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. It proclaimed:
“The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of the
government,” and that “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.”[i]
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,”[ii]
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.[iii]
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.[iv]
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.[v]
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.[vi]
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.”[vii]
The Organization of American States 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.[viii]
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.[ix]
[i]
U.N. General Assembly, Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (New York: United Nations, 1948), art. 21(3).
[ii]
Organization of American States, Charter of the
Organization of American States (Bogota: Organization of American States,
1948-1993), art. 1.
[iv]
Eric C. Bjornlund, Beyond
Free and Fair: Monitoring Elections and Building Democracy (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press,
2004), 54-5.
[v]
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.
[vi]
Yves Beigbeder, International
Monitoring of Plebiscites, Referenda, and National Elections (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1994), 133.
[viii] Hyde,
Pseudo-Democrat’s Dilemma, 97-8.
