The Limits of Election Monitoring
What Independent Observation Can (and Can’t) Do
Article Summary and Author Biography
When Tunisia and Egypt hold elections this fall, international election monitors will face pressure to validate the results as a proof that the Arab Spring is yielding democratic dividends. They must resist that pressure -- both to maintain their independence and convince Egyptians and Tunisians of it.
SUSAN D. HYDE is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Yale University and the author of The Pseudo-Democrat’s Dilemma: Why Election Monitoring Became an International Norm. JUDITH G. KELLEY is Associate Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and the author of Monitoring Democracy: When International Election Monitoring Works and Why It Often Fails, to be published by Princeton University Press.
Response
Professors Susan Hyde and Judith G. Kelley are right to point out the pitfalls independent election observers face, but wrong to assume the monitors themselves are unaware of them.
Today, the international monitoring of elections has become so common that refusing to invite foreign observers is seen as a signal that a regime has something to hide. Among the media and in policy circles, the importance of election monitoring is almost universally accepted. This uncritical treatment of international election observation, however, ignores a more complicated reality: that monitors can have both positive and negative effects. And now, as countries in the Middle East and northern Africa are poised to hold competitive elections for the first time, understanding the role and impact of election observers is more important than ever.
Election observation took shape in the post-Cold War years, as a number of regions, in particular Africa and post-communist eastern Europe, held multiparty elections for the first time. Today, the most active international election monitors come from the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), but more than a dozen organizations (including the Carter Center, the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, and the Organization of American States) send observers to five or more elections each year.
On the positive side, observers can verify that governments are indeed playing by the rules, which can be important in quelling “sore loser” protests, increasing voter confidence, assisting the international community in assessing the legitimacy of the elections, and in theory, promoting democratization. And when governments do not play by the rules, observers can reduce fraud that would otherwise occur and condemn governments for election manipulation, sometimes validating domestic protest, as happened in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004. International monitors conduct a great deal of on-the-ground work months before an election even takes place. They provide legal and logistical assistance, monitor the media, and coordinate with domestic observers and other civil-society groups. At the same time, they pressure governments -- either through direct meetings or public condemnation -- to update voter registers, support domestic observers, ensure that ballot materials are delivered throughout the country, and adopt technologies that make blatant election fraud harder.
Many countries benefit from ongoing advice and assistance from international observers. In 1998, Guyana established a permanent electoral commission, a recommendation first voiced by the Organization of American States (OAS) after the country’s flawed 1997 election. Since 2002, Kenya no longer has individual voter card identification numbers on ballots, which in the past could be used to compromise the secrecy of the vote. After a controversy over “double punched,” and therefore invalid, ballots in Indonesia’s 2004 presidential elections, the country followed the advice of international observers and changed the marking process from using nails to pens. And in its 2004 and 2009 elections, El Salvador refined its voter lists, created new identity cards, and improved the reliability of polling stations and tabulation. Even if incremental, such changes help build credible electoral institutions and processes.
In Egypt, where intimidation and abuse of power persists, observers will need to monitor the freedom of new political parties to campaign and organize, as well as the ability of voters to access information about candidates.
Yet some serious problems persist in election observation. For starters, in recent years, Russia and China have taken the lead in establishing “pseudo” monitors, such as those from the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. These observers endorse any election so long as the candidate or party preferred by Moscow or Beijing wins (see, for example, the CIS endorsement of the highly fraudulent 2004 election in Belarus). Although the obvious biases of these sham monitors make their assessments rather weak in the eyes of Western audiences, the endorsements of such groups are often trotted out in propaganda campaigns both at home and in friendly authoritarian countries.
Reputable observer organizations can also face political pressure from powerful states or international organizations, particularly when elections threaten a leader perceived as a Western ally, or when elections are anticipated as important marks of transitions, such as the upcoming elections in Egypt and Tunisia. Such pressure is usually subtle and varied: Donors or politicians may seek to influence assessments behind the scenes, or by strategically choosing mission staff from friendly member states. For example, in Nigeria in 1999, both the Commonwealth Secretariat and the European Union reminded their missions that their member governments wanted to endorse the elections as a way to restore normal relations with Nigeria. It is important to remember that observers are agents of donors, governments, and organizations, whose need for diplomacy or stability can push monitors away from frankly assessing elections. This problem is underreported and not discussed enough, either because many in the media assume that all monitors are disinterested “election police” or because policymakers choose to turn a blind eye.
- previous-disabled
- Page 1of 2
- next
Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.