Most people who follow world politics are used to hearing about international election monitors, who work through intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations (UN) or non-governmental organizations like the U.S.-based Carter Center, in order to ensure that elections are free and fair. Through their efforts, these monitors provide valuable information for journalists and policy makers alike. They help donor governments determine whether countries are meeting requirements for democratic governance, they inform investors (who care about stability), and they provide valuable information to human rights activists working to ensure that citizens have a meaningful voice in government. International election monitoring was not always so prevalent, however. At first it was mostly associated with the UN activity in non-sovereign territories. With the end of the Cold War, however, the practice has skyrocketed and countries and organizations spend vast resources to send observer teams to elections worldwide. Enthusiasm for the practice is broad; many people laud it is as a tool to improve the conduct of elections and build democracy. Critics, however, argue that election monitoring does not really reduce fraud and, worse that it sometimes ends up legitimizing fraudulent elections. Indeed, many important questions remain unanswered: Do monitoring efforts cause governments to reduce fraud? If monitors influence government behavior, why and how does that happen? How often do monitor assessments later turn out to be inaccurate? Is there a common explanation for such errors? Answering these questions require a thorough inquiry into the rise of election monitoring, and into the actions of various monitoring organizations themselves: What explains the level of engagement of international monitors in a given election as well as the conclusions monitoring groups draw about individual elections? Why do some governments still refuse to let in monitors, while other, similarly corrupt governments invite monitors? How do the answers to these questions vary with different monitoring organizations? There is an abundance of case studies of individual elections, particularly personal accounts of election observers, but systematic analyses of international election monitoring are lacking. This study represents an important step toward correcting this shortfall; data are collected and analyzed on the presence and conclusions of monitors since their inception in the mid-1980s. This involves coding of hundreds of reports and primary documents from monitoring organizations. This project improves our understanding of the effects of election monitoring, but all data will be digitally archived and made available to other researchers. These data provides entirely new variables for other research, which involves measures of the components of democracy. This initial project opens up many follow-up questions and opportunities for continued research on questions about the role of elections in democratic transitions and democratic consolidation. There is clearly more to democracy than elections. However, genuine elections are an important human right and an essential component of freedom of expression. By improving understanding of election monitoring, this project will support the spread of individual human rights and help external actors design effective policies and programs to achieve these ends.
