Electoral assistance can be defined today as the legal, technical and logistic support provided to electoral laws, processes and institutions. It spans a broad spectrum - from the establishment of the legal framework for the administration of elections, to inclusive electoral systems and voter registration processes, support to the institutions called to administer and adjudicate upon electoral processes, through the provision of financial resources, materials, equipment and expert advice, as well as technical and financial support to civil society engaged in civic and voter education, election observation and media monitoring, including technical assistance to political parties.

The provision of this type of assistance implies as well the handling of a very complex and delicate set of interactions among Electoral Management Bodies, assistance providers, multilateral and bilateral development agencies, partner country governments, CSOs, political parties and vendors. The appreciation of the sensitiveness of this delicate set of relationships requires the development of specific skills that go well beyond the pure technical advice.

In this context, by “Effective Electoral Assistance” we mean all the initiatives and activities that are intended to improve the quality and impact of electoral assistance to partner country electoral institutions. In this sense, electoral assistance is part of the wider democratic development of the partner country, in accordance with the five key principles of “ownership, alignment, harmonisation, managing for results, and mutual accountability” that inform the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.

Electoral assistance as defined above is still a discipline in its infancy, despite the fact that election assistance activities have been part of the external relations’ agenda of several established democracies since the end of World War II. Only very recently has electoral assistance been recognised as a branch of democracy development assistance (“Electoral Management Bodies as Institutions of Governance”, Lopez-Pintor 1999 and “International Electoral Assistance: A Review of Donor Activities and Lessons Learned”, Reilly 2003) and there is still a relative scarcity of literature on electoral assistance and academic research dedicated to it. This is reflected in the limited availability of comparative documentation in terms of historical background, content, methodologies and potential approaches to electoral assistance.

It was only after the end of the Cold War that the importance of supporting the establishment of functioning and transparent governance institutions was widely acknowledged as a priority for the creation of more stable, peaceful and economically sustainable democracies.  This arose during a period of formation of new countries established after the break up of authoritarian regimes and in countries transitioning from military regimes, and support for the institutions and processes related to elections was very much a part of this development. Since then, states at the bilateral level and, more often multilaterally, have been keen to provide significant financial support to elections in several countries, with important progress being made in the process.

However, after the initial enthusiasm caused by the so-called “Third Wave” of democratisation which began in the mid-1970s but advanced apace in the 1990s, problems began to emerge. In studying transitions in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, a striking dichotomy emerged in many cases between the provision of apparently successful election assistance and the concomitant failure of recipient states to make progress in the overall democratisation process. In many cases, the transition from electoral democracies to parliamentary democracies was never fully accomplished.  This “Focus On” highlights how the lack of progress in this area may be attributed to the failure of all development partners to fully understand the integral relationship between electoral assistance (as opposed to election assistance) and democracy development objectives. Indeed, it was believed that the focus of democracy assistance could quickly move to other areas of democratic development, such as rule of law, or parliamentary support programmes after the first wave of democratic elections.

The resulting recognition that concepts such as ‘effectiveness’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘capacity building’ were the way forward in electoral assistance was made by several development agencies around the  turn of the Millennium[1], but very often the officials  involved struggled to identify effective methods that could turn the above mentioned concepts into effective implementation policies. Many development agency officials dealing with electoral assistance expressed frustration over the pressures created by short pre-election time frames, in combination with large expenditures and with the sudden drop-off of interest for the partner countries’ institutional development in the post electoral period.

Long-term institution building programs in the electoral area were at first simply not considered, as the focus was usually on the election as an event. International support was typically not available for sustained activities in this sector and longer-term assistance was deemed difficult to measure and more easily influenced by external factors or unforeseen events. In contrast, short-term, ad hoc support to specific election events remained extremely attractive, as it provided easily identifiable and measurable (though much more modest) outcomes, provided high visibility at a political level and had proven to be easily justifiable to domestic and international constituencies.

In the past three years, some key global players in development assistance such as the European Commission (EC), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and International IDEA have undertaken concrete steps to make a more holistic approach to electoral assistance possible in the practical implementation of electoral projects. The immediate objective behind these initiatives is the intention that emerged within the EC and UNDP to rationalise their interventions in this area and harmonise them with their overall objectives in promoting democratic development. The longer-term objective that informs all these activities, particularly committed to by International IDEA, is to provoke definitive changes in the manner electoral assistance is conceived, designed, identified and implemented by all development agencies and assistance providers.  These efforts have been accompanied by the emergence of a methodological and linguistic distinction between election assistance and electoral assistance. This distinction defines the former as the provision of support targeting the Election Day, and the latter as a more integrated and holistic form of long term support to electoral systems, processes and institutions. In this context, the most notable development has been the design of a new planning and training tool by the EC and International IDEA's electoral specialists, called the electoral cycle.

This paper will describe some of the new activities and initiatives undertaken by the above mentioned institutions in an attempt to make electoral assistance effective, as well as the related efforts to conceptualise the linkages between electoral assistance, democracy development and the necessary development of more inclusive political frameworks and democratic culture. This description will follow a brief overview of almost two decades of electoral assistance and an analysis of the challenges and constraints which emerged towards the end of the 90s. The main aim is to demonstrate with concrete examples that the building of strong and transparent electoral administration capacity is a primary and invaluable form of investment for the long-term democratic development of the partner countries and that ad hoc contributions to election events, whilst still needed and politically attractive, yield positive results only if embedded within a larger and more complex framework of democratic assistance initiatives.

In this effort to promote a concept of electoral assistance that is demand-driven and directed towards the long-term strengthening of democratic processes and institutions, the role of technological innovation as a powerful but still precarious instrument for increasing transparency and accountability is considered, as well as the crucial importance that existing low-cost capacity building and professional development tools can play in effective electoral assistance programmes.

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