Democratic Audit Indicators

How far, how equally and how securely do citizens enjoy rights of free speech, association and assembly?

How far and how equally can citizens exercise public control through free and fair voting?

How far are voters offered choices that allow them to exercise public control as equals?

How far and how equally do citizens participate in elections that determine the composition of the legislature and appointments to leading executive offices?

How representative are bodies that legislate or supervise the exercise of executive and administrative power, and how far and how equally can citizens exercise public control through those bodies?

How far and how equally do citizens enjoy civic capabilities needed for them to exercise public control over the polity?

How plural and how independent is the range of social groups, organised interests and communications media that seeks to influence the polity? How equal is their access to public institutions and how equally accessible are they themselves to individual citizens?

How far are the decisions of the polity deliberated within a public sphere that allows all points of view to be considered, justified and decided in relation to all others, free of inequalities in power and resources?

How far does the polity rest on a rule of law that itself encompasses no more and no less than those conditions required for citizens to author their own laws as equals?

How far is the polity accepted as a unit whose citizens can (themselves and through their representatives) make decisions that are morally and legally binding on one another? And how far can citizens acting as equals exercise public control over the design of the polity itself?