When an election defeat results not in a peaceful transition of power, but rather in riots, a coup, or the refusal of an incumbent to step down, and when a political party uses smear tactics, personal intimidation, or other dirty tricks as its prevailing campaign tactics, the issue is not whether ordinary citizens understand democracy but whether their leaders do. Voter education, as well as civic education, is almost always aimed at ordinary people. The assumption is that they have to learn to be democratic, to vote, to elect leaders, to understand how political processes work, about their civic responsibility and about governance.
Far less is said about whether those who wield political power understand the tenets of democracy and are willing to abide by them. Little is said about what these leaders might need to learn once they are elected and what they may take for granted but still not know about how to represent their constituencies, about how to govern, about democratic decision-making, and about their constitutional rights and responsibilities.
Leaders are a High Impact Force
In addition to the importance of leadership education in support of democracy, there is the added advantage that leaders are a high impact group. Changing their behaviour, attitudes, and knowledge level can have profound effects on their followers and on the messages they communicate to them.
A variety of leadership groups can be identified and programmes developed both during elections and between elections. In countries where leadership is imbued with mythical overtones and is considered hereditary, such programmes may be particularly important and also highly politicized.
Community leaders, whether appointed, elected, ordained, or born, are an obvious starting point. In addition to their own educational needs, they also provide access to the communities they represent. Traditional leaders have a relationship of allegiance with their communities that makes it very difficult to do any educational activity without obtaining at least tacit support from them.
In short, providing leadership training to political, traditional, or community leaders, developing relationships of trust, providing them with information useful to their constituents, and providing them with opportunities for input, will only increase their sense of ownership in voter education programmes, thereby increasing the likelihood of success.
Finding Educational Opportunities
Within the political life of the country, elected officials at local, regional, or national levels often get onto a treadmill that makes it extremely difficult for them to educate themselves or to initiate educational programmes for themselves, their colleagues, party caucuses or parliamentary committees. Nevertheless, there is an increasing trend toward orientation and training programmes endorsed or organised by political parties and the institutions to which they are elected.
Areas of Training
Political party leadership training will always have two components that educators may find difficult to separate. The first is the need to compete successfully in elections and to ensure that they have a comparative advantage over other parties. The second is a concept which is often referred to as loyal opposition, i.e., both parties in power and out of power should have an incentive to ensure the legitimacy of the electoral outcome and of governing institutions and will need to work collaboratively toward this end.
Programmes of training for party election agents, for example, have been successfully conducted across party lines. Information programmes, that ensure that all party officials have the same understanding of election regulations and voting procedures and understand their obligation to comply with the law or be subject to fines and other penalties, have also been successful. These activities do more than pass on information about elections: they develop collaboration and trust between competitors and establish relationships between leaders that are necessary when conflicts arise. Finally, such programs ensure that there is a large group of well-informed leaders who are able to communicate information about the elections at the same time as they are involved in competing for power.
Election authorities should ensure that briefings cover:
- the electoral code or all pieces of legislation governing the election
- pertinent election regulations
- codes of conduct
- roles, rights, and responsibilities of contestants and their agents
- arrangements being made for voting, counting, tabulation and determination of results, and security
- complaint and adjudication procedures and;
- role of the election authority
They may also encourage the development of more general democratic education for political leaders dealing with matters of democratic culture, the role of opposition, and the particular transfer of power arrangements that will follow an election, especially a founding election. Such courses may be offered by agencies other than the election authority, but the authority may initiate them and remain involved.
