Democracy promotion after World War II
Democracy promotion as an interest of Western governments stretches back to the reordering of the international community following World War II. In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) made democratic principles a foundation of the new prevailing system. “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of the government,” it proclaimed, and “this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.” [10] The same year, the Charter of the Organization of American States stated as one of the body’s essential purposes: “to promote and consolidate representative democracy,” [11] as did the Council of Europe’s founding statute in 1949, thus reinforcing the emergence of this new prerogative.
Eighteen years after the adoption of the UDHR, the U.N. codified its aspirational language on democratic elections in a binding international treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Drafters of the UDHR recognized immediately the need to give weight and concreteness to their document, but the U.N. General Assembly’s adoption of the ICCPR was delayed for 12 years due to hesitation on the part of both the United States and the Soviet Union. [12] An idealistic wave of former colonial states achieving self-determination in the 1950s and 1960s, however, pushed the ICCPR to the fore.
In this environment the first small election observation missions were deployed. The U.N., in particular, began overseeing referenda on independence in territories under U.N. trusteeship as a precursor to accepting countries into the international community of sovereign states. The early missions included elements of supervision or assistance as well as assessment. In 1948, a special Temporary Commission on Korea supervised and monitored the country’s by-elections in the U.S.-controlled South following an attempt by the General Assembly to unite the two Koreas under one government. [13] The U.N. Plebiscite Commissioner in British Togoland’s 1956 referendum on integration with an independent Gold Coast (Ghana) similarly played this dual role. This report marked the first use of the language “free and fair” to certify the integrity of a vote. [14] In its 1958 mission for French Togoland’s Legislative Assembly elections, the U.N. deployed 21 observers and 12 staff to ensure the legitimacy of a legislature that could achieve independence. [15] Despite the small mission and its short time-frame (two months), as well as flawed electoral laws, the U.N. Commissioner ultimately certified that, “the outcome of the elections faithfully reflects the wishes of the people of Togoland.” [16]
The OAS was also an early pioneer of observation, launching its inaugural mission in 1962 to Costa Rica. Framed as a technical assistance project, the OAS mission to Costa Rica nevertheless reported on the integrity of the election and established a precedent for future missions to six Latin American countries in the 1960s and 1970s. Like the U.N. in this period, the OAS did not emphasize its independence or neutrality. Instead, it underscored its “moral support” for democracy. [17] The organization’s decision to shift from a firm position of nonintervention toward active support for democratization coincided with a U.S.-backed push to suspend Cuba’s membership. [18]
Collapse of communism and new opportunities
The collapse of Communism and thaw of Cold War tensions in the 1980s provided a new impetus for election observation, enabling the field to grow. This spurred, in turn, reflection on its parameters and methodology. As new opportunities for international engagement appeared in Eastern Europe and Latin America, the salient motivation for monitoring elections shifted from supporting self-determination to advancing democratic values where authoritarian regimes were crumbling.
The Cold War placed democratic elections into an economic context, linking them explicitly to the free market. Between 1989 and 1992, many of the largest providers of foreign aid, including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), United States, Great Britain, France, and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), had announced that funding decisions would tie good governance to capitalist reforms. [19] Multi-party elections came to be seen as a pre-condition of economic liberalism. [20] This approach led some critics to see financial and ideological aims in the decision of Western governments to fund observation missions.
Increased demand for international monitors highlighted the need for standardization and the definition of a professional field with specific expertise. In 1984, the International Human Rights Law Group produced the first handbook for election observation, Guidelines for International Election Observing. Authored by Larry Garber and funded by USAID, the handbook recognized that international human rights instruments were vague on what constituted “free,” “genuine,” and “periodic” elections, and that this had led in part to inconsistent observer reports. Garber cited specifically the 1979 Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and 1982 El Salvador elections as demonstrating the need for clearer standards, noting that political agendas and divergent methodologies had resulted in harmful conflicting assessments. [21]
Emphasizing the role of election observation missions in promoting human rights, Garber’s Guidelines addressed issues such as criteria for deciding where to observe, mission composition and length, reporting (including sample checklists), and minimum conditions for a “free and fair” election. The momentum of election observation during this period also was reflected in the U.S. Congress’s creation in 1983 of the National Endowment for Democracy. The National Democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republication Institute (IRI), two of its four original grantees, sought to develop significant election observation programs.
