D-Minus Elections: The Politics and Norms of International Election Observation

2009 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 765-787 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Kelley
Keyword(s):  
Nongovernmental Organizations ◽  
Organizational Politics ◽  
International Community ◽  
Democracy Promotion ◽  
Member States ◽  
Election Monitoring ◽  
Organizational Norms ◽  
Election Observation

AbstractAs international election monitors have grown active worldwide, their announcements have gained influence. Sometimes, however, they endorse highly flawed elections. Because their leverage rests largely on their credibility, this is puzzling. Understanding the behavior of election monitors is important because they help the international community to evaluate the legitimacy of governments and because their assessments inform the data used by scholars to study democracy. Furthermore, election monitors are also particularly instructive to study because the variety of both intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations that observe elections makes it possible to compare them across many countries and political contexts. This study uses a new dataset of 591 international election-monitoring missions. It shows that despite their official mandate to focus on election norms, monitors do not only consider the elections' quality; their assessments also reflect the interests of their member states or donors as well as other tangential organizational norms. Thus, even when accounting as best as possible for the nature and level of irregularities in an election, monitors' concerns about democracy promotion, violent instability, and organizational politics and preferences are associated with election endorsement. The study also reveals differences in the behavior of intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations and explains why neither can pursue their core objectives single-mindedly.

scholarly journals Dual Effects of Democracy Promotion: Evidence from International Election Observation Data of Myanmar’s General Elections

2020 ◽  
Vol 02 (02) ◽  
pp. 2050012
Author(s):  
Xiang Wu
Keyword(s):  
Good Governance ◽  
Democracy Promotion ◽  
Institution Building ◽  
Observation Data ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
The West ◽  
Election Monitoring ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Election Observation ◽  
Work Done

Since the 1990s, international election observation, as an important way of election monitoring, has become increasingly active on the international stage. By inviting international election observation missions (IEOMs) to conduct election monitoring, the nascent democracies not only hope to promote democracy and enhance its legitimacy, but also tend to reduce international sanctions and improve relations with the West. The international election observation of Myanmar’s two general elections in 2010 and 2015 is an important sample to observe Myanmar’s democratic process and its interaction with the international community. IEOMs in Myanmar have witnessed diverse situations from being rejected to being invited, from being independently observed to participating and from slamming elections to praising them. In the 2015 general elections, IEOMs had an important impact on Myanmar’s democratic transition, but in essence, their limitations were only surrounding the election-related matters. The work done by many international election observation organizations has been limited to the procedural level of democracy, and could not help Myanmar to further the institution-building. General elections in Myanmar are due in 2020. Currently, many IEOMs have traveled to Myanmar for election observation, but it is yet to be decided whether it will contribute to good governance in Myanmar.

The Fifty-Sixth Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 213-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Dennis
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Nongovernmental Organizations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Member States ◽  
Sixth Session ◽  
The United Nations

The fifty-sixth session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights took place in Geneva from March 20 to April 28,2000, under the chairmanship of Ambassador Shambhu Ram Simkhada of Nepal. The delegations of fifty-three member states and ninety-one observer states werejoined by 1760 representatives of 224 nongovernmental organizations. The Commission ultimately adopted one hundred resolutions and decisions, three-fourths of them by consensus.

Experimenting in Democracy Promotion: International Observers and the 2004 Presidential Elections in Indonesia

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 511-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan D. Hyde
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Impact Evaluation ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Democracy Promotion ◽  
Assistance Programs ◽  
Democracy Assistance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Election Monitoring ◽  
Field Experimentation

Randomized field experiments have gained attention within the social sciences and the field of democracy promotion as an influential tool for causal inference and a potentially powerful method of impact evaluation. With an eye toward facilitating field experimentation in democracy promotion, I present the first field-experimental study of international election monitoring, which should be of interest to both practitioners and academics. I discuss field experiments as a promising method for evaluating the effects of democracy assistance programs. Applied to the 2004 presidential elections in Indonesia, the random assignment of international election observers reveals that even though the election was widely regarded as democratic, the presence of observers had a measurable effect on votes cast for the incumbent candidate, indicating that such democracy assistance can influence election quality even in the absence of blatant election-day fraud.

Introduction

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith G. Kelley
Keyword(s):  
Process Monitoring ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Political Process ◽  
International Community ◽  
Election Monitoring

This introductory chapter discusses the credibility of international institutions and the methods the international community uses to promote good domestic governance. It asks about whether international election monitors improve the quality of elections. Given the logistical and political challenges to their efforts to assess elections, skeptics would have plenty of reasons to question claims that monitoring organizations could actually influence the behavior of politicians in any way. Theoretically, monitors may be able to improve elections through several mechanisms. Yet, as early critics noted, international election monitoring organizations are highly complicated actors and monitoring is a complex undertaking. By injecting themselves into the domestic political process, monitoring organizations raise many questions about their conduct and effects and, by extension, about the motivations of the international actors who sponsor them.

