Strengthening Electoral Integrity

Today a general mood of pessimism surrounds Western efforts to strengthen elections and democracy abroad. If elections are often deeply flawed or even broken in many countries around the world, can anything be done to fix them? To counter the prevailing ethos, Pippa Norris presents new evidence for why programs of international electoral assistance work. She evaluates the effectiveness of several practical remedies, including efforts designed to reform electoral laws, strengthen women's representation, build effective electoral management bodies, promote balanced campaign communications, regulate political money, and improve voter registration. Pippa Norris argues that it would be a tragedy to undermine progress by withdrawing from international engagement. Instead, the international community needs to learn the lessons of what works best to strengthen electoral integrity, to focus activities and resources upon the most effective programs, and to innovate after a quarter century of efforts to strengthen electoral integrity.

Part I. Introduction: Does Electoral Assistance Work?: 1. The pragmatic case for electoral assistance; Part II. Evaluating Electoral Assistance: 2. What is electoral assistance?; 3. Evaluating effectiveness; 4. Threats and opportunities facing electoral assistance; Part III. The Strengths and Weaknesses of Electoral Assistance Programs: 5. Reforming electoral laws; 6. Strengthening women's representation; 7. Supporting independent media; 8. Regulating political finance; 9. Improving voter registration; Part IV. Conclusions: Lessons Learned: 10. Making electoral assistance work better.

Pippa Norris is the McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and Laureate Fellow and Professor of Government and International Relations at Sydney University. She is the director of the Electoral Integrity Project. Recent books by this award-winning author include Driving Democracy (Cambridge, 2008), Cosmopolitan Communications (Cambridge, 2009), Democratic Deficit (Cambridge, 2011), Making Democratic Governance Work (Cambridge, 2012), Why Electoral Integrity Matters (Cambridge, 2014), and Why Elections Fail (Cambridge, 2015).