The U.N. had continued to supervise and observe elections since Togoland in 1958 under mandates from the General Assembly, Security Council, or Trusteeship Council. [22] Yet by 1989, when it supervised elections in Namibia, it was inaugurating a new phase of engagement in democracy-building that was broader than its previous focus on decolonization. A year earlier, the U.N. General Assembly issued a resolution entitled “Efforts of Governments to Promote or Consolidate New or Restored Democracies.” U.N. observation in Nicaragua in February 1990 and in Haiti in 1991 solidified the reversal in the body’s previous position that it would only be involved elections where a threat existed to internal peace. Instead, it also would pursue democratization directly. [23] Growing U.N. and international interest led to the designation in 1991 of the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs as a focal point for electoral assistance and the creation of the U.N. Electoral Assistance Division (UNEAD) to support that work. [24]
Simultaneously, the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), predecessor of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), began discussions of deploying observers. Its 1989 Conference on the Human Dimension of Security precipitated an important precedent, whereby CSCE member states agreed in June 1990 to issue a collective standing invitation to observers for all future elections. [25] The following year, CSCE established an Office of Free Elections (now Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR)) to meet this demand. In the Western Hemisphere, the end of the Cold War provided an opening for the OAS General Assembly to recommend in 1989 that the body send observers to any member state that requested them. [26] At the same time, the Commonwealth Secretariat began monitoring elections with a new focus on national contests rather than on territories seeking independence, and the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union) made its first foray into observation during Namibia’s 1989 elections in concert with the U.N. [27]
The growth of observation was not limited to international organizations. The first major citizen election observation organization, National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL), emerged in the mid-1980s in the Philippines with the aim of raising awareness of manipulation by the repressive military regime of Ferdinand Marcos. NAMFREL members initially organized for the 1984 Congressional elections, but it was their success fielding 500,000 volunteers for a snap presidential election in 1986 that helped allay skepticism about the utility of citizens observing their own elections and paved the way for the growth of the practice around the world in parallel with international observation. In this case, NAMFREL’s exposure of fraud on the part of the Marcos government contributed significantly to the ouster of the regime. [28]
This formative period saw groups experimenting with closer collaboration, testing new methodologies, and setting precedents for observer conduct. In 1989, NDI and IRI, along with The Carter Center’s Council of Freely Elected Heads of Government, jointly deployed a mission to Panama led by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. [29] This marked Carter’s debut in election observation, a field in which The Carter Center would become a leader over the next decade. In the run-up to the election, Carter resisted attempts by military strongman Manuel Noriega and his presidential designee, Carlos Duque, to restrict the mission to a symbolic delegation consisting of President and Mrs. Carter, former U.S. President Gerald Ford, and three staff. By threatening to skip the election altogether if the Panamanian government did not yield to the observer organizations’ conditions for a larger, professional mission, Eric Bjornlund notes, President Carter established a new standard of independence for election observation. [30] This autonomous model contrasted with the common practice in the 1980s of foreign governments sending official delegations to observe and reaffirm relations between countries. As Garber noted in his 1984 handbook, “their primary purpose often [was] to signify support for the electoral process.” [31] Carter’s position was also at odds with another partisan model, employed in Panama during the same election: A coalition of domestic opposition groups, the Committee to Support International Observers, hosted and even paid the stipends of 270 international observers. [32]
The joint mission to Panama demonstrated observers’ growing influence over the international community’s perceptions of electoral processes. The mission’s widely publicized denunciation of the government’s falsification of results, followed by nullification of the elections, was based on a parallel vote tabulation (PVT), or “quick count,” of a statistically significant sample of polling stations that showed a substantial opposition victory. [33] “The effective repression of the democratic impulses of the Panamanian people,” the final report noted, “provides encouragement to those governments in the region and beyond who cling to power, despite the contrary aspirations of the majority of their people.” [34] While Carter was unable to broker a peaceful resolution to the electoral conflict, the mission’s findings helped catalyze global condemnation of Noriega’s rule.
