this to, based on the state of democracy framework and based on international ideas, kind of understanding of democracy, try to be as inclusive as possible into and in our measurement. And also as you know, in some of the other measurements they kind of look at very more narrow definitions of democracy or just specific kind of characteristics. And I think that's why some people sometimes kind of say they're biased, et cetera. In addition, we've tried to kind of, in the way that we designed indices, try to include as many data sources as possible. And like also as I mentioned, we include data both over kind of a large number of countries, but also kind of over time. So hopefully by that we're also able to kind of go beyond maybe some of the biases or some of the challenges that we've seen with other measurements. Okay. And now I'm actually going to ask you an unprepared question for you because you mentioned it. Idia doesn't collect the data itself, does it? It's other people who collect the data. So I mean, as everyone knows, there are so many good data initiatives around the world. There's so many good data collection going on. And what we have done is that we have tried to find the most suitable indicators which will measure our concept. So we've taken indicators from many different, both kind of academic initiatives and other types of initiatives. And all of this information and all kind of the data sources, et cetera, are available on our website as well. So cool. So you have numbers on countries and you measure their democracy. Can you compare countries? So basically, the indices are kind of carefully designed to actually look at democracy from a comparative perspective. This means that it encouraged users to not only look at their country but to look at their country data in comparison to either what's going on in a region, in the region or another region perhaps, who have had either similar political developments or similar experiences with conflicts, et cetera. So while we do have kind of scores per country and individual country scores, we encourage everyone to look at the data from a comparative perspective and also not only compare across regions and countries but also compare over time because that's when also you find a lot of different nice variations and interesting developments. Okay. Because in some countries, I guess it's more obvious you have development that works very fast in other countries such as in Sweden where you might have very slow but you still have development and it could be hard to see it if you don't have these numbers. Yes, exactly. And I think what's important with this example that you just brought in is that in a way by having data that goes all the way back to 1975 and there are also other measurements initiatives that goes beyond that time is that you kind of see that democracy takes time to build. So it's not something that goes from you build in 2016 and then you're done in 2017. It actually takes time. So even if a country like Sweden doesn't have the most exciting variation over time, it still shows that to keep high levels or lower high levels of democracy, it's not something from one year to another. No, no. You can look at the trends. So those who are just joining us now, I just want to repeat that my name is Lisa and I work in the communications team and together with me, I have Melida Jimenez who is our expert and is talking about our global state of democracy indices. I also want to encourage you again to add your comments and your questions in the comments field and we'll do our best to reply as soon as possible. But I think it's maybe time to have a look at the website because it's much better to understand what it is by looking at how it's organized. Will you present it to us? Yes, I will. And I'm looking forward to it because we've actually spent a lot of effort and time to make the data accessible and user-friendly as much as possible so you don't have to be like an advanced statistician to get access to the data or understand it. Yeah. So here we are on our website and at the top banner, you will find a lot of kind of information behind the scenes of the indices, which means that if you click on some of these tabs, you will find a methodology document, also the code book, the technical procedures guide, which is kind of where we in a very transparent and accessible way present exactly how you go about to constructing the indices. And apart from that, you also have the different links to different other resources such as the publication. But I now want to kind of show you how we visualize the data on our website. And the first that you will see when you go into our website is our world map. And the world map is designed to kind of make it very accessible to just, you know, at your first look, understand the data and the different developments. The cursor at the bottom allows you to kind of go back and forward in time so you can see the different variation across the world and you can zoom in and zoom out into different countries or regions and also kind of move the cursor over a country to get the specific country score. And sorry to interrupt you, but right now we're looking at representative government, and it's the world map. So it's one of the five attributes, yeah. Yeah, and then you can also on the left side kind of choose other attributes or other sub attributes and kind of move forward and just get a kind of quick overview of what's going on. And this is kind of a good way to just, if you just want to quickly have access without maybe having, you know, the scores, et cetera, still have a good sense of what's going on in the world at that time for a particular attribute. Okay, and we also have a feature where you can kind of compare the attributes or sub attributes. And what you do first is you kind of choose your geographical location. In this case, we've chosen Latin America and the Caribbean. And then you choose your attribute that you want to kind of drill down into and look into what's going on in this region. Here we've selected fundamental rights and we can also then select the sub attributes, access to justice, civil liberties, social rights and equality. And this is actually a good attribute to kind of show you how international ideas in this differs a little bit from other measurements because it has this very inclusive kind of attribute which includes, for example, social rights and equality. So this is kind of our way to try to broaden the definition of democracy. And this is also a way to show that some of the sub attributes have a different development over time. It looks like the, I can't see which one, but the lowest one is moving faster in recent times. So you can compare the different sub attributes. Exactly. And then you can look at a region or a country's development and then see where are the peaks