Election coverage quality, misinformation trends and press freedom, analysed without a side.
Published democracy indices are built from questions like these. Choose an indicator, tick the safeguards you can see, and watch how a reading moves. It scores nothing and nobody: the needle only follows your ticks.
Can voters trust how the vote is run and counted?
Nothing ticked yet
Tick the safeguards you can see in the system you are reading about. The needle follows your ticks, not any outside score.
A teaching instrument. No real country, party or person is rated here.
Tick what you can see in the system you are reading about.
Tick what you can see in the system you are reading about.
Tick what you can see in the system you are reading about.
Tick what you can see in the system you are reading about.
Tick what you can see in the system you are reading about.
Tick what you can see in the system you are reading about.
Thirteen ideas the indicators rest on, in the order history produced them. Scrub along the line, or use the arrows. Each stop gives the plain definition from the library and the explainer that tells the longer story.
Citizens of Athens meet in an assembly to debate and vote on public business directly.
GlossaryA citizens assembly brings together a randomly selected, demographically representative group of members of the public to deliberate on a specific policy question, often over several sessions, before producing recommendations for government or parliament to consider, a point that becomes clearer in hindsight, which is one reason the subject remains contested.
Read: Early forms of citizen assemblyDates are long established milestones. The definitions are quoted from this site's own explainers.
The library itself, measured. Every number here is counted from the published explainers when the site is built.
Each bar in a tile is one explainer, by length, in library order.
Four of the institutions the library explains. Hover or focus a frame to change how you see it.
Misinformation literacy is a habit, not a talent. These five explainers cover the checks that turn a fast moving claim back into something you can weigh.
Evergreen explainers, written to be read before you need them.
The upper house is generally cast as a chamber of review, examining legislation passed by the lower house before it can become law. In many systems it is elected on a different basis, such as by state or region, or through a different voting method entirely...
Read the explainerPhoto: Building of the first Greek Parliament, Nauplion, 202618 by Zde (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Openverse
A press council is an industry body, often self regulatory, that handles complaints from the public about the conduct or...
A public sector integrity framework brings together the various rules, bodies, and processes designed to prevent corruption...
Legal aid provides funded legal assistance to people who cannot afford to pay for representation themselves, aiming to...
Electoral reform movements have campaigned at different times for changes such as extending the franchise, introducing the...
Sentencing guidelines provide courts with a structured framework for determining an appropriate penalty once someone has...
A quorum is the minimum number of members who must be present in a chamber for it to conduct official business, such as...
A tribunal is a body established to resolve disputes in a specific area, such as employment, immigration, or administrative...
Participatory budgeting is a process in which residents are given a direct say in how a portion of public funds, often at a...
An electoral roll is the official list of citizens registered to vote within a given area. Its accuracy matters enormously...
Critical thinking habits that support media literacy include routinely asking who created a piece of content and why...
The opposition consists of the party or parties that did not form government after an election, and its formal role is to...
Misinformation is false or misleading information that spreads regardless of whether the person sharing it knows it is...
The burden of proof determines which party in a legal dispute is responsible for proving their claim, and to what standard...
Financial disclosure requirements oblige public officials to report significant income, assets, and liabilities, giving...
Analysed without a side. About the method
Each explainer describes how an institution or process works. None of them grades a real country, party or person.
Photographs are used under their own Creative Commons licences and credited on the article they illustrate.
The gauges and timeline on this page respond to you. They show how analysts read a system; they do not publish a score.