Democracy Audits and Governmental Indicators Conference

I just came across a reference to the “Democracy Audits and Governmental Indicators” conference that is co-sponsored by the American Political Science Association and the Goldman School at Berkeley.  This came across the search results as I was probing around, looking at other implementations (planned or otherwise) of the Democracy Index idea (this search itself inspired by Steve Israel’s legislative proposal).

I had a schizophrenic reaction when I reviewed the conference.  On the one hand, it brings together some of the national and international experts on measuring democratic performance (sort of a POLITY writ large for those of you who understand the reference, though it looks like the ambitions here are larger).

On the other hand, there was nary an elected politician, bureaucrat, or party official at the meeting (though I was very impressed to see representatives from the World Bank, Freedom House, and IDEA).

I can’t tell if this was academics talking about more data for academics, which was my initial fear, or something more.  Time will tell, I suppose.

Great website, by the way, and concept memoes freely available.  Kudos to the organizers for that.