or where are the downhills. And then most often you would kind of need to look into the region's history or some of the current events and look into, okay, what actually happened in this year or what was moving in many different countries at the same time. So this allows you basically to kind of drill down into the data for a particular country or region. And then we have kind of the third feature at our website and this one allows you to compare countries and regions over time. And this is a little bit what we discussed earlier in terms of looking at the data from a comparative perspective. So what you do first is you kind of choose the attribute that you want to look at. And here we've selected civil liberties. And then you can just select the different regions. So you select the kind of Africa, East Africa and West Africa. And then you can look over time, how has these developments kind of looked in these regions. And this allows you to not only kind of have an understanding of that particular attribute, but also kind of choose and select the countries of your interest. So it might be so that you're doing a project or you're doing some research on a particular country, and this feature is particularly useful to kind of select a couple of countries and compare different attributes and different developments. It also has a feature where you can kind of download your graph, the graph that you have kind of selected yourself. And this is particularly useful if you're writing an article or you want to include this in some of your work or analysis. It's very easy accessible and you don't need to kind of know any statistical programs or etc. You get a good image that you can use. And lastly we have a feature which allows all the users to kind of get a good snapshot of the data for a country or a region. And again, we have the timeline with the cursor where you can move back and forward. But this is more of a kind of a snapshot because it focuses on the scores for that particular year that you have selected and a particular country. It allows you to also compare with the regional and global levels. And you can see here that then it's again, it will be like the one year score, but it will still give you kind of the context and that's why how that country fits into a region or sub region. Yeah, and how it fits with the other developments. So because in some instances you can be like, so what does 0.43 means? Right, but you put that score in in comparison with the other scores, then it gives a little bit of a meaning. Okay, this is how it is in the rest of the Caribbean or in the world, etc. And it gives you a little bit more of a context for those of you who can be puzzled by the different meaning of the numbers. Me, myself, I'm sometimes a bit confused as well. But this is really how you can compare a country or a region with itself over time. Yeah, and put some meaning behind the numbers in particular so that 0.43 means something. Yeah, we also have a feature on the website where you kind of can go in and again for those of us who like numbers, we can just look at the scores directly and find that very amusing. And you know, there are others who won't find it amusing, but for those who do like looking at scores, you can look at this table and you go into the website and you move the cursory back and forward to the year that you want. But also you can download then your table or download the whole raw data set for those who are interested. Okay, so you could use that data to develop your own models. Yeah, okay, that's very interesting. Yeah, sorry, did you have more? No, that's it. And I would also encourage everyone to visit this website and kind of play around, explore the data, let us know if there's anything you would like to learn more about. And also if you have any questions on how to understand the data, the website and the data in itself. And in general, the global state of democracy indices, it's not for international idea. It's for the users out there and it's for everyone who are interested to analyze democracy over time and in different countries. So enjoy and have fun. I'm not going to let you off the hook that easy. Because you're talking about others doing analysis, but India spent a lot of time and effort doing its own analysis last year and with the report and using the indices. Were there any interesting conclusions? What did you come up with? Yeah, so last year we had, once we were done with the indices after a lot of work, we also had the opportunity to kind of have a first shot in analyzing the different trends and different developments. And we have presented this analysis in the first chapter of the global state of democracy report. And one of our key findings is that with our data, and especially with a diverse definition of democracy, is that we don't find the same type of decline in democracy that we've heard in other reports or in other analysis. On the contrary, it's a little bit more positive at the global level and we've seen progress over time. So at the moment we're looking at kind of the highest levels of democracy around the world. However, of course, our data also shows a great deal of variation at the country level and that's why also we kind of emphasize on digging down and exploring the data and looking at the different regions, subregions, etc. But at the global level we see a positive picture. What we also found in our analysis was that the levels of impartial administration haven't moved significantly since 1975, so the levels for that specific attribute remains stable or stagnant. And what is impartial administration if you could just sort of more plainly? It measures kind of the levels of corruption, which we in our measurement calls absence of corruption and it also measures predictable enforcement. So in general, kind of elements related to the rule of law and anti-corruption. And those are the elements that based on the first initial findings in our data, we see that countries are still struggling with as much in 2015 as they did in 1975. Maybe for different reasons, but still one of the elements in a democracy that seems challenging for countries across the world. Something that they have in common. On a final note, what does the future look like for the indices? You said it covers up until 2015, are you planning on adding more data? We're currently actually working on updating it and we're now trying to update the indices with data to 2018 with release in 2019. So we're adding three more years and it's going to be very interesting for us to see what the data shows in terms of some of the most recent country developments and some of the most recent kind of political crisis in different areas of the world. Okay, thank you very much for joining us and thank you to all of you out there. Please add your comments, we look forward to answering them.