From an electoral point of view, “legal framework” has both a restricted and a broad meaning.

From this paper’s point of view, “legal framework” is understood in such two meanings. We intend to develop a definition of “legal framework” as broad as possible in order to achieve a detailed understanding of such an expression.

A legal framework is the group of legal regulations on the voting rights used by citizens to elect representative officials. However, a legal framework can also be integrated by electoral regulations that authorize citizens to use public powers on their own (using legal devices to achieve legislative goals, to define public policies, to impeach any public officer).

Any legal framework, seen as a group of constitutional, legislative, regulatory, jurisprudential and managerial rules, can also be seen as a procedural technique at hand aimed at promoting either representative or indirect democracy.

It must be noticed that elections are neither the only way to elect public officials (there are legal and randomly made appointments; besides, elections are also undertaken by collegiate institutions such as corporations’ boards following no electoral laws whatsoever) nor are used to exclusively appoint public officials. As a matter of fact, citizens also use elections to accept or reject legislative bills, governmental decisions or resolutions taken by a public authority (referendum, collective lawsuits and impeachments are used to do so).

The “legal framework” topic is integrated by three main categories: preliminary issues, basic alternatives  and fundamental components.

The first category is also divided into three main subjects. The first of them proposes an electoral overview, which contains a definition of “legal framework”, the subject’s content and the methodology followed to build it up. The second, which refers to guiding principles, makes a brief description of international and regional principles contained in both treaties and covenants and which have to be taken into account when creating or reforming electoral laws. The third subject is built upon a historical and legal analysis about what things have to be taken into account to support a legislative framework. It is worth mentioning that here; a comparative study on different legal traditions takes place.

The section on basic alternatives, which have to be taken into account to build up any legal framework, presents a study on political systems and political regimes. Such study explores different ways to organize public powers from a territorial point of view as well as the styles that can be adopted by a democratic government based on the electoral contest of political parties.  It also describes both representative and indirect democracies, the legal devices supporting legal frameworks and the creation and reform processes of such devices.

The third category explores the fundamental components of legal frameworks. Here different topics are analyzed as follows: electoral systems, electoral administration, district delimitation, voters’ registry, voters’ training, candidates and political parties, election management, counting, the relations between elections and technology and elections’ integrity. Likewise, a detailed study on the different models for the resolution of electoral disputes is undertaken and a classification is derived from it. The place occupied by each single electoral authority within such a classification depends on the place they occupy within their nations. A comparative study on systems of appeals for electoral disputes is also undertaken, and includes a description of deadlines, evidentiary rules and election’s nullification.

The final chapter aims at summing up the information in final notes. There, cost-oriented considerations are derived from all the studies.

The topic area of “Legal Frameworks” aspires to improve available information, including in it any useful topic and making it more comprehensive and precise.

Therefore, this subject pretends to highlight how important the electoral role played by legal frameworks can be.

A deductive methodology is used in order to help the reader to have a clear picture of the subject before any revision of contents is set into motion. Readers are benefited because they enter into this document’s main subjects in a more familiar way. A particular section is developed in order to expose the contexts on which both legal frameworks and elections are based.

The most important subjects are contained in two sections, which also include many topics that are related to the ACE Project’s eleven topics.

The first section aims at studying the basic alternative ways in which an election can be undertaken. There, three related possibilities are analyzed: direct and indirect democracy cases, the existent legal instruments and the processes followed to create and reform legal instruments. This section draws all the options available to design, reform and set down, on legislative texts, an electoral system.

The second section, on the other hand, includes the essential components of a legal framework. The study analyzes different topics, which include the electoral system, the relations between elections and technology, electoral management, the resolution of electoral disputes, and some final notes that contain an evaluation of the already mentioned possibilities.