Getting Away with Foul Play?:The Importance of Formal and Informal Oversight Institutions for Electoral Integrity

摘要

Electoral integrity is increasingly being recognized as an important component of democracy, yet scholars still have limited understanding of the circumstances under which elections are most likely to be free, fair and genuine. This paper posits that effective oversight institutions play a key role in scrutinizing the electoral process and holding those with an interest in the electoral outcome to account. The main insight of this paper is that deficiencies in formal electoral management can be effectively compensated for via one or more other institutional checks: an active and independent judiciary, an active and independent media and/or an active and independent civil society. Flawed elections are most likely to take place when all four checks on electoral conduct fail in key ways. These hypotheses are tested and supported on a cross-national time-series dataset of 1,047 national-level elections held in 156 electoral regimes between 1990 and 2012.