The vast majority of countries now hold elections. But many experience abysmally low turnout rates and others are criticized as fraudulent or manipulated. What should we then conclude about the integrity of elections? What drives public and elite perceptions of elections and how do perceptions of election integrity affect support for democracy?
Advancing Electoral Integrity, edited by Pippa Norris, Richard Frank, and Ferran Martínez i Coma, brings together contributions from scholars and practitioners on the question of electoral integrity: how it is to be measured and how we might foster more legitimate elections in all parts of the world. The result is an intriguing collection. The volume is one in a series of publications emanating from the six-year-long Electoral Integrity Project, spearheaded by Norris and funded by the Australian Research Council with the participation of the University of Sydney, Harvard University, and International IDEA, among other institutions. Alongside the present work, products of this enterprise include a trilogy of books and a special edition of the journal Electoral Studies.
The authors define electoral integrity as “agreed international principles, values and standards of elections applying universally to all countries worldwide throughout the electoral cycle, including during the pre-electoral period, the campaign, and on polling day and its aftermath” (p. 36). This definition will surely become the standard in the literature. It usefully clarifies that elections must be understood to encompass the whole of the electoral process and not just the act of voting, an idea long promoted by domestic (national) election monitors as an integral approach to elections. The definition supports claims of the value of domestic monitors’ ongoing presence throughout an election cycle, in stark contrast with the relatively short stay of international observers. Their definition further asserts, somewhat provocatively, that we can agree upon universal standards for elections grounded in global norms and evaluate their integrity accordingly. While Norris and her colleagues make compelling arguments for their universalizing definition, they will surely be contested on these grounds by critics of neoliberal democracy promotion, such as Alison Ayers (“We All Know a Democracy When We See One,” Policy and Society 27 [September 2008]: 1–13). Ideally, they would do more to address questions about whether there have been fundamental disparities in the creation of international agreements on election standards, such as those that Makai Mutua raises with regard to human rights instruments (“Standard Setting in Human Rights: Critique and Prognosis,” Human Rights Quarterly 29 [no. 3, 2007]: 547–630.)
The chapters comprising the first section of the volume (especially Chaps. 3 and 4) provide a comprehensive snapshot of the state of the field, including an examination of the scope and relative strengths and weaknesses of several relatively new data sets now available to scholars. These include the National Elections Across Democracy and Autocracy (NELDA) data set, the Quality of Elections Database (QED), and Birch's Index of Electoral Malpractice (IEM). There is also a certain amount of grandstanding for the Perception of Election Integrity survey, one component of the larger Electoral Integrity Project, which seems quite promising but which was still in the pilot stage at the time of writing of this volume. The Carter Center's Database of Obligations for Democratic Elections, a compilation of excerpts related to election standards drawn from international legal instruments, is also discussed (Chap. 2).
The volume's greatest strength is its attention to the role of election management bodies (EMBs) in election integrity. Much of the literature in this area focuses on international election monitors, but as Ursula Daxecker and Gerald Schneider point out (pp. 89–90), international monitors are only a part—and sometimes not a very effective part—of the equation that explains quality of elections. Despite growing interest in election management and a trend toward the creation of autonomous public institutions to run elections impartially, there is very little published work that systematically evaluates these critical institutions in comparative perspective. Nicholas Kerr (Chap. 10) and Arturo Maldonado and Mitchell Seligson (Chap. 12), find evidence that the performance of election management bodies affects public perception of electoral integrity in Africa and Latin America. Both chapters, along with the U.S. case study by Thad Hall and Charles Stewart (Chap. 13), suggest that well-administered elections can indeed help diminish the documented gap of trust in elections between supporters of winners and losers (see pp. 200, 242, 262).
Alistair Cook (Chap. 9) employs a quantitative analysis of data from Britain's 2009 European Parliament elections to create an empirical test of whether higher spending by EMBs results in better elections. Cook's findings link spending on registration, in particular, to incremental improvement in election administration, and suggest a practical implication for practitioners: Spend more in problem localities (p. 184).Cook makes a convincing argument about the applicability of his findings to other developed democracies (pp. 178, 181). However, his contention, citing Robert Pastor (“The Role of Electoral Administration in Democratic Transitions,” Democratization 6 [no. 4, 1999]: 1–27), that increased spending on elections should reap even greater gains in developing democracies is questionable. Cost per voter tends to be much higher in transitional and developing democracies, even after second or third transitional elections. (See the Administration and Cost of Elections Project, “Cost of Registration and Elections: How Much Do Elections Cost?” available online at http://aceproject.org/ace-en/focus/core/crb/crb03). Election management bodies have institutional incentives to preserve and expand their own budgets, and these incentives are not always aligned with improving the quality of elections. High expenditures on elections in contentious contests, such as in Nicaragua, Mexico, or Venezuela in recent years, may in fact contribute to voter disillusionment, particularly where the impartiality of the EMB is in question (on this problem, Antonio Ugues, Chap. 7, provides a valuable contribution).
In contrast to the attention lavished on EMBs, the volume gives relatively little space to consideration of the role of organized civil society, including domestic (national) election observers, now present in more than 60 countries, and political party observers. These types of actors, too, play a role in election integrity, often in conjunction with election management bodies. They should also be included in the electoral integrity research agenda. Finally, although the chapters do speak to one another, drawing links across the different contributions in the volume, some sections in the earlier chapters are repetitive, as multiple authors reprise discussions about the rise of hybrid regimes and electoral autocracies and the limitations of international monitors. In addition, there is perhaps too much emphasis in the first few chapters on the potential contributions of data sets and resources that were not complete or fully tested at the time of editing.
The most compelling question raised by the volume is whether electoral integrity in itself or public perception of electoral integrity is more important for democracy. Although no contribution addressed this issue head-on, the work as a whole leads me to believe it is the latter. Perception drives the public and elite reaction to elections, and in turn such valuable outcomes as peace and the political legitimacy of regimes. In all, for scholars of elections this is a valuable and extremely worthwhile volume.
