The classification of electoral costs are defined in Types of Electoral Costs serve as the basis for developing cost-assessment methodologies. The following steps are required:
- Define the political environment—to be taken as a constant factor—a necessary consideration regardless of whether a democracy is stable, transitional or post-conflict.
- Consider whether the electoral budget of an election year is covering one or several elections; and in the latter case, whether elections are to be held simultaneously or separately.
- Separate fixed costs of the ordinary functioning of the EMB from variable costs as specific for a given election—and then distinguish between personnel and operational costs if relevant for the budget of a particular event.
- Identify the list of election-related activities, which may include voter registration, boundary delimitation, the voting operation, counting and transmission of results, dispute adjudication, voter education and information, and campaigning by political parties and candidates.
- Separate core costs and integrity costs in relation to each of the activities listed in D above.
- Consider separately the direct and diffuse costs incurred by different organizations involved in electoral activities as core and integrity costs. Quantify direct costs precisely, and estimate diffuse costs based on contextual figures or best-educated guesses.
- Identify the funding source for each cost category, whether national or external, public or private.
- Finally, make the necessary adjustments in comparing cost evolution over time (increase/decrease in the overall cost or in particular budget line items) for within a given country or among different countries, by including capital and equipment investments as well as amortizations. In both cases, indexing the currency in constant values for a given year may be necessary.
Table 1 (below) shows the frequency and intensity with which different costs are incurred, depending on the democracy environment.
Three trends are apparent when comparing electoral scenarios in stable, transitional and post-conflict democracies.
First, integrity costs are relatively higher in transitional than in stable democracies, and still higher in post-conflict situations. This is primarily, although not exclusively, due to the requirement of police and military to handle security at every stage of the electoral process, frequently with the presence of an international force.
Second, diffuse core costs are particularly extensive in stable democracies where a large part of the actual electoral expense is covered by budgets from different state administrations; in such environments, it is not always easy or feasible to quantify which part of their budgets are devoted to electoral activities. On the other hand, diffuse integrity costs are greater in transitional and post-conflict environments because of the need for funding from a peacekeeping budget, which are difficult to quantify. Diffuse costs attributable to political party finance are substantial and difficult to quantify in both stable and other democracies.
Third, the existence and amount of vigilance costs could be reduced to some core costs for party agents in stable democracies, but would expand to domestic and international observers in the other democracy environments, especially in post-conflict situations.
