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Making Electoral Assistance Effective

Author: Fabio Bargiacchi et al
Date: 2008
Size: 31 pages (1.03MB)

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Summary

How can development agencies' commitment to move from event-driven to process- and demand-driven electoral assistance be more fully implemented? This report assesses how electoral assistance is delivered on the ground, and examines how the conceptual shift towards process is shaping agencies' priorities. While the importance of long-term institutional strengthening for effective electoral assistance is now widely recognised, greater emphasis on capacity development is needed, both at the development agency and partner country level.

After the end of the Cold War, the importance of supporting the establishment of functioning governance institutions became widely acknowledged as a priority for the creation of more stable and sustainable democracies. Since then, donors have been keen to provide financial support to elections in several countries. Results, however, have been mixed. In political transitions in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, a striking dichotomy emerged in many cases between the provision of apparently successful election assistance and the concomitant failure of recipient states to make progress in the overall democratisation process.

In the aftermath of these interventions, donors began to recognise elections as a 'process' rather than an 'event'. However, the evolution from event-driven support to process and demand-driven support in electoral assistance programmes has been a long one.

• Development agencies initially believed that fast elections would catalyse faster economic and political development.
• Development agencies made their own identification of the needs that should be addressed, although these did not always match the priorities perceived by the partner countries.
• The international community often locked transition countries into an artificial and unsustainable 'democratic development process' steered from outside, not from within.
• Absence of coordination between different bilateral and/or multilateral development agencies resulted in lack of effectiveness and sustainability of the electoral assistance efforts.

Electoral assistance can be defined today as the legal, technical and logistic support provided to electoral laws, processes and institutions. While this 'paradigm shift' in approach has now taken root, there is still considerable work to be done.

• Development agencies should come together at the beginning of every new election cycle and dispatch coordinated electoral needs assessment missions.
• Standard situation toolkits for electoral needs assessments missions could be developed. These could be used in conjunction with stakeholders such as Election Management Bodies, civil society organisations and observers.
• The typical cash flow crisis in the middle of the implementation period could be avoided by linking the disbursements to specific benchmarks and deadlines in the electoral cycle.
• Assistance programmes should adopt the results-based management approach, with indicators agreed by development agencies, implementers and recipients.
• Effective electoral assistance should include greater awareness of the professional development and institutional capacity needs of recipients, rather than focusing solely on training needs for procedures related to a given electoral event.

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Source: Bargiacchi, F. et al., 2008, 'Making Electoral Assistance Effective: From Formal Commitment to Actual Implementation – ACE “Focus on …” Series', ACE Electoral Knowledge Network and Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, Stockholm
Organisation: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, http://www.idea.int/