What is electoral assistance?

Although firmly footed within the wider domain of democracy assistance efforts, the notion of international electoral assistance has undergone various evolutions and has lent itself to a number of interpretations since the proclamation of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which in Article 21 provides the legal and moral justification for democracy assistance.

Electoral assistance in this context refers to all  initiatives and activities that are intended to improve the quality of electoral processes and institutions in partner countries and to effectively manage all the interactions between donors, EMBs, governments, international organisations, CSOs, political parties and service providers. In this sense, electoral assistance is part of the wider democratic development of the partner country, in accordance with the five key principles of ownership, alignment, harmonisation, managing for results, and mutual accountability that inform the March 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.

Electoral assistance can be defined as the legal, technical and logistic support provided to electoral laws, processes and institutions. It spans a broad spectrum – from the establishment of the legal framework for the administration of elections; inclusive electoral systems and voter registration processes; support to the institutions called to administer and adjudicate upon electoral processes; the provision of financial resources, materials, equipment and expert advice; technical and financial support to civil society engaged in civic and voter education; election observation and media monitoring; to including technical assistance to political parties.

A long-term approach

Elections provide an important entry-point for wider interventions to support democratic governance development, such as the strengthening of civil society, the promotion of human rights (including issues of gender, minorities and indigenous peoples), support to parliaments, media and political party development, reinforcement of the rule of law and justice, and more opportunities for political dialogue and conflict mitigation. Electoral assistance programmes should thus be designed to be broader than the traditional concept of an electoral assistance plan. Such responses need to be developed as part of a longer-term approach addressing what can more appropriately be achieved in the short and long term through a single project. Six clear outputs are discernable with this approach:

• increasing participation in the democratic process;

• developing shared democratic values;

• enhancing the integrity and accountability of the process;

• promoting sound electoral management practices;

• efficient use of national resources; and

• development of desirable synergies with other State institutions.

Part of the long-term approach to electoral assistance is the realisation that elections are continuous processes rather than events; this is conceptualised through the Electoral Cycle approach.

Context of electoral assistance

Electoral assistance takes place in a variety of different circumstances. The scope of technical and financial assistance depends on the type of election (e.g. national or sub-national, presidential, parliamentary or local); the environment in which the election takes place (e.g. post-conflict, transition, third or fourth post-transition/post-independence election); and other prevailing conditions (size of electorate, health of the national economy and national funding available for elections, state of voter register and electoral institutions, physical constraints, etc.). The scope and effectiveness of the assistance also depends on the extent to which the political actors in the country are supportive of democratic processes per se so that, for example, they are willing to see a good process as ultimately more important then achieving an outcome that favours them.

Sample elements of electoral assistance projects in transitional environments:

• Constitutional/legal reform
• Capacity-building of political parties
• Capacity-building of EMB
• Voter registration
• Civic and voter education campaigns
• Setting up electoral dispute mechanisms
• Election security
• Election logistics and infrastructure
• Integration of new technologies
• Media and elections

Hastily planned, poorly designed elections in post-conflict or newly created states may actually exacerbate the problems they are intended to help address. Careful attention needs to be paid to the timing and conduct of post-conflict elections, along with the important factors of building strong democratic institutions, forming long-lasting relationships with civil society and strengthening political parties. Working with political parties in this context may be especially difficult, given that some parties may be converted from armed movements and, therefore, have members that in the past were members of militia groups with no tradition of democratic practices. Getting these actors to accept the rules of the democratic game is crucial and represents a key challenge of this work.

The challenges of electoral assistance has been identified and acted upon by several important actors within the international community, most notably the European Commission and the UNDP through the creation of the EC-UNDP Joint Task Force on Effective Electoral Assistance.

Read more about the history, context and future of Electoral Assistance in the ACE Focus on Effective Electoral Assistance.