There is still a long way to go before electoral assistance can be declared completely effective. Mistakes will continue to be made, especially in presence of high political pressure to deliver elections as early as possible. It is still relatively early days in the field of electoral assistance, and the way forward will be a constant learning experience. Nevertheless, it is encouraging that key electoral assistance providers and development agencies have engaged in recent initiatives designed to facilitate the achievement of democratic development objectives through electoral assistance projects. In particular, the gap between “learning the lessons” to “applying the lessons learnt” is now closing.
Effective electoral assistance primarily means long term institutional strengthening and capacity development. Twenty years of electoral assistance have demonstrated that there is no short-term method to support a democratic transition. The international community must be ready to stay the course if the democratic development of a partner country does not follow the originally envisaged path. Short-term election assistance projects are unlikely to disappear from the foreign policy agenda of established democracies, and indeed, they should not be entirely discouraged. The solution is to frame them within a wider assistance context, with a clear understanding from the outset of their real deliverables and limited impact on the democratic development of the partner country.
Development agencies capacity can be built up through a more long-sighted approach, embodying openness towards electoral systems and processes that differ from those adopted in western democracies, and the facilitation of initiatives that are driven by partner countries’ institutions, with a specific focus on south-south exchanges.
Knowledge and capacity development services such as ACE and BRIDGE are cost-effective and readily available tools for professional development and the dissemination of regional based knowledge. . Each new electoral assistance project and electoral mission should make more use of these services, from the moment of programme design and deployment. EMBs should be made aware that these services are available at relatively low costs and require limited implementing capacity. These instruments should be included as key components in every electoral assistance project, to be utilised independently of the more operational component of the assistance project, including making them available in several languages other than English.
Capacity development is a matter that concerns development agencies, in some cases, even more than partner countries. The Global Training Platform is developing training courses modeled after the Joint EC-UNDP-IDEA training events that can be easily customised to the specific needs of the agency or institutution requiring the training services. Planning an effective electoral assistance project is an extremely complex undertaking, best achieved at the multilateral level. In this respect, development agencies coordination of aid and initiatives requires much more than simply identifying the technical needs. There remains insufficient capacity to identify and plan a well-coordinated and targeted electoral assistance programme. Anticipating requests for assistance in a sustained long-term support process rather than reacting to periodical requests - this is the crucial Gordian knot to be cut.
Next: Links Relevant to Effective Electoral Assistance