The 1990s: growth and professionalization of the field
Judith Kelley demonstrates that the sharpest rise in number of missions conducted annually worldwide occurred between 1989 (30 percent of elections) and 1991 (46 percent). [35] The end of the Cold War provided an opening for election observation to boom and for more organizations to join the field, including the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) in 1992 and the European Parliament in 1994. And by the late 1990s, regional, non-Western actors were active, including the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the South African Development Community (SADC), and the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa, later changed to the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA). [36]
The spread of observation and proliferation of groups put pressure on national leaders to allow monitoring in their countries or, in other terms, brought governments to realize the utility. As Susan Hyde notes, even undemocratic leaders (like Noriega in Panama) became willing to invite observers based on the benefits of foreign aid and relationships that could come after a positive assessment, at the risk of being caught red-handed at manipulation. [37] Kelley adds: “Election monitoring continued to spread because external actors increased democratic conditionality and because the stigma associated with not inviting monitors motivated even cheating governments to invite monitors to avoid an automatic stamp of illegitimacy.” [38] Yet, as more countries became open to observation, observer groups with increasing depth of expertise also demonstrated greater willingness to issue critical reports. In the 1980s, international observer groups only questioned seriously the legitimacy of an electoral process four times. In the 1990s, the number of negative reports rose sharply to a high of 16 elections in 2000. [39]
Increased confidence in observers’ assertions of fraud could be due in part to the honing of statistical methods over the same period. Parallel vote tabulations (PVTs) can project results ahead of official announcements or verify their accuracy based on an independent count of a statistically significant sample. Following the successful detection of malpractice in Panama and Nicaragua, as well as NAMFREL’s innovative 1986 PVT in the Philippines, the technique was used in Africa during the 1991 Zambian national elections. NDI trained and oversaw Zambian counters whose data enabled the groups to confirm an opposition victory on election night – results that were not officially announced until significantly later. [40] NDI continued to develop PVT methodology throughout the 1990s, emphasizing international support to national civil society organizations with the capacity to field thousands of volunteers in a given country. This quantitative data complemented the qualitative reporting from a necessarily smaller number of international observers where the two worked alongside one another. During Indonesia’s 1999 legislative elections, for example, the NDI-Carter Center joint mission announced in its preliminary statement on counting and tabulation that PVT results from a civil society group, the Rectors’ Forum, supported its assessment of a fair process: “Significantly, the results of these various unofficial tabulations do not provide any evidence to support allegations of widespread or significant fraud or tampering designed to benefit any particular party or parties.” [41]
The establishment of international election observation as a norm in the 1990s brought certain challenges. Critics voiced concerns about the quality of observation and the frequency with which groups observing the same election reached conflicting conclusions.
In 1997, Thomas Carothers attributed the first shortcoming to overcrowding of the field and amateur techniques of less experienced groups, citing the example of Nicaragua’s 1996 general elections, for which the country had hosted 80 international observer groups. [42] Aside from a handful of experienced organizations (including those already discussed), he wrote, “many of the rest are ‘dabblers’ who come in for high-profile elections with short-term, poorly prepared delegations.” [43] He also criticized the overemphasis on polling and consequent failure to catch violations occurring in other parts of the process; the phenomenon of “electoral tourism” by those driven more by curiosity than methodological rigor; and lack of impartiality. [44]
The abundance of observers also fostered a diversity of methodologies that sometimes resulted in discord. Observer groups commonly used “free and fair” as the standard for a successful election. Yet even in cases where the somewhat less ambiguous phrases “met international standards” or “fulfilled international commitments” were used, organizations were often unclear about what those standards and commitments were or, most often, what constituted meeting them – especially when an election’s results were not overtly fraudulent.
The lack of clear and consistent methodologies and assessment criteria among observers was compounded by the question of whether observers’ assessments should be conditioned by the country context. Carothers found in 1997 that some groups applied lower standards in places with a poor track record of democracy or a lesser degree of political development. “The notion that it is important to offer at least some encouragement to societies that are struggling with the basics,” he writes, “leads them to downplay serious problems.” [45]
Zimbabwe’s conflicted national elections in 2000 and 2002 demonstrated how contradictory assessments could dull the impact of observation and exacerbate domestic tensions. The fraught context of the 2000 vote raised questions about the conditions under which observers should agree to operate in the first place. The government of President Robert Mugabe attempted to cherry-pick groups and categories of observers it thought would reach favorable conclusions, restricting the size of missions, denying accreditation to some groups, and preventing observers from monitoring critical pre-election activities. Some groups adapted their delegations to the government’s restrictions, while others denounced the move even ahead of polling. [46] No definitive conditions existed in the election observation community for withdrawing.
