Our curated library is packed full of knowledge, know-how and best practices in the fields of democracy and culture.
Read the latest on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and other critical world events in our library of democratic content. Gathered from trusted international sources, the curated library brings you a rich resource of articles, opinion pieces and more on democracy and culture to keep you updated.
Take a look at curated library below and search by keyword (i.e. Ukraine or authoritarianism) or format (i.e. article or report) and find a tailored list of resources on the topics you're most interested in.
The Citizens’ Charter: Contributions to Poverty Reduction
"This brief discusses various aspects of the Citizens’ Charter approach to poverty reduction. These include incorporating a deeper understanding of poverty dynamics into the program’s architecture, engaging provincial and district level authorities and programs, promoting the strategic use of poverty data to inform policymakers, and testing and then scaling up pro-poor initiatives" (Institute for State Effectiveness, 2019).
Digital Election Interference
This report examines a "Freedom on the Net 2019 Key Finding" that "politicians and hyperpartisans use digital means to manipulate elections" (Shahbaz and Funk, 2019).
Performance and Policy-Based Budgeting: How to Spot the Fakes
"Andrew Laing, ISE’s Public Economics Practice Manager, analyzes the key components of performance and policy-based budgeting and how practitioners can test budget systems to spot the often fine lines between best practice and poor performance" (Institute for State Effectiveness, 2019).
What Can Be Done About the Problem of Political Parties?
"In a world of declining political party influence, protest movements and organized labor have increasingly served as vehicles to express grievances and channel political action. However, the limits of protest movements and labor unions’ activities… point to the essential role that political parties play in holding governments to account" (Liddiard 2019).
The Samara Centre's Field Guide to Online Political Conversations
This report brings together insights from the study of difficult conversations and the study of social media to examine what’s going wrong, why it matters, what government action we should expect, and how citizens can change the nature of online political conversations.
Empowering EU against state capture through a new monitoring tool
"State capture...is a specific security risk for the EU" and "there is a lack of proper prevention and detection tools in place to curb corruption effectively in its many forms and across the different jurisdictions in the EU... As corrupt practices evolve, EU Member States need to respond by deepening their capacity to tackle new and more complex forms but also to better share existing knowledge" (Mideva and Todor Galev, 2019).
Strengthening Democracy: What Do Americans Think?
“This report summarizes findings from the first Yankelovich Democracy Monitor, a nationally representative survey of 1,000 American adults 18 and older. The survey was fielded from September 14 through October 15, 2018, by telephone, including cell phones, and online” (American Academy of Art and Sciences, 2020).
Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions
"This scoping report explains why social media is one of the elements of a democratic, rule of law–based state that observer groups should monitor. It aggregates experience from diverse civil society and nongovernmental initiatives that are innovating in this field, and sets out questions to guide the development of new mandates for election observers" (Schmuziger Goldzweig et. al., 2019).
Democratic Deconsolidation in Developed Democracies, 1995-2018
The authors “show that levels of support for democratic governance are not stable over time, even among high-income democracies, and have declined in recent years” and “suggest that...a process of democratic deconsolidation can” as well (Mounk and Foa, 2019).
Common Goals, Different Approaches: How Five Cities Reimagined Their Public Spaces
"The disparate approaches chosen by the five cities… show clearly that there’s no simple right or wrong answer to the question of how to create a better civic commons. Instead, they offer different lessons for further efforts… to create a more sustainable and more integrated urban landscape in the future" (Wiener, 2019).
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