|
|
|
Email this citationCIAO DATE: 09/02
The Impact of Election Administration on the Legitimacy of Emerging Democracies: A New Research Agenda
Jørgen Elklit and Andrew Reynolds
September 2000
Abstract
In this paper we attempt to push the development of a new subfield of research in the field of democratization and institutional design, which is the relationship between the institutionalization of electoral politics (and in particular the administration of elections) and the emergence of democracy in the developing world. This new avenue of research represents an important advance in the study of causal relationships, which so far has either been completely neglected in the democratization canon or has only been given dramatically insufficient attention.
The paper suggests a framework for the analysis of election management bodies that builds on a close scrutiny of the electoral management system's performance during the 12 steps of the electoral process. This approach obviously leads to discussion of how the formation of policies in the electoral field can benefit from insights gained within the field of policy analysis, in particular within the field of implementation theory.
A pilot study of recent elections in eight sub-Saharan countries (Botswana, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zambia) allows us to conclude that this framework—even though it yet has to be fully utilized—is helpful in coming to grips with the electoral processes in these cases. However, a full test requires more cases and more in-depth data collection than has been possible here.
Full text (PDF format, 44 pages, 420kb)
