report, which assesses the quality of public services provided by the state in six countries in Latin America, as well as the citizens’ degree of satisfaction (Pareja et al. 2016).

_Living Life_ attempts to establish measures of bureaucratic efficiency, one factor among several that can prevent a country from progressing in key social outcome indicators as measured by the UN Human Development Index, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) _How’s Life_ report, the European Commission’s Sustainable Development Indicators, or the Social Progress Imperative’s Social Progress Index. Inefficient bureaucratic procedures may also hinder the effective realization of key democratic principles assessed by the International IDEA Democratic Accountability in Service Delivery and State of Democracy data or by the Varieties of Democracy data sets. The same democratic principles recognized by these legal assessments may not be achieved in practice if the related administrative requirements are too complicated or costly.

_Living Life_ also complements four key cross-country indicators discussed in detail by Van de Walle (2005). The first set of indicators is taken from a paper published by the European Central Bank (ECB) and compares public sector efficiency covering 23 OECD countries in 1990 and 2000. A second set of indicators are taken from the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) released every two years. A third indicator is the World Economic Forum’s annual Public Institutions Index (one of the pillars of the Global Competitiveness Index covering 117 countries). The fourth indicator is IMD Business School’s annual indicator for government efficiency covering 60 countries.

Both the ECB’s indicator and WGI overlap with _Living Life_ ’s areas of study. However, there are a few core differences. The ECB indicator measures the efficiency of government performance by comparing inputs (public spending as a share of gross domestic product (GDP)) to outcomes, while _Living Life_ measures the ease of access to those basic public services as opposed to the outcomes or the quality of those outcomes. The WGI’s Government Effectiveness Dimension captures “perceptions of the quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government's commitment to such policies” (Kaufmann et al. 2010, 223). _Living Life_ , on the other hand, attempts to establish more objective measures of bureaucratic performance by accounting for time, processes, steps, and costs. The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index’s performance measurement of government institutions and the IMD Business School’s world competitiveness rankings both examine enhanced economic growth and prosperity, whereas _Living Life_ focuses on the quality of interaction between citizen and governments.

Because bureaucratic complexity is often an effective proxy for corruption, _Living Life_ offers complementary insights on issues addressed by global, opinion-based and qualitative indicators such as Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index and the Global Corruption Barometer. Other relevant performance measurements include the Open Budget Index, the Public Integrity Index, and Freedom House’s Civil Liberties and Political Freedoms Index.

Topic-specific initiatives such as those that collect data and analyze election outcomes dedicate efforts to understanding the societal impacts of voting. Extensive databases exist with relevant data on voting percentages of registered population, legislative frameworks for elections, and electoral management. Little research exists, however, focusing on the actual procedures and steps undertaken by citizens to register to vote and to fulfill their 6 | P a g e