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society and academia (e.g. human rights, law, religious groups, women’s interests). They takepart in their personal capacity, not as formal representatives of their respective organisations.Government officials and office bearers of political parties are excluded from participation.The panels discuss intensively each of the 42 indicators. All of them are formulated as an idealgoal, for example: “The right to freedom of expression is practiced and citizens, includingjournalists, are asserting their rights without fear”. The experts exchange legal opinion andpractical experience in regard to this benchmark and contemplate to which level their countryhas achieved this aim. A rapporteur takes detailed notes and compiles the results into a comprehensivereport – two days of debate usually produce information and assessments worthweeks of field work by a researcher.One aspect of the exercise that helps to concentrate minds and keep discussions is the scoring.After extensive, qualitative debate panelists are asked to allocate (quantitative) scores to eachof the indicator – in a secret ballot – that measure the degree of achievement:1 Country does not meet indicator.2 Country minimally meets aspects of the indicator.3 Country meets many aspects of indicator butprogress may be too recent to judge.4 Country meets most aspects of indicator.5 Country meets all aspects of the indicator and hasbeen doing so over time.These scores can then be used both as a measurement of development in a given country overtime (it is planned to repeat the exercise every two years), as well as to make comparisonsbetween various countries.This report documents the result of a test run in six countries (Angola, Botswana, Mozambique,Namibia, Swaziland and Zambia). First versions of some of the indicators turned out tobe either not clear enough or too complex, and these were changed accordingly without causingdamage to the comparability of the results.The results of the scoring show that panelists generally took a realistic view – neither attemptingto be patriotic and give undue praise nor being overly critical or cynical. Botswana andZambia ended up with an equal overall score of 2.2 (countries minimally meet aspects of theindicators), mainly due to the lack of any attempt to reform the broadcasting sector (whereboth countries scored exactly the same low: 1.7). Namibia and Kenya both scored 2.7 overall,meaning that these countries “meet many aspects” of the indicators, with high marks for freedomof expression in general for Namibia (3.2) and professional standards for Kenya (3.2).These results now make for powerful lobbying tools. As all panelists have clout in their sphereof influence they can draw on them in helping to shape opinions inside and outside the politicalarena. The dismal score for Botswana, for example, came as a surprise to the panel, whospoke of their country as a “democracy without democrats”, where there is “a lot of fear amongcitizens, partly due to intimidating threats made by state operatives like the police, securityofficers and the army”.So This Is Democracy? 2005-171-Media Institute of Southern Africa