Methodology
The CIVICUS Monitor is a participatory research platform that assesses the state of civic space worldwide and offers insights into its developments. We define civic space as the respect in law, policy and practice for freedoms of association, peaceful assembly and expression and the extent to which the state protects these fundamental rights.
In an attempt to capture civic space dynamics on a global scale, the CIVICUS Monitor works with over 20 civil society research partners from around the world. These partners periodically produce civic space country updates, drawing insights from a set of guiding questions and a rich array of primary and secondary sources. These updates, often coming directly from national civil society bodies, undergo rigorous triangulation and verification processes before publication.
The CIVICUS Monitor consolidates this information to identify top civic space violations and positive developments recorded throughout the year. Between 1 November 2022 and 31 October 2023, we published 469 updates and identified more than 2,600 incidents related to civic space, with 1,898 of them categorised as a violation.
Our researchers evaluate each of the incidents and tag them to identify the type of civic space violations that occurred. We also identify the victims and the action that led to the violation. This information allows us to detect the main global and regional civic space trends that are analysed in depth in this report.
To draw comparisons at the global level and track trends over time, the CIVICUS Monitor also produces and updates civic space scores and ratings for 198 countries and territories. Each country’s civic space is rated in one of five categories – open, narrowed, obstructed, repressed, or closed – based on a methodology that combines several sources of information on freedoms of association, peaceful assembly and expression and the state’s duty to protect those fundamental freedoms. This report focuses on countries that experienced rating changes and those that had relevant civic space developments over the past year.
Frequently Asked Questions
HOW DO YOU GET TO THE RATINGS?
At the heart of the CIVICUS Monitor’s methodology is the combination of several independent data sources, comprising both quantitative and qualitative data. Firstly, we compile indicators from civil society organisations that evaluate core civic freedoms, including Freedom House's association indicator, V-Dem's peaceful assembly indicator, and Reporters Without Borders' freedom of expression indicator. The second component involves analysing narrative reports from national, regional, and international civil society organisations, providing relevant information on the civic space conditions of each country. Our team follows standardised coding guidelines to ensure consistency, allowing us to compare assessments across countries and over time. These external analyses are then combined with assessments from CIVICUS and our research partners to calculate a score for each country. This score categorises countries as open, narrowed, obstructed, repressed, or closed.
DO COUNTRIES WITH THE SAME RATING EXPERIENCE THE SAME CIVIC SPACE CONDITIONS?
Ratings are conceptualised as broad bands, where a variety of civic experiences can exist within any given rating category. The goal of ratings is to offer robust comparisons between countries over time, meanwhile the scores provide more detailed information on the state of civil society freedoms within those broad categories.
We establish a minimum and a maximum theoretically possible value, representing completely unrestricted (100) to entirely restricted (1) civic spaces. This range is comprehensive enough to encompass this global variety of civic experiences and allows us to confidently assess and compare the state of civic spaces across different countries and territories.
HOW OFTEN DO THE GLOBAL RATINGS AND TOP VIOLATIONS GET UPDATED?
Scores underpinning the ratings and the list of top violations are updated annually following the release of the annual report People Power Under Attack.
What freedoms are included in your documentation?
The goal of CIVICUS Monitor is to provide a comprehensive assessment of the conditions for civil society within countries and over time. Civic space is defined as the respect in law, policy and practice for freedoms of association, peaceful assembly and expression and the extent to which the state protects these fundamental rights. The CIVICUS Monitor conceptualises the conditions for civil society as the respect for these four indicators.
How do you measure civic freedoms quantitatively?
The CIVICUS Monitor combines qualitative and quantitative data inputs generated by primary and secondary research.Recognising that indicators used to conceptualise civic space cannot be directly observed or assessed by a single measure, our methodology constructs a composite indicator to provide an overall view of conditions in each country. To do so, we created a fixed scale which establishes the range of the CIVICUS Monitor, i.e. we impose a minimum and a maximum theoretically possible value. This range encompasses a range of completely unrestricted (100) to completely restricted (1) civic spaces. Given that the state of civic space across all countries and territories vary from very restricted to more open, we can be reasonably confident that the range we set up is broad enough to encompass the variety of civic experiences around the world.
How many countries and territories does the Monitor cover?
We annually rate civics space conditions of 198 countries and territories around the world. However, we specifically publish regular updates for a subsample of around 160 countries, where our research partners provide crucial on-the-ground information, enabling us to offer in-depth insights.