The head of the Estonian Human Rights Centre published a column in Postimees, Estonia’s first daily newspaper, in which he refers to MPG’s benchmarking tool for political parties to press for more diversity on Estonia’s political scene.
With its large Russian-speaking minority, politics in Estonia has been divided across ethnic lines since the country’s independence. In his column, Kari Käsper states that “election results show that [Estonia’s four major political parties] cannot or do not want to represent society’s diversity“. He looks at the composition of the parties’ executive boards and notes that in the Social Democratic Party only three members out of 23 are of Russian origin; one out of 16 in the Estonian Centre Party; and none in the Reform Party and in the Union of Pro Patria and Res Publica.
MPG’s toolkit on Becoming a Party of choice includes a benchmarking tool to help parties opening to diversity and equality, from voters and candidates to staff and suppliers. The benchmarks looks at at the following questions, for instance:
- Are equality data used to map the party’s electorate?
- Are candidates with a migrant background allocated as many winnable constituencies or winnable seats as other candidates?
- To what extent does the composition of party leadership and executive structure reflects society’s diversity?
A new project, DivPol, was launched earlier this year and will use MPG’s tool with political parties across the political spectrum in seven European countries.