In Zimbabwe, observer groups’ assessments reflected the obstacles they faced. NDI and IRI, which were refused accreditation, flatly denounced the process, as did the EU, whose delegation was restricted. Referencing Zimbabwe’s constitution as well as both the UDHR and African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, NDI stated: “The conditions for credible democracy do not exist in Zimbabwe at this time.” [47] The Commonwealth voiced concerns, particularly with electoral violence and intimidation, but ultimately concluded that “the conditions constitute a climate for the growth of multiparty democracy” after a long period of single-party rule. [48] SADC and the OAU, neither of which bore the brunt of Mugabe’s anti-Western rhetoric, were even more positive about the election: SADC’s Parliamentary Forum noted that it hoped for an electoral climate like Zimbabwe’s to prevail in all its member states. [49] The overall message of the international community was unclear and contradictory, placing the efficacy of observation missions and validity of their methods into question. Mugabe’s relative success at manipulating missions in 2000 empowered him to employ similar tactics in 2002. This time, however, the SADC Parliamentary Forum and Commonwealth were far less complimentary in their reports. Only the OAU issued a statement that praised the electoral process. [50]
Defining principles and building consensus
After their experience in Zimbabwe, leading observer groups recognized the need to provide greater clarity about their objectives and methods. Some guidelines already existed, contained in handbooks published by NDI and OSCE/ODIHR, as well as Larry Garber’s 1984 handbook, the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s Free and Fair Elections: International Law and Practice (1994), and International IDEA’s Code of Conduct for Ethical and Professional Observation of Elections (1997), which was produced in consultation with other major organizations and EMBs. This document concisely presented observation’s objectives and standards of good practice, organized around ethical principles (such as transparency and neutrality) central to meaningful observation. [51] Building on this premise, NDI’s Integrity Project, and lessons learned from Zimbabwe and other contentious elections of the early 2000s, The Carter Center, NDI, and UNEAD began meeting formally to build consensus and professionalism in the field of election observation. In October 2003, The Carter Center hosted a regionally diverse group of 15 intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations in Atlanta to share collective experience with the aim of determining the parameters, content, and format of a Declaration of Principles and Code of Conduct. The consultation process continued with a Carter Center-EISA forum in 2004 in Johannesburg, South Africa that brought together citizen observer groups and members of African EMBs to ensure sensitivity to African perspectives in the drafting process, followed by a European Commission-sponsored meeting in Brussels where final details were decided. [52]
On Oct. 27, 2005, 22 organizations endorsed the Declaration of Principles in a formal session of the United Nations in New York. Participants agreed that it would not be legally binding, but would rather serve as a set of best practices, retain flexibility, and be open for endorsement indefinitely. A key difference between the Declaration of Principles and earlier guidelines was that endorsers quickly developed a community of practice that meets regularly to monitor and ensure the document’s implementation. This process began in London in 2006 with the first of what are annual “implementation meetings” of the Declaration of Principles endorsers. The 2006 meeting focused on the donor community’s role in fostering effective observation.
Recognizing that meeting the Declaration of Principles’ standards of professionalism required a holistic look at the electoral process, observer groups pushed further the emerging trend toward long-term observation in the years following its adoption. Emphasis had evolved from early high-level political delegations to a focus on election day polling procedures, then to missions that paired high levels of technical and political expertise with teams of long-term observers to assess the entire electoral cycle where possible. The next decade also inaugurated the use of tablet and mobile phone technology to speed reporting and synthesis of data collected by observers, the solidification of assessment standards, and the testing of new modes of collaboration with citizen observers. At the forefront of these changes, the annual Declaration of Principles implementation meetings sought to share best practices and confront mutual challenges. Recurrent themes during the first 10 years included the harmonization of meaningful standards for assessing electoral technologies; building consensus on international obligations as a basis for assessment; follow-up to observer recommendations, or how to translate them into reform; coordination with citizen observers; and methods for evaluating the impact of observation.
[10] U.N. General Assembly, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (New York: United Nations, 1948), art. 21(3).
[11] Organization of American States, Charter of the Organization of American States (Bogota: Organization of American States, 1948-1993), art. 1.
[12] Christian Tomuschat, “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” United Nations, accessed July 15, 2014, http://legal.un.org/avl/pdf/ha/iccpr/iccpr_e.pdf.
