Harvard and Sydney Universities
At a time of
growing gloom about prospects for democratization around the world, many still
hope that elections will provide opportunities for gains. Contests in countries
such as Myanmar, Nigeria and Benin provide hope, in different ways, for
progress.
The good
news is that direct elections are used today as the pathway to elected office
in the lower house of parliament in 95% of all sovereign nation-states around
the world (185 out of 193 states).[1]
During the late twentieth-century, popular contests have also proliferated for
presidential, provincial, municipal and local office. This potentially
strengthens the voice of the people and the accountability of their leaders.
But the bad
news is that major challenges remain to strengthen electoral legitimacy and the
quality of free and fair contests in all countries. Too often, multiple serious
technical flaws and violations of political rights are reported. Laws ban
opposition parties. Rival leaders are imprisoned. Voting rights are suppressed.
Electoral registers are inaccurate. Ruling parties dominate the airwaves. Free
speech is muzzled. Thugs threaten voters. Campaigns are awash with money.
Ballot-stuffing fakes the count. Electoral officials favor the government. Dispute
resolution mechanisms are broken. Rigged elections can reinforce the legitimacy
of corrupt and repressive leaders, solidifying their hold on power.
Electoral
malpractices also matter
by deepening public mistrust of electoral authorities, political parties and
parliaments, which, in turn, affects citizen behavior by depressing voter
turnout and catalyzing protest activism.[2] Since
elections are the heart of the representative process, flawed contests damage party competition, democratic governance, and
fundamental human rights.[3]
But how
common are these types of problems? Where do they arise around the world?
New evidence to give insights into this
issue has been gathered by the Electoral Integrity Project. The 2015 annual
report compares the risks of flawed and failed elections, and how far countries
around the world meet international standards. The report gather assessments
from over 2000 experts to evaluate the integrity of all 180 national
parliamentary and presidential contests held between 1 July 2012 to 31 December
2015 in 139 countries worldwide, including 54 national elections held last
year.
To summarize
the evidence, Figure 1 illustrates the contrasts in the overall 100-point PEI
index for all the countries covered in the survey since 2012, divided by global
region. The ranking and map offer a worldwide overview.
The
comparisons highlight that Scandinavia and Western Europe are rated most highly
in overall levels of electoral integrity, not surprisingly given the long
history of democracy in the region. The rankings in PEI worldwide are led by
Scandinavian states -- Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden –which also do well
in most standard indices of the quality of democratic governance. At the same
time, however, contrasts are observed in PEI-4.0 scores even among similar
European Union member states and post-industrial societies; Mediterranean
Europe usually performs less well than Northern Europe. The UK also scores
exceptionally poorly compared with other European societies, with a PEI Index
around 20 points less than the top ranking Scandinavian states.
In the
Americas, even wider disparities can be seen, contrasting the cases of Costa
Rica, Uruguay and Canada, all well rated by experts, compared with the low
ratings for Guatemala, Venezuela, Honduras and particularly Haiti. Overall the
United States ranks 47 worldwide out of all 139 nations under comparison, based
on the 2012 presidential and 2014 Congressional elections, even before the
bitterly divided 2016 campaign, the lowest score for any long-established
democracy.
In
post-Communist Europe, the power-sharing democracies, smaller welfare states,
and mid-level income economies in the Baltics and Central Europe often do well
in the quality of their elections today, including Estonia, Lithuania, and
Slovenia, all scoring higher in the PEI Index than long-established
majoritarian democracies such as India, the US, and UK. At the same time,
Central Eurasia remains the home of several unreconstructed authoritarian
states, which hold multi-party elections to legitimate ruling parties but with
limited human rights, exemplified by the poor PEI scores observed in
Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Belarus.
Asia-Pacific
sees similar wide disparities, with the affluent post-industrial societies of
Australia, South Korea, New Zealand and Japan heading the ratings, as well as
Mongolia, which has made rapid progress in abandoning its Soviet past. Yet
other countries in the region perform far worse in the PEI Index, notably Cambodia,
Malaysia and Bangladesh.
In the
Middle East, Israel and Tunisia are the states holding elections with the
highest integrity, according to the experts, whilst Bahrain, Afghanistan and
Syria rated as having poor elections.
Finally,
Sub-Saharan Africa sees positive scores for electoral integrity in Benin,
Mauritius, Lesotho and South Africa, while unfortunately more than half the
states included in the survey have low scores for integrity, with Burundi,
Equatorial Guinea, and Ethiopia rated at the bottom of the sub-continent – and
some of the lowest ratings around the globe.
What explains the ratings?
Research
suggests that there is no single factor that can explain why countries perform
well or badly when it comes to electoral integrity.[4] Instead the drivers lie in a combination of three types
of conditions:
- Structural constraints; electoral integrity is more challenging in societies with widespread poverty and illiteracy (such as Afghanistan), a legacy of deep-rooted conflict (like Burundi), battling the ‘curse’ of natural resources and state capture (like Equatorial Guinea), and the confronted with a historical legacy inherited from previous regimes and elections within each country;
- International linkage; the quality of elections is also shaped by how far societies are open to the spread of international norms and standards through cosmopolitan communications and membership of regional organizations (such as within the OAS and OSCE), the positive or negative impact of neighboring regional powers, such as South Africa and Russia, and through the provision of international development aid and technical assistance; and,
- Institutional arrangements; electoral integrity also rests upon the power-sharing design of constitutional arrangements, electoral systems, and procedures, providing transparent, fair, inclusive and legitimate rules, as well as the powers, capacity, and ethos of the electoral authorities when managing elections.
Rather than abandoning support for elections, the
international community needs to double down on its investment. Roughly half a
million US dollars of ODA are spent annually on providing electoral assistance.
While many elections are indeed deeply flawed today, the international community
needs to work more effectively if there is to be any hope of further progress
in human rights and democracy.
[1] Independent nation-states without de jure direct elections for the lower
or single house of the national parliament specified in the constitution
include Saudi Arabia, Brunei Darussalam, UAE, Qatar, and China. In addition,
South Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia lack de
facto direct elections for parliament, due to transitional constitutions.
Direct elections have also been temporarily suspended in Thailand.
[2] Pippa Norris.
2014. Why Electoral Integrity Matters.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
[3] Thomas Edward
Flores and Irfan Nooruddin. 2016. Elections
in Hard Times: Building Stronger Democracies in the 21st Century. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
[4] Pippa Norris.
2015. Why Elections Fail. NY:
Cambridge University Press.
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