Once a mission has issued recommendations
stemming from its observation of an electoral process, it faces the dual
challenge of ensuring that they have an impact on the country’s political
development and of measuring that impact. Formal follow-up activities are hard
to define for donors and to explain to host countries, absorb resources for an
indeterminate period of time, and may lead to few tangible achievements. The
difficulty of maintaining an international presence often results in
responsibility for follow-up being transferred to citizen organizations willing
to and capable of playing an advocacy role. If coordinated carefully, this
entrusts local groups with ownership of their own political process. They
should not feel, however, that they are being pressed to push an external
reform agenda.
Follow-up can take the form of both
monitoring and advocacy, encouraging governments to implement suggested changes
to bring practices into alignment with international standards, as well as
reporting systematically on the status of such efforts. International
treaty-monitoring bodies such as the U.N. Human Rights Committee, which tracks
states’ compliance with the ICCPR, employ mechanisms for domestic and
international NGOs to submit shadow reports containing their findings. These
may influence the treaty body’s assessments. With a more prominent
international profile, treaty bodies’ reports could exert continuous pressure
on states to improve electoral practices even when not in the election-day
spotlight.
Establishing the causal impact of observers’
reports and recommendations on behavioral changes among political actors is
extremely difficult if not impossible. For this reason, most observer groups do
not claim that their intended outcome is altering the way stakeholders act.
Instead, they concentrate on shaping perceptions of national and international
stakeholders. Perceptions are easier to gauge through public and private
statements and opinion polls. Candidates are unlikely to report that they
decided not to engage in fraud or intimidation, for example, because of the
presence of observers or the embarrassment caused by their internationally
syndicated statements. Nevertheless, international observation reports do
sometimes have a direct influence on other states’ policies toward countries
where elections were observed. In Madagascar in 2013, for example, a positive
assessment of presidential elections was an explicit condition for the
country’s re-entry into the international system after four years of isolation.
Following a 2009 coup, sanctions had devastated the country’s economy, and the
African Union suspended its membership. Reports by EISA, the EU, The Carter Center,
and the AU confirmed a peaceful and largely democratic transfer of power in
December 2013, resulting in the lifting of the sanctions and reinstatement of
AU membership.
Determining the degree to which observation
in general improves election quality is difficult also because, as Kelley
(2012:112) states, observers’ decision to monitor a given election is not
random. It depends both on their evaluation of whether a country has high
potential for progress and on authorities’ willingness to host observers. In
other words, “If the anticipated quality of an election influences whether
monitors are present, then monitors may not influence quality at all, but
merely respond to it. That is, monitors may simply go to elections that are
more likely to improve.”[i]
Election observers want to bring about
positive democratic change over the long term, not only deter misconduct for a
single election cycle. Many observer recommendations require time to take
effect. Legal changes can be slow in coming, but transforming the prevailing
political culture, especially in countries with long traditions of repressive
authoritarian rule, is even more gradual and may depend on a generational
shift. Observers frequently monitor elections in a given country multiple
times, giving them the opportunity to evaluate progress. Ultimately, the extent
of observers’ influence does not follow a simple formula: sometimes countries
implement rapid, major improvements; sometimes they advance in limited areas
and not in others; sometimes very gradual change takes effect; and sometimes
promising developments are followed by a backslide to authoritarianism or
disorder. Yet patterns exist in terms of areas of the electoral process most
likely to improve following observation, notably electoral laws, voter lists,
and the efficacy and timeliness of polling procedures (related to training).[ii]
Closer and longer-term tracking of changes
in electoral and political conditions in countries previously observed can help
shape observers’ approach to recommendations and follow-up, as well as their
understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses. The previously mentioned
ACE Database of Recommendations, which compiles recommendations issued by all
major organizations, as well as groups’ collective effort to articulate to whom
their recommendations are targeted, have made this process more systematic and
better suited to a long-range approach to democratic reform.
[i]
Kelley, Monitoring Democracy, 112.
