Election-Campaign Law

Susan Hyde, ?Catch Us If You Can: Election Monitoring and International Norm Diffusion?

By Michael Alvarez

Susan Hyde, a co-editor with Thad and I on our Election Fraud book, has just published an interesting and innovative article, “Catch Us If You Can: Election Monitoring and International Norm Diffusion” in the American Journal of Political Science. Here’s the abstract of Susan’s article:

Why has the decision to invite foreign election observers become an international norm? More generally, how do international norms develop in the absence of incentives for cooperation or activism by norm entrepreneurs? Motivated by the case of election observation, I argue that international norms can be generated through a diffusely motivated signaling process. Responding to increased benefits associated with being democratic, international election observation was initiated by democratizing governments as a signal of a government’s commitment to democracy. Increased democracy-contingent benefits gave other ?true-democrats? the incentive to invite observers, resulting in a widespread belief that all true-democrats invite election monitors. Consequently, not inviting observers became an unambiguous signal that a government was not democratizing, giving even pseudo-democrats reason to invite observers and risk a negative report. I evaluate this theory with an original global dataset on elections and election observation, 1960?2006.

Full post as published by Election Updates on February 28, 2011 (boomark / email).