The Institute for Democracy “Societas Civilis” – Skopje (IDSCS) and the Institute for Central-Eastern and Balkan Europe (IECOB) are monitoring the quality of the debates in the Assembly. The monitoring started in June 2014 and it is part of the project “Parliament Watch! Strengthening the political debate and deliberative discourse” that is financially supported by the European Union. During the monitoring period 10 monthly reports with the main findings will be published. Through applying the ‘Discourse Quality Index’ each speech act in the plenary and in the sessions of eight parliamentary committees, selected according their importance for the political debate and political culture in the country, is being assessed based on several parameters. The main goal of this monitoring is to reach to empirical conclusions about the level and quality of argumentation of the parliamentary debates and to measure to what extent different opinions and standpoints influence and contribute to law-making. Simultaneously within the project, monitoring of 10 media with national coverage and distribution is conducted with aim to draw conclusions on the extent of which the general public is informed about the arguments placed forward by the Members of the Parliament (MPs).
The full document can be found here: http://idscs.PARLIAMENT_WATCH_Third_Monitoring_report_Dqi_Parliament_October.pdf