When International Meets Domestic: Monitors, NGOs, and Election Quality

• In Event: Poster Session: International Collaboration

Abstract

Since 1990s, international election monitoring has proliferated to improve election quality and promote democracy around the world. While scholars have examined various questions around international monitors, including their effects on the quality of election, little attention has given to how they influence the election quality in relation to domestic factors. In fact, few studies have focused on the interaction between the monitors and domestic actors and even fewer studies have examined it at the empirical level. This leaves a large hole in the existing body of literature given that international factors usually have effects on domestic politics indirectly through various channels rather than directly and independently.
In this study, I explore the effects of international election monitors on the quality of elections by incorporating the transnational advocacy networks theory. Drawing on the insight that election assessment shares common features with the ‘naming and shaming’ strategies employed by transnational advocacy networks, I focus on the interaction between international election monitors and domestic NGOs that promote democracy. I argue that international monitors will be more likely to increase the quality of elections when they are coupled with democracy promotion efforts by domestic NGOs, while they will be likely to have no effects without them. I test my argument with a multi-methods approach, including an illustrative case study and quantitative analysis using data on 159 parliamentary and presidential elections in 38 countries between 1990 and 2018. The result largely supports my expectation that international election monitors have conditional effects on election quality. The finding has important implications for understanding the effect mechanism of international monitors in electoral authoritarian regimes.

Author

• Soyeon Park, Michigan State University