Observation, monitoring or supervision
Consolidated reply by the ACE Practitioners' Network. Contributors: Ayman Ayoub, Horacio Boneo, Ilona Tip, Alan Wall, Michael Meadowcroft.
The most widely accepted distinctions between election observation, election monitoring and election supervision refer to the role and the mandate of the different missions in terms of the level of intervention in the electoral process: observers having the smallest mandate, monitors having slightly more extended powers, while supervisors are those with the most extensive mandate.
The mandate of election observers is to gather information and make an informed judgement without interfering in the process.
The mandate of election monitors is to observe the electoral process and to intervene if laws are being violated.
The mandate of election supervisors is to certify the validity of the electoral process.
Different organisations use different definitions for these terms (see some examples below) and in some cases the terms observation and monitoring are used interchangeably without any explicit distinction being made between the two.
The Electoral Observation and Monitoring Missions of the African Union normally decide the scope or mandate of their observation missions based on the findings of an assessment mission. The scope or mandate can include:
- observation, which involves gathering information and making an informed judgement;
- monitoring, which involves the authority to observe an election process and to intervene in that process if relevant laws or standard procedures are being violated or ignored;
- mediation, that is third-party intervention in electoral disputes, directed at assisting disputants to find a mutually acceptable outcomes and solutions to electoral disputes;
- technical assistance, which generally takes the form of technical support and advice to the Electoral Commission;
- supervision and audit, which involves the process of certifying the validity of all or some of the steps in election processes either prior to or after the election has taken place.
According to International IDEA's Code of Conduct: Ethical and Professional Observation of Elections any foreign presence at an election might, in popular usage, be referred to as “observation”. This can however be confusing, as this term has been used to refer to any of the following five different types of activity:
- mediation, which is a form of third-party intervention in disputes, directed at assisting disputants to find a mutually acceptable settlement.
- technical Assistance, which generally takes the form of technical support to the electoral process.
- supervision, which is the process of certifying the validity of all or some of the steps in an election process.
- monitoring, which involves the authority to observe an election process and to intervene in that process if relevant laws or standard procedures are being violated or ignored.
- observation, which involves gathering information and making informed judgements from that information.
According the International IDEA Code of Conduct, supervision and monitoring are sometimes confused with observation because all three activities are based on gathering information regarding an electoral process, and then making judgements about that process, based on the information collected. However, supervision and monitoring are significantly different from observation, for the following reasons:
- Supervisors and/or monitors have much greater authority than observers.
- Supervisors and/or monitors, by virtue of their greater authority, are usually governed by much stricter rules of conduct than those which apply to observers.
The functions of supervisors and monitors could implicate them in the election management process itself.
Supervision by foreigners of an election process has been necessary in some elections, for example, those in Namibia in November 1989 and Bosnia in September 1996. On the other hand, authority to intervene, which is part of the monitoring function, is rarely conferred on foreigners, although it is conferred in some cases on employees of the election management body. For example, the South African election experience in April 1994 demonstrated the importance of domestic monitoring of an election by officials of the electoral administration.
The Central Electoral Commission of Palestine defines election observation as "the process of gathering information related to the electoral process in a systematic way, and the issuing of reports and evaluations on the conduct of electoral processes based on information gathered by the accredited observers without interference in the process itself. Elections observation aims at:
- Detecting any infractions in the electoral process.
- Providing concerned bodies with remarks on the progress of the electoral process and decisions taken.
- Guaranteeing the integrity and neutrality of the electoral process."
The ODIHR handbook Election Observation – A decade of monitoring elections: the people and the practice makes no distinction between observation and monitoring and the Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation and Code of Conduct for International Election Observers makes no explicit distinction between observation, monitoring and supervision and provides no definition of the terms.
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ACE Encyclopaedia: Roles and Rules of International Observers
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Consolidated reply: International vs. Domestic Election Observation
