Modules attached to household surveys

— National Statistical Institutes measuring governance and democracy

This multi-country activity aims at developing a routine official statistical tool that could considerably enhance monitoring and assessment of governance and democracy. It consists on collection and analysis of data on governance, democracy and subjective poverty through household surveys that are carried out by National Statistical Institutes in francophone Africa and the Andean Community. Data is collected through the specific modules "democracy", "governance" and "subjective poverty" that is attached to the questionnaire of the regular surveys.

The results thus obtained include both objective indicators (absenteeism of public functionaries in different public services, incidence of corruption in various administrations, participation in previous elections and reasons for non-participation, etc.), as well as subjective perception and opinions (on the functioning, trustworthiness and shortcomings of institutions and policies, most important problems of the country, etc.). One of the main strengths of these results is their high level of disaggregation: once e.g. single institutions can be identified as particularly prone to corruption, the policy-incidence of the results becomes evident. In addition, since the modules are attached to surveys providing rich socio-economic information, all phenomena mentioned above can be described in relation to their incidence in poor/non poor households, households with/without higher education, households with a woman as household head, etc., thus allowing for a clearer picture of the vulnerability of different social classes.

The methodology has been developped by Metagora-partner DIAL, who provides technical assistance in francophone Africa and the Andean Community. In order to identify fields of improvement and points of potential synergies, it was compared with other methods to measure democracy and governance during a scientific workshop in Bamako.