[13] Eric C. Bjornlund, Beyond Free and Fair: Monitoring Elections and Building Democracy (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2004), 54-5.
[14] Jørgen Elklit and Palle Svensson, “What Makes Elections Free and Fair?”, Journal of Democracy 8, no. 3 (1997): 32, doi: 10.1353/jod.1997.0041.
[15] Yves Beigbeder, International Monitoring of Plebiscites, Referenda, and National Elections (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1994), 133.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Hyde, Pseudo-Democrat’s Dilemma, 97-8.
[18] Ibid., 99.
[19] Kelley, Monitoring Democracy, 29.
[20] Gisela Geisler, “Fair? What Has Fairness Got to Do With It? Vagaries of Election Observations and Democratic Standards,” Journal of Modern African Studies 31, no. 4 (1993): 630-1, doi: 10.1017/S0022278X00012271.
[21] Larry Garber, Guidelines for International Election Observing (Washington, DC: International Human Rights Law Group, 1984), i.
[22] Bjornlund, Beyond Free and Fair, 55.
[23] Ibid., 56.
[24] U.N. General Assembly, Enhancing the Effectiveness of the Principle of Periodic and Genuine Elections, A/RES/46/137 (New York: United Nations, 1991).
[25] Kelley, Monitoring Democracy, 16.
[26] OAS General Assembly, “Human Rights and Electoral Monitoring,” AG/RES. 991 (XIX-O/89), Nineteenth Regular Session, Washington, D.C., November 13-18, 1989: Proceedings (Washington, D.C.: Organization of American States General Secretariat), 37.
[27] Kelley, Monitoring Democracy, 37.
[28] Bjornlund, Beyond Free and Fair,212-215.
[29] The Carter Center engaged in efforts to avert electoral conflict prior to the Panama mission, including in Haiti in 1987, but did not deploy observers.
[30] Bjornlund, Beyond Free and Fair, 77.
[31] Garber, Guidelines, 4.
[32] NDI and IRI, The May 7, 1989 Panamanian Elections: International Delegation Report (Washington, D.C.: National Democratic Institute & National Republican Institute, 1989), 63-64.
[33] Bjornlund, Beyond Free and Fair, 77.
[34] NDI and IRI, May 7, 1989 Panamanian Elections, 4.
[35] Kelley, Monitoring Democracy, 16-17.
[36] Ibid., 35-36.
[37] Hyde, Pseudo-Democrat’s Dilemma, 109
[38] Kelley, Monitoring Democracy, 31.
[39] Hyde, Pseudo-Democrat’s Dilemma, 112.
[40] Bjornlund, Beyond Free and Fair, 88.
[41] NDI and The Carter Center, “Post-Election Statement No. 3 of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and The Carter Center International Election Observation Mission: Indonesia’s June 7, 1999, Legislative Elections” (Jakarta: NDI/The Carter Center, 1999), 2, https://www.ndi.org/files/212_id_3rdelect_0.pdf.
[42] Thomas Carothers, “The Observers Observed,” Journal of Democracy 8, no. 3 (1997): 21, doi: 10.1353/jod.1997.0037.
[43] Ibid., 21.
[44] Ibid., 22-25.
[45] Carothers, “Observers Observed,” 25.
[46] Bjornlund, Beyond Free and Fair, 200-201.
[47] NDI, Zimbabwe Parliamentary Elections 2000: Report of the NDI Pre-election Delegation, May 15-22, 2000 (Harare: National Democratic Institute, 2000), 9.
[48] Commonwealth Secretariat, The Parliamentary Elections in Zimbabwe: 24-25 June 2000: Report of the Commonwealth Observer Group (London: Commonwealth Secretariat, 2000), 34.
[49] SADC, “Zimbabwe 2000: SADC Parliamentary Forum Mission Interim Statement,” SADC Parliamentary Forum, accessed August 18, 2014, http://www.content.eisa.org.za/old-page/zimbabwe-2000-sadc-parliamentary-forum-mission-interim-statement.
[50] Bjornlund, Beyond Free and Fair, 195.
[51] International IDEA, Code of Conduct for Ethical and Professional Observation of Elections (Stockholm: International IDEA, 1997).
[52] Carter Center, Building Consensus on Principles for International Election Observation (Atlanta: The Carter Center, 2006), 4-7, http://www.cartercenter.org/documents/CC%20Elec%20Standards%20G_final.pdf.
