International IDEA stands for International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. The organisation's objective is to promote and advance sustainable democracy and to improve and consolidate electoral processes world-wide. With the aim to assess the quality of democracy at the local level, the organisation designed a State of Local Democracy (SoLD) assessment framework.
The SoLD Assessment Framework provides a practical resource to representatives of local governments, civil society organisations, academia, community groups, media and other key local actors. It is based on a three-pillar structure, including 86 guiding questions:
- Citizenship, equal rights and justice
- Representative and accountable institutions and processes
- Citizen initiative and participation
The SoLD Assessment Framework is used as a guide for local actors to help them conducting self-evaluations of democratic life in their locality, identifying the democratic strengths and weaknesses and to translate these into local reform and development priorities. Also, the assessment framework is based on a definition of framework that is found on two basic principles that include the popular control of public decision-makers, and the political equality of those who exercise this control.
Beside the SoLD Assessment Framework, International IDEA provided another assessment tool called 'Assessing the Quality of Democracy'. It is expected that the third assessment tool, 'Democratic Accountability in Service Delivery' will be published in June.
Read here the full State of Local Democracy Assessment Framework.