Localized Data for Strengthening Democratic Norms and Governance

Citizen voices are critical to understanding government effectiveness, democratic norms, and vulnerability to disinformation. Without localized data on people’s attitudes and attributes, governance programs are less effective. 

Fraym’s localized population data provide foundational understanding that informs programming to strengthen democratic governance, support peaceful societies, and improve overall development and security outcomes. 

Access to Fraym data means our partners:

• Gain critical insights for targeted interventions.
• Bolster government responsiveness.
• Protect citizens and prevent conflict.

Below we outline some specific examples of how Fraym data accelerates these efforts.

Government Responsiveness

Inform responsive governments to better serve the needs and preferences of the public.

Challenge: Government responsiveness and effectiveness of public services varies spatially across a given country. For example, the proportion of adults who believe the Government of Kenya is doing a poor job addressing food security varies by ward from 33% in Shella to 93% in Kayole South. 

Solution:

• Map access to public services across an entire country at the local level and identify under-served or vulnerable communities for prioritization.
• Produce tailored statistics on service delivery for specific communities, zones, provinces, or even customized geographic areas that cross local borders. 
• Map changes in trust in government and attitudes toward public services, institutions, and key public issues over time.

Democratic Norms and Trust in Institutions

Unprecedented spatial insight into how trust in institutions and democratic norms, like citizen participation, are shifting around the globe.

Challenge: Norms that reflect trust in institutions, respect for democratic values, and human rights evolve over time and vary at the local level. For example, while mistrust in elections decreased nationally in the Philippines from 14% in Q2 2022 to 11% in Q3 2022, mistrust increased in Manila from 17% to 20% over the same period of time.

Solution:

• Quantify baseline and change in attitudes and norms surrounding democracy, corruption, human rights, citizen participation, equity, and inclusion to support advocacy for pro-democracy measures.
• Map trust in critical institutions like national and local governments, elections, police, and religious leaders.  
• Identify at-risk communities regarding political exclusion, violence, and human rights abuses with geographic precision and quickly identify corresponding characteristics to strengthen policy mechanisms for protecting communities.

Countering Disinformation 

See how vulnerability to disinformation changes over time and inform efforts to bolster resilience by ensuring resources and messaging are targeted to communities most at risk.

Challenge: Disinformation threatens democracies around the globe by eroding stability and boosting malign influences. For example, Russia’s disinformation campaign in Ukraine aimed at destabilizing society and weakening the population’s trust in democracy laid the groundwork for Russia’s invasion and the ensuing humanitarian crisis. In Kharkiv, the most popular ways of getting news just prior to the invasion were YouTube (76%) and Facebook (70%), both channels through which Kremlin-backed disinformation has been shared. While over half of the population of Kharkiv trusted YouTube and Facebook, only 32% often checked the accuracy of news information on social media at the time.

Solution:

• Identify, analyze, and map communities and population segments most vulnerable to disinformation. 
• Identify how to best reach target populations with counter campaigns through hyperlocal media consumption data. 
• Measure change in population dynamics and behaviors over time to evaluate and inform messaging design with spatial precision.

Conclusion

Efforts to strengthen democracy and governance continue to be critical in improving development outcomes worldwide. Understanding local threats to democracy is necessary when designing, implementing, and adapting impactful programming.  With community-level data you can more effectively target interventions to communities most in need of enhanced public services or most at risk of the consequences of poor governance and malign influence.