EIP August 2024 Newsletter
PEI Report and Data release, Call for Papers, Dublin ECPR, iEIP Conference Recap, and more!
Perceptions of Electoral Integrity – New Report and Data
The release of PEI 10.0 adds 42 new contests to the PEI dataset. This report explores in more detail eight key contests in 2023: general elections in Zimbabwe, Turkey, Argentina, Nigeria, and Thailand, the presidential election in Egypt, and legislative elections in the Netherlands and Poland. The release of PEI 10 also presents a number of changes to the methodology of aggregating the overall PEI Indices. This follows a move to measure electoral integrity in terms of whether elections empower citizens and deliver democracy. There are now some additional questions in the survey designed to capture whether elections achieve this.
Call for Papers - Democratic Electoral Reform?
Redesigning Elections in Comparative Perspective
Online workshop, 19-21st March 2025
Organised by the Electoral Integrity Project and Westminster Foundation for Democracy
Convenor: Toby S. James (t.s.james@uea.ac.uk)
Election quality varies globally. Addressing concerns about democratic backsliding and improving election quality is a critical policy issue. However, achieving electoral reforms can be challenging. Incumbent governments may resist changing the rules that brought them to power and may instead push for reforms that favor their future electoral success. Electoral reform often competes with other policy priorities like the economy, law and order, or education. Governments may also face accusations of rigging the process, even when proposing beneficial changes.
While academic research often focuses on electoral system reform, the electoral cycle approach highlights the broader scope of laws, institutions, and practices involved.
Open Call for Papers
The Electoral Integrity Project and The Westminster Foundation for Democracy invite paper proposals on the following themes and questions:
Principles underpinning electoral reform
Barriers to democratic, inclusive, transparent, and consensus-oriented reform
Maintaining public trust
Interventions ensuring ‘good’ electoral reform
Case studies of electoral reforms
Proposals are welcome from various disciplines and methodologies, including:
Academic papers: legal analysis, cross-national studies, country case studies
Practitioner presentations: reflections on experiences with electoral reforms
Deadlines
Deadline for paper proposals: 15 September 2024
The Electoral Management Survey is still accepting submissions!
The deadline for the Electoral Management Survey has been extended to the end of August. If you represent an Electoral Management Body - please get in touch for the survey link at electoralintegrity@gmail.com
Going to ECPR in Dublin? Join us at our Electoral Integrity Panels
The European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) and the EIP will be hosting a section on electoral integrity research, focusing on the challenges and variations in the quality of elections globally. Issues include electoral violence, vote rigging, disinformation, and the impact of technology on elections. The section is chaired by Holly Ann Garnett, Toby James, and Leontine Loeber. Key panels cover topics like campaign finance, trust in elections, and safeguarding democracy.
iEIP-2024 - Conference Recap
The Electoral Integrity Project held the 4th Annual online conference during July 8-12 2024.
Elections are crucial to achieving democratic governance. This year’s virtual workshop focussed on the three major components of electoral integrity: electoral justice, participation and contestation.
The event was convened by Holly Ann Garnett (Royal Military College / Queen's University, Canada), Toby James (University of East Anglia, UK), Anna Unger (Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary).
2024 was widely billed as the ‘year of elections’ with 2 billion people headed to the polls. Half way through the year, we asked an expert panel to examine how elections fared in their countries. What were the concerns ahead of election day? Did they come to pass? If not, why? Was electoral misinformation a problem? If so, how? The opening included experts discussing elections in India, Mexico, South Africa, Hungary and the UK.
The workshop featured a roundtable by IFES on EMB interdependence, highlighting challenges to EMB independence amid governmental pressures. It focused on maintaining independence while collaborating with government agencies, a topic often overlooked. The Global Network for Securing Electoral Integrity (GNSEI) shared ongoing efforts and drafted guidelines from consultations with various stakeholders to support EMBs in protecting their autonomy.
Overall the conference included over 300 participants from around the world, sharing research-based ideas and conversations about how to improve electoral integrity.
All sessions are available to watch on the YouTube Channel and on our website:
Congratulations to Rebecca Wagner on Completing Her PhD!
We are pleased to announce that 2023 EIP Fellow, Rebecca Wagner has successfully defended her thesis and completed her PhD.
Rebecca's thesis, titled "The Shrinking of Civic Space in Electoral Processes: Empirical Evidence on Restrictions, Responses, and Electoral Resilience," explores how CSOs respond to autocratization during elections and what factors contribute to their resilience.
Rebecca's research, utilizing a mixed-methods design with a case study of Kyrgyzstan and a global survey of election observers, provides valuable insights into strengthening democracies.
We commend Rebecca for her perseverance and dedication in completing this significant academic milestone.
Congratulations, Dr. Wagner!
New Publications
Carla Luis, Toby S. James and Holly Ann Garnett. 2024. “The Voter Experience Around the World: Lessons for Theory and Practice.” Representation.
James, T. S. (2024). Real Democracy: A Critical Realist Approach to Democracy and Democratic Theory. New Political Science, 1–31.
Bush, S.S., Cottiero, C. & Prather, L. Zombies ahead: Explaining the rise of low-quality election monitoring. Rev Int Organ (2024).
Coming soon!
"Electoral Justice and Electoral Integrity", 2024, Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary Branch of Mexico
Following a successful international forum held on October 2023 the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary Branch of Mexico decided to publish a volume with the latest research and findings on electoral integrity and electoral justice.
With chapters by leading global experts including Sarah Birch, Holly Ann Garnett, Francisco Guerrero, Toby James, Miguel Lara Otaola, Justice Janine Otálora, Irma Mendez and Justice Reyes Rodríguez, this volume not only sheds light on the interlinkages between electoral justice and integrity, but provides sound guidance and tools for tribunals, academics and practitioners for improving access to justice and the defense of citizen's political rights and civil liberties.
Available: Q4, 2024!
From our Partners
The Carter Center
Carter Center Democracy Program staff and associates recently published an original research article, “Changing the rules to win the game again: does presidential term-limit evasion affect measures of electoral integrity?” in the political science subfield journal Democratization. This research paper is the product of original data collection and a multi-year collaboration with lead author, Ian Batista (EIP Junior Fellow 2024), and the Center’s Democracy and Electoral Integrity 2023 Fellow at Emory (co-author Marcella Morris).
The article analyzes an original dataset of 414 presidential terms in 63 African and Latin American countries (1988–2019), using mixed-effects models to investigate each tactic’s effect on different electoral measures, including overall quality perception. The data confirms our theoretical expectations that term-limit evasion through the court mode produces the worst effects on electoral quality, EMB Autonomy, irregularities, intimidation, and voter registry accuracy.
Thank you for being a part of the Electoral Integrity Project community. For more updates, visit our website or follow us on Twitter @ElectIntegrity.