What is the Electoral Cycle?

The Electoral Cycle is a visual planning and training tool designed to assist development agencies, electoral assistance providers and electoral officials in partner countries to understand the cyclical nature of the various challenges faced in electoral processes. The Electoral Cycle is developed by the European Commission (EC), the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as a response to obstacles to the implementation of long-term assistance in the field of elections and by recognising the principles of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness ^[1].

The electoral cycle appreciates elections as continuous processes rather than isolated events. At the most general level, the electoral cycle is divided in three main periods: the pre-electoral period, the electoral period and the post-electoral period. Notably, the electoral cycle has no fixed starting or ending points, which is also true for the three periods and for the segments within the cycle. In theory, it may be said that one cycle ends when another beings. However, some post-electoral period activities may still be ongoing when activities related to the subsequent electoral cycle commence. Similarly, some segments, such as civic education and support to political parties, cut across the whole cycle and are therefore to be considered ongoing activities throughout all three periods.

Elections are composed of a number of integrated building blocks, with different stakeholders interacting and influencing each other. Electoral components and stakeholders do not stand alone. They are inter-dependent, and therefore the breakdown of one aspect (for example the collapse of a particular system of voter registration) can negatively impact on any other, including on the credibility of the election itself, and thus on the legitimacy of the elected government and the democratisation process of a partner country and its overall development objectives.

The fusion and cross-cutting of electoral related activities and the inter-dependence of the stakeholders highlights the cyclic nature of electoral processes and stress the need for long-term assistance and capacity-building as opposed to short-term event-based electoral assistance.

How can the Electoral Cycle be used?

The electoral cycle supports development agencies and partner countries to plan and implement electoral assistance within the democratic governance framework by thinking ahead 5 to 10 years, rather than reacting to each electoral event as it occurs. In order to achieve this, it is crucial to acknowledge at both the political and operational levels that every time a decision to support an electoral process is made, such a decision entails an overarching involvement and commitment to the democratic evolution of the concerned country far beyond the immediate event to be supported. Any decision to keep offering ad hoc electoral support, while this might still be acceptable at the political level, must be accompanied by the consideration that it will not solve the democracy gap in any partner country, but will instead trigger a more staggered process of development cooperation.

Indeed, the core mistake of past electoral assistance projects did not rest in the provision of ad hoc short term support, but in the belief that such support alone would suffice to ensure the sustainability of the following electoral processes, enduring results in the independence and transparency of the electoral management bodies concerned and the consequent democratic development of the partner country.

The electoral cycle approach is valuable in engaging other stakeholders in the process and providing them with tools to improve their assessment of times and roles for their action. Consequently, financial support should be linked to a longer-term and integrated strategy, which should include the electoral period as one phase of a longer-term democratisation process.

[1] The Paris Declaration (2005) committed the signatories to five principles related to ownership, alignments, harmonization, managing for results and mutual accountability. During the third High-Level Forum meeting in Accra (2008), participants renewed their commitments to help developing countries’ governments formulate and implement their own national development plans, using their own prioritisation, planning and implementation systems whenever possible.