Political Systems and Democratic Governance Diagnostic - Rocha Menocal and Wingfield (2025)

The Democratic Governance Diagnostic has been produced for the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) with support from the UK Government Politics and Governance Centre of Expertise (CoE) by TPP Principal Alina Rocha Menocal of the Thinking and Working Politically Community of Practice and Tom Wingfield.

The toolkit proposes a strategic approach to democratic governance through the following stages.  

Context and problem
1. Problem statement (what are the challenges, what is most critical, and why is it worth investing time to address it?)
2. Underlying causes and more immediate drivers shaping the quality of democratic governance.
3. Your organisation or country’s historical relationship and what has been learned about where it has had a positive, negative or no effect on political change.

Strategic approach – where you can make the most difference
4. Potential sources of locally led longterm change that would prevent erosion or deepen democratic governance.
5. Your organisation’s ability to support these changes (its comparative advantage and influence, potential policy trade-offs and mitigation, potential alliances with more powerful external actors).
6. Your overarching ‘strategic bets’ and approach based on domestic pressure for change and your influence. 

The course of action – how you will do it
7. Setting out the different levers and areas of intervention to be deployed and the assumptions explaining why this is plausible. Where there is a wider portfolio, this should include what ‘doing development democratically’ means in practice.

8. How any risks of ‘doing harm’ and any trade-offs with other priorities will be mitigated.
9. Summary of external peer review and ‘critical friend’ feedback.
Review
10. Key learning questions or indicators to reflect on in six-monthly light touch review cycles.