February 10, 2010
By
Alison Loat
I'm working my way through this report on Canada's democratic engagement, released recently by The Institute of Wellbeing, an organization that develops and regularly produces statistical reports on various aspects of Canada's well being.
The researchers have done a very thorough job of pulling together the literature on these topics from Canadian and international sources - a tremendous service. They then list indicators grouped into three areas: individual's engagement; the Canadian government's engagement and Canadians' global engagement.
One can quibble with many of the indicators, but this is a good start. No one said democracy was easy to measure, and the paucity of current and historical data on these matters doesn't help either. As a result, the index relies on a lot of the traditional sources and concludes many of the same things about declining voter turnout and engagement.
Hopefully with time they'll consider investing in original research, and in the meantime, it's worth considering a wider discussion on what else we should be measuring.
LABELS:
media and citizens, Institute of Wellbeing, democracy
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