The diversity assessment tool is designed to assess to what extent political parties adopt measures to integrate people with an immigrant background into the life of the party. Parties are organisations that are to a greater or lesser extent professional organisations operating at local, regional, national and European levels. In order to achieve their overall goals, parties aim to:
- seek the support of voters
- recruit members
- select candidates for representative office
- select leaders
- employ staff
- purchase goods and services.
As part of a broader strategy to achieve these goals, parties can adopt and implement equal opportunity, anti-discrimination and diversity principles. This would make parties more representative and effective to mobilise the population. The tool is primarily meant for the national level where general rules are set for the party as a whole. However, the tool can also be used for party operations at sub-national level and by party affiliated organisations such as training institutes.
For the design of the tool we made use of a compendium of benchmarks and indicators on diversity in political parties. We shaped the tool as a user-friendly questionnaire. A first draft was introduced and discussed with political parties, civil society organisations and academics at workshops organised in seven European countries during the last months of 2013 and the first months of 2014.