At the turn of the Millennium, electoral assistance providers began to
engage more consistently with donors to analyse, in greater depth, the impact
of their support to elections in post conflict, transitional and emerging
democracies in terms of their long term democratic and economic development.
UNDP, in particular, undertook a review of a
decade of its experience in electoral assistance, from 1990 to 2000, which
can be considered the first comprehensive evaluation made in the field of
electoral assistance. The result of this review revealed that elections were too often supported as isolated events.
Electoral support was not linked to other aspects of democratic governance such
as constitution building, as well as political and electoral system design,
despite the fact that electoral assistance often offered an ideal entry point
for assisting partner countries on other democratic governance efforts. The UNDP’s
review presented the clear conclusion that the relationship between electoral
systems and political party systems, and the need to involve stakeholders
through dialogue, were often insufficiently understood or not fully considered
in planning electoral assistance support, pointing for the first time to the
responsibilities of the international community. UNDP followed up its 10 year
review with more
specific studies, while a number of
other development cooperation agencies like the UK’s Department for
International Development (DFID) and the Swedish
International Development Agency (Sida) undertook similar critical reviews
of ad hoc support to electoral processes and the need to place electoral
assistance more clearly within larger democracy and governance efforts.
Despite the gradual widespread acknowledgement of the need to move away
from the event-driven support approach, the hard reality of foreign policy
proved to be a difficult obstacle to overcome in planning longer term electoral
assistance projects. At times, support to sudden elections or referenda after
an unexpected regime change or a breakthrough in a long-drawn conflict was not
necessarily compatible with efficient and effective planning, not even with the
execution of an inclusive and transparent electoral process, unless massive
international presence was deployed. In many other cases, a fundamental
dichotomy persisted in the approach of many development agencies (and in the
consequent formulation of assistance programmes) between the desirability of
investing in capacity development and the political imperatives to achieve the
best results within the shortest possible timeframe.
The assumption made by many development agencies was that “democratization tends to
unfold in a set sequence of stages”[1] , and
that the institutional design that had been previously put in place with
international technical assistance might eventually be found by the new rulers
of the partner countries as not respondent to their needs. Many developing
countries in between elections moved away from the initially established
democracy trajectory and reformed their political and electoral systems. These
changes were sometimes the result of a genuine democratic development process
within the partner countries; at other times these changes were imposed by the
new rulers in the attempt to consolidate their hold on power. The consequence
in both cases was often a severe underestimation of the technical and financial 
implications that such reforms had in the organisation of new elections, and hence
belated requests for support to the international community that had to be met
at the political level in order to maintain the partner country on the
“democratic path”. In these situations, the role of international politics may mean that electoral assistance
was to unwittingly serve national political agendas rather than primarily
assisting the partner country in improving electoral systems and processes
within the framework of advancing democratic governance.
In the face of growing consciousness of its limited effectiveness, this
type of assistance was repeated again and again, and the event-driven approach often
frustrated the efforts of those development agency officials who had been
advocating a different strategic course. Electoral reforms therefore became a
double-edged sword: on the one hand they were advocated for and encouraged to
enable the partner country to follow its own democratic development; on the
other hand, they were also very much feared as often requiring an unforeseen
amount of technical and financial assistance and increasing concerns about the
sustainability of electoral processes.
Independent international observation missions
played an important role in shifting the mindset of electoral assistance
providers from the event-driven approach to a more cyclical one. Evaluations and reports produced by election
observation missions represented a valuable tool for better assessing the
strengths and weaknesses of the electoral process in a given country and of
their reform processes. Electoral observation in the New Millennium had in fact
already considerably evolved from the so called rubber-stamping missions of
early 1990s to become a rather sophisticated and complex undertaking,
especially due to the initiative of the European Union, the Office for
Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the OSCE (OSCE-ODIHR) and
independent foundations like the Carter
Center.
Observation missions
organized by the above mentioned actors are now deployed after timely needs
assessment missions and apply a tested and precise
methodology as well as an internally agreed code of conduct modelled on the
Declaration
of Principles for International Election Observation. Non-partisan
election observation by international and domestic observer organisations can greatly
contribute to enhancing the integrity of election processes by deterring
irregularities and fraud, by promoting public confidence in the electoral
process, by mitigating potential for election-related conflicts in the
pre-electoral period, and most importantly, can provide grounded
recommendations for improving the democratic reform process. Today there is a
growing tendency for international and domestic observer organisations to monitor
second and subsequent legislative and presidential elections. Furthermore,
missions are deployed to observe local elections and referenda, with the aim of
promoting
genuine, cost effective and transparent elections. This includes the
strengthening of democratic institutions and respect for human rights and the
rule of law, which also benefit from development cooperation programmes. However, although observation missions produce detailed reports highlighting the
strengths and weaknesses of the electoral processes, such reports have rarely
been used for defining and structuring future electoral support programmes.
This is often due to a limited understanding by election observation missions
of development cooperation mechanisms and its implications for the complexities
of electoral administration structures in partner countries.
Next: Facing Electoral Realities: Too Much Assistance, Too Late
[1] Thomas
Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm”, Journal of Democracy, Volume
13, N.1, January 2002.
