The Scanlon Foundation Research Institute undertook a program of work to inform how Australia can strengthen its democratic resilience. The program was divided into three stages.

The first involved a qualitative analysis of a representative sample of the population to understand how democracy is understood. It was further enhanced by a study of the prevalence and association of ‘democracy’ in mainstream media such as opinion pages and in Hansard (the report of the proceedings of the Australian parliament and its committees).

The second stage was to locate and analyse evaluations of national and international programs intended to build democratic resilience, social cohesion and civic participation.

Finally, the results of the first two stages informed the third stage which included:

1. Identification of data linkage opportunities.
2. Assessment of potential indicators for spatial and temporal monitoring of Australia’s social cohesion and democratic resilience.
3. Provision of insights into where and how to improve the design of future programs that strengthen democratic resilience and social cohesion.
4. Creation of a data visualisation webpage.

To aid an understanding of the state of democracy within the local government area, the project created the Democracy Index. This was built through the aggregation of nine questions that focus specifically on democracy and political participation. While the Index is in its early stages, with only one year of data available, it will become more robust over time.