R2P in Syria and Myanmar: Norm Violation and Advancement

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-233
Author(s):  
Jenna B. Russo
Keyword(s):  
Security Council ◽  
International Community ◽  
Member States ◽  
Norm Violations ◽  
Norm Violation ◽  
Theoretical Claim ◽  
The Creation

Attempts to intervene in the Syrian and Myanmar crises have been hampered by political deadlock, leading even supporters of R2P to question its continued salience. Yet, upon closer consideration, Member States and other members of the international community have, by and large, upheld their protection responsibilities, via the creation of innovative mechanisms that have been used to bypass Security Council deadlock. Not only have these mechanisms served to uphold R2P in these two cases, they have created alternate pathways to operationalise R2P, thus serving to further advance the norm. The theoretical claim put forth is that norm violations have served as an alternate vehicle for norm advancement, as flagrant norm violations committed by the Syrian and Myanmar governments, as well as by the Security Council, have reminded members of the international community of the costs of failing to protect.

Humanitarian Intervention: Which Way Forward?

2000 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 23-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Caplan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
International Order ◽  
International Community ◽  
National Sovereignty ◽  
Member States ◽  
Political Consensus ◽  
Kosovo War

States have long taken exception to the notion of humanitarian intervention because it threatens to undermine a bedrock principle of international order: national sovereignty. In the case of Kosovo, however, NATO's nineteen member states chose not only to put aside their concerns for national sovereignty in favor of humanitarian considerations, but also to act without UN authorization. This essay examines the ways in which states – European states in particular – are rethinking historic prohibitions against humanitarian intervention in the wake of the Kosovo war. It focuses on two approaches:Efforts to reinterpret international law so as to demonstrate the legitimacy of humanitarian intervention andEfforts to build a political consensus regarding when and how states may use force for humanitarian endsWhile efforts to weaken prohibitions may succeed, thereby facilitating future interventions, resolution of the tension between legitimacy and effectiveness in defense of human rights will continue to elude the international community unless a political consensus can be achieved.

scholarly journals Resisting International Election Observation Through Election Visit Programmes: The Case of Malaysia

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 310-331
Author(s):  
Muhamad Takiyuddin Ismail ◽  
Norazam Mohd Noor
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Aid ◽  
International Norm ◽  
Election Monitoring ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Election Observation

Malaysia has not invited International Election Monitoring Organisations (IEMOs) for any of its general elections (GEs) since 1990 and so is numbered among those states that defy this international norm. Although the elections under the Barisan Nasional (BN) regime displayed a wide variety of manipulative practices, the BN was able, due to its position as a semi-authoritarian nature, its strategic importance and its lack of dependence on foreign aid, to successfully resist demands for the presence of IEMOs. The prospects for IEMOs has been further reduced, since the GE 2013, by the Election Commission’s “election visit programme” (EVP), adopted to compensate for the absence of IEMOs. Following Malaysia’s historic GE 2018, a widespread consensus has developed that though Malaysia should not abandon its own EVP programme, it should readopt this international norm by inviting IEMOs. This is especially needed considering the amateurish state of domestic election monitoring in Malaysia.

scholarly journals Democratic Dawn? Civil Society and Elections in Myanmar 2010-2012

2012 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lidauer
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Transition Process ◽  
International Community ◽  
National Election ◽  
Democratic Regime ◽  
Electoral Process ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Election Observation ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government

While the general elections in Myanmar in November 2010 were widely condemned, both national and international actors approached the by-elections of April 2012 as a political rite-de-passage to improve relations between the government and the opposition inside, and between the former pariah state and the international community outside the country. An undercurrent of the government-led transition process from an authoritarian to a formally more democratic regime was the development of a politically oriented civil society that found ways to engage in the electoral process. This article describes the emerging spaces of election-related civil society activism in the forms of civic and voter education, national election observation, and election-related agency in the media. Noting that, in particular, election observation helps connect civil society to regional and international debates, the paper draws preliminary conclusions about further developments ahead of the general elections in Myanmar expected to take place in 2015.

Election Observation in Zimbabwe

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 26-37
Author(s):  
Sylvester Marumahoko
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Democracy Promotion ◽  
African Union ◽  
Central Tenet ◽  
The World ◽  
Election Observation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Cold War

Election observation is fast emerging as a central tenet of preserving and extending democracy in Africa and other parts of the world. It is also evolving as the flagship of democracy promotion and the best-funded type of democracy-related assistance. Since the end of the Cold War, hundreds of elections held in Africa have been the subject of election observation involving hordes of local, regional, and international observers. The scrutiny comes against the backdrop of the African Union (AU) and membership regional bodies resolving to make election observation a component of all polls conducted in Africa. The article explores the opportunities, challenges, and constraints to election observation in Zimbabwe. The general conclusion of the article is that election observation is crucial for the realisation of democratic polls in Zimbabwe.

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