Building a Composite Indicator to Measure Active Citizenship in Europe

This paper presents the definition and framework for developing composite indicators of active citizenship, the process of building a composite indicator and the results obtained from the indicators in terms of European cross-country comparisons. The framework and indicators used in this report are based on recommendations emerging from the research project on ¿Active Citizenship for Democracy¿ coordinated by the Centre for Research on Lifelong Learning (CRELL) of the European Commission. The Active Citizenship Composite Indicator (ACCI) covers 19 European countries and is based on a list of 63 basic indicators for which the data has been principally drawn from the European Social Survey of 2002. The results of the ACCI shows a heterogeneous Europe where Nordic countries lead and southern European countries display positive performances in Democratic Values and Representative Democracy but lag behind in Protest and Social Change and Community Life dimensions. Finally, in order better to understand the phenomenon of active citizenship the relationship between the Active Citizenship Composite Indicator and other social cultural and economic indicators were explored. High levels of Active citizenship are found to correlate with the rule of law and human and economic development.JRC.G.9-Econometrics and applied statistic