In the evolution of the democratic process, the use of a scorecard and related measurement methodologies has proven very helpful. For example, scorecards are now regularly used to assess whether an election has been fully ‘free and fair’. In the case of election evaluation, indexing, or ‘score carding,’ has proven to be valuable in measuring performance within and across countries. Other democratic process indices widely recognized and accepted as methods of evaluating governance include the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index and the Freedom House Freedom in the World index. These indices have proven invaluable in evaluating progress within countries over time as well as cross-nationally. Using data from these indices has allowed governments to demonstrate progress in governance in a simple and concrete manner, democracy practitioners to zero in on particular areas of need, civil society to bring credibility to governance issues, and academic research to undertake regression analysis with a trusted and relatively unbiased aggregated evaluation
