Data di Pubblicazione:
2008
Citazione:
Measuring election freeness and fairness / M. Regalia. ((Intervento presentato al 2. convegno Graduate Network Conference tenutosi a Budapest nel 2008.
Abstract:
What constitutes a “free and fair, competitive and recurrent” election? With respect to standards of freeness and fairness, there is still no agreement on suitable criteria. Particularly complex is the use of the expression “free and fair” as indicating a “measurable, verifiable, uniform, and well-established international standard”. Although criteria for declaring an election “free and fair” have been developed in various contexts, it is difficult to establish precise guidelines for assessing elections “quality” and it is even more difficult to translate such theoretical concepts into the reality of election evaluation. Through this paper I will try to remedy these difficulties.
Jørgen Elklit and Andrew Reynolds built a framework to identify levels of electoral governance performance. They find eleven principal areas of concern: legislative framework; electoral management; constituency and polling district demarcation; voter education; voter registration; access to and design of ballot paper (party and candidate nomination and registration); campaign regulation; polling; counting and tabulating the vote; resolving election related complaints, verification of final result and certification; post election procedures. They suggest to evaluate elections assigning a score to each indicator. Building on this framework, in this paper I will offer my own proposal for assessing the quality of an electoral process in cases of internationally observed founding elections, transitional elections, or post-conflict elections. I am interested in these elections because they can be the dividing line between disorder and order, between autocracy and democracy, between conflict and peace. In fact, while it is true that “elections and democracy are not synonymous” (because democracy also requires civil and political rights, an independent press and an active civil society, the rule of law, horizontal and vertical accountability, and civilian control over the military), elections remain an essential part of a democratic government, not only for choosing democratically between candidate running for offices, but as a necessary pre-requisite for strengthening democratic consolidation.
Robert Dahl has described a number of “institutional prerequisites” of democracy among which there are also free and fair, competitive and recurrent elections, but Dahl did not explain what “free and fair” means, he only stated that “elected officials are chosen in frequently and fairly conducted elections in which coercion is comparatively uncommon”. However, free and fair elections require the realization of a number of other preconditions of democracy, that Dahl spelled out: elections cannot be free and fair, competitive and recurrent if not all adult citizens have the right to vote and to run for office, if there is no freedom of speech, assembly, movement, campaign, information and press. In other words, free and fair elections require civil and political rights: without them no election can be called a democratic election. Therefore, guarantees of civil and political liberties in the pre- and post-election environment should take a part of the election observation package. The pre-election period is especially important because it is at this moment that observers should evaluate whether freedoms of voters, parties and candidates provided for in the electoral law and the constitution are guaranteed and whether electoral resources and media access are almost equally distributed among election competitors. The post-election period is also crucial since at this stage observers must assess whether electoral rules on counting and complaints are applied fairly, regularly and impartially. Unfortunately, elections per se, intended a
Tipologia IRIS:
14 - Intervento a convegno non pubblicato
Elenco autori:
M. Regalia
Link alla scheda completa: