Ian McAllister (ANU)

The expansion of democracy following the collapse of communism in 1989-90 led many to believe that democratic institutions would rapidly take root. However, over the past decade, electoral malpractice has become widespread, casting doubt on democratic consolidation.

This paper examines the causes and consequences of weak electoral integrity in Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine. Using surveys collected since 2000, we show that public perceptions of electoral unfairness have their roots in views of society-wide corruption and in seeing democracy as an ideal, while viewing elections as fair correlates with watching television, showing the importance to the regimes of controlling the media. Views about electoral integrity have a significant impact on electoral participation, but the effect is substantially mediated by popular beliefs about democracy.

Overall, the results suggest that only root and branch reform in the post-communist societies will substantially improve public perceptions of electoral integrity.

Ben Goldsmith (University of Sydney

I present some preliminary statistical analyses of electoral integrity and political violence in non-democratic regimes. The logical pivot of the competing expectations is that, while unfree and manipulated elections might help avoid violence because they help incumbents maintain power, they might also lead to violence because they disenfranchise the opposition. Conversely, free and fair elections threaten incumbents, which might lead to their use of violence against the opposition, while they advantage the opposition by providing the possibility of genuine access to power, thus reducing their temptation to use violence.

The results suggest that electoral malpractice in nondemocratic regimes is associated with less violence. Theoretically, I argue this points to a general model of such elections in which the degree of threat to the incumbent’s hold on power is the main factor in sparking electoral violence in non-democratic regimes. The conditions under which such a relationship might be relevant, provided it holds up to further scrutiny, are of particular interest for my continuing research.

Graeme Gill (University of Sydney)

The demonstrations following the December 2011 legislative election and the poorer performance of United Russia in that election both suggest a potential crisis in the Russian electoral authoritarian regime. Assuming the Russian leadership wishes to stabilize electoral authoritarian rule, how should it go about doing this? The path of increasing electoral competition and decreasing control, which is what much of the demonstration activity has been about, potentially can lead to democratization, and therefore regime change. A safer course for the regime may be reform of United Russia. However analysis of the party’s performance shows that it has not been carrying out the tasks of a dominant party. This reflects the fact that over the past decade it has been essentially an appendage to the personalist rule of Vladimir Putin. However the best chances for the long term stabilization of electoral authoritarianism is for the party to be changed such that it fulfills in a more effective fashion those tasks associated with a dominant party.

Michael Miller (ANU)

Despite the global spread of autocracies with multiparty elections, we know little about what predicts electoral authoritarianism (EA). To fill this gap, I use multinomial logit to simultaneously predict transitions to EA and democracy from non-electoral autocracy between 1946 and 2007. Because autocrats retain power under EA, I argue that EA transitions follow from a strategic calculus that balances incentives to hold elections against the costs of controlling them. As a result, socioeconomic factors that make voters easier to buy off, such as low average income and high inequality, predict EA adoption. In contrast, autocrats lack significant power under democracy, so democratization is predicted by regime weakness, but not socioeconomic conditions. Lastly, I find parallel regional diffusion effects: Democratic neighbors predict democratization and EA neighbors predict EA transition.

Ben Reilly (ANU)

This paper argues that the democratization of East Asia is producing a distinctive form of electoral majoritarianism in the region‘s new democracies.

Larry LeDuc (Toronto University)

This paper uses data in the 6th Wave of the World Values Survey to examine how voters perceive choices on the ballot and whether this matters.

Carolein van Ham (University of Twente)

In the wake of the third and fourth wave of democratization, the number of countries holding regular elections for executive and legislative offices sharply increased: over 85% of the world’s states now select their national leaders through elections. However, while global norms for elections increasingly converged, global practice shows a widely varying “menu of manipulation”. Thus, while most states hold formally democratic elections and commit to international standards for elections, the de facto quality of elections ranges from “free and fair” elections with genuine contestation between parties/candidates to “façade” elections that are marred by manipulation and fraud.

In light of these empirical developments, research on electoral integrity is increasingly relevant. Not only as a way to clarify the fuzzy boundaries between regime types, particularly electoral autocracy and electoral democracy, but also to understand the causes of variation in electoral integrity across regimes and over time. Under what circumstances do formal democratic institutions co-exist with de facto authoritarian practices and, conversely, under what circumstances does holding formally democratic elections initiate a process of increasing electoral integrity?

Rich Frank and Ferran Martinez i Coma
(University of Sydney)

This paper provides an overview of a new dataset—The Perceptions of Electoral Integrity (PEI) data-set—measuring expert perceptions of electoral integrity and presents the preliminary results of the pilot phase. The PEI project is a part of the larger Electoral Integrity Project focused on understanding the correlates of electoral integrity. These new PEI data represent a contribution to the methodological literature on expert surveys as well as to the literature on the causes of electoral integrity and why some elections fail to live up to standards of electoral integrity.

Rodney Smith
(University of Sydney)

Forms of electronic voting are being used or seriously considered in a range of countries throughout the world. Alongside its advantages, electronic voting brings potential challenges to electoral integrity. This paper attempts to identify some of the political factors needed to understand the effects of electronic voting on electoral integrity. The paper identifies the key points in the cycle of elections at which electronic voting can affect electoral integrity. It shows that the worldwide patterns of adoption and abandonment of electronic voting are more complex than is often thought. The trajectory of electronic voting use is not simply one of growth, or one of growing use in new democracies balanced against its abandonment by more established democracies. The paper identifies four broad effects of introducing electronic voting on electoral integrity. These can be summarised as: (i) electronic voting maintaining or improving electoral integrity in countries with already high levels of electoral integrity; (ii) electronic voting reducing electoral integrity in countries with high levels of electoral integrity; (iii) electronic voting improving electoral integrity in countries with low levels of electoral integrity; and (iv) electronic voting reducing electoral integrity in countries with already low levels of electoral integrity. These effects are illustrated using the cases of Switzerland, Ireland, Brazil and Kazakhstan. The paper concludes by identifying some key reasons that electronic voting leads to different electoral integrity outcomes.