What are country-led governance assessments?

Country-led governance assessments differ from external assessments in that they are initiated, implemented and sustained by national actors. National stakeholders lead the work on the assessment, believe in its legitimacy and hold it to be relevant. No single actor can be said to represent 'the country' which means that country-led assessments must have the active participation of state and non-state actors including Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and should progressively involve and have the support of an increasing and 'representative' number of national actors.

In country-led assessments, the processes involved in assessing democratic governance are equally important as the outcome of the governance assessment. If governance assessment results are not locally owned and embedded in ongoing national development processes they will likely be shelved and will not feed into policy-making processes. Therefore, a central feature of country-led processes for assessing and monitoring democratic governance is that local and national stakeholders actively participate in key steps of the assessment process including what is to be assessed, how to assess it and how the assessment is to be used. Local engagement in all stages of an assessment is critical for linking the assessment results and the corrective actions needed and for safeguarding the transparency and policy relevance of the assessment process.