Latin America and the Caribbean
Over the past 20 years, Latin America and the Caribbean have seen a great extension of democratic government. However, even now democratic consolidation is faced with challenges rooted in issues of inequality, economic populism, corruption, civilian-military relations and market reforms, amongst others.
In response, the region has become the home of a plethora of innovative and local solutions for measuring governance. Such home-grown solutions have sprung from the needs of governments, think tanks, research institutes and NGOs to strengthen the use of evidence in decision making and to make governance more inclusive.
These pages seek to provide guidance to many of these existing initiatives for measuring democratic governance within Latin America and Caribbean. They do so with a view to offer guidance to existing data, to overcoming particular regional challenges, and to the methodology and process of conducting a governance assessment.
Participatory budgeting constitutes a special case, with the most famous example taking place in Porto Alegre in Brazil. The creation of formal institutional mechanisms to facilitate the participation of ordinary citizens in the allocation of sub-national budgets is now a widespread practice in many Latin American countries.
The guidance on these pages will seek to complement the processes of participatory budgeting and to further strengthen the region's governance measuring initiatives.
UNDP supported initiatives in Latin America and the Carribean
News
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On October 26th, UNDP Mexico and CIDE (Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas) launched the project “México Estatal: Quality of Governance and Accountability in the Federal Entities of Mexico”, at a public seminar focusing on the conceptual framework and methodologies of the project.
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Examples of Regional Initiatives
see attached ToR
Since the 1970s, Prof. Mitchell Seligson, his colleagues and students have systematically surveyed the citizens of Latin America on their political views…
EQxIS is an informational tool that presents disaggregated data on social indicators for monitoring development goals. Estimations for four points in…
La IA América Latina busca evaluar los sistemas de participación pública nacionales para garantizar el acceso a…
Tools for assessing governance
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Stated purpose:The overall purpose of the Agenda on Local Governance in Latin America is to help inform the design of projects to enhance local governance and to introduce…
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Stated purpose:The Project Observatory of Democracy in Central America proposes a system of indicators of legal and institutional governance for Central American countries…
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Stated purpose:The purpose of Desde lo Local is to provide a diagnostic tool to support the three government levels (national, federal and municipal) in providing specific…
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Stated purpose:The objective of the standards of municipal transparency is to provide a model guaranteeing access to information in all municipalities of Chile. The &…
UNDP Key Publications
on assessing governance related to Latin America and the Caribbean
GA Library
Five most recent publications on Latin America and the Caribbean produced by a wide variety of institutions
Plataforma Democrática is an initiative devoted to strengthening Latin American democratic institutions and culture by fostering pluralistic debate on the social and political transformations of the region.