Conceptualizing and Measuring Elections

Since the end of the Cold War, a universal consensus has appeared on the desirability of pluralist democracy and this implied a heavy emphasis on multi-party elections to promote democratization. As a consequence, in the early 1990s several developing countries experienced numerous competitive multiparty elections that marked for various of them a transition from a long period of authoritarian, military or one-party rule to weak democratic government. While countries that undertake later in the 1990s the political transition continued to hold founding elections, in countries that had experienced early regime change, the ending of electoral cycles originated a wave of “second” elections that started the possibility of a democratic consolidation.2 By the middle of the 1990s one of the more striking developments related to this wave of founding and second elections has been the flourishing of an international election observation industry: first in Africa, countries which had suffered decades of civil war started a peace process with multi-party elections and many one-party or military regimes were replaced by governments deriving their mandate from multi-party elections. Donor governments, international organizations and NGOs sent thousands of international elections observers to these countries. For the European Union, for example, “Election observation expresses the EU’s interest and concern in promoting democratic elections within its wider policy of support for democracy, the rule of law and human rights”. “The purpose of an EU Election Observation Missions (EOM) around the world is to provide support for the development of the country’s democratic institutions and procedures, and to assist partner countries in their objective to hold elections of a high standard. In this context the EU EOM will conduct a comprehensive analysis of the electoral process”. Analogous are the purposes of other international (such as the United Nation, the African Union, the Organization of American States, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, etc.) and governmental and non-governmental organizations (Carter Center, International IDEA, IFES, International Republican Institute, National Democratic Institute, etc.). Therefore, the ultimate purpose of any observation mission is to support states in realizing their commitment to hold democratic elections with an eye to democratization. However, to properly do their job, electoral observation missions need to have a clearly established set of rules, models and paradigms with whom to compare the elections they observe. Since there is not even consensus on what “free and fair elections” means, I will try to give, firstly, a verbal definition of this concept, secondly, an operational one and finally I will propose a summarizing index that can be useful to compare elections. Therefore, this paper will be divided in three main parts: the first one will try to find a definition of the concept “free and fair elections”; in the second one 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; finally, in the third one I will propose an summarizing index that can be useful to compare elections. Therefore, this paper will be divided in three main parts: the first one will try to find a definition of the concept “free and fair elections”; in the second one 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; finally, in