Challenging the Norm? International Election Accompaniment in Nicaragua and Venezuela
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CHALLENGING THE NORM? INTERNATIONAL ELECTION ACCOMPANIMENT IN NICARAGUA AND VENEZUELA
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Shelley McConnell, St. Lawrence University Jennifer McCoy, Georgia State University Michael McCarthy, Johns Hopkins University SAIS [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Abstract
International election monitoring has been touted as a regional norm in the Western hemisphere, but recent reforms in Venezuela and Nicaragua substituted a diminished international role of electoral accompaniment. This article traces the initial acceptance and later limitation of international election monitoring in those countries to explore whether the change constitutes norm localization or norm defection. It concludes that the norm is not as well institutionalized in the hemisphere as conventionally thought, and that models need to assess together national and international monitoring capacities.
Keywords: Norm, election, observation, Nicaragua, Venezuela
1 Between 1990 and 2001, the emergence of a new international election monitoring norm (IEM) seemed to be accepted in the Western hemisphere. 1 The norm emerged as the practice of monitoring by international organizations to provide impartial third-party guarantees and confidence in situations of deep distrust, particularly those arising from transitions from authoritarian governments or from civil wars.2 The concept included the expectation that those observers would have unimpeded access to election authorities and all aspects of the process, and would report objectively on the process.
The practice was extended by some states to continue to invite international observer missions beyond the transitional period simply to demonstrate their democratic credentials, and adopted by others when established democracies began to experience serious distrust or violence.
Recently, however, two countries where the IEM norm appeared to be well established – Venezuela and Nicaragua – have departed from that framework, eschewing international monitoring of controversial elections and opting instead for international accompaniment. Nicaragua and Venezuela each invited comprehensive international election monitoring missions for successive elections (four national elections 1990-2006 for Nicaragua and six national elections 1998-2006 for Venezuela). Nonetheless, the
1 For purposes of this article we are not distinguishing between observation and monitoring. 2 As understood here, norms are “shared expectations about appropriate behavior held by a collectivity of actors.”(Checkel 1999: 83) They establish “standards of behavior defined in terms of rights and obligations.” (Krasner 1983: 3) For a norm to have effect, it need not be so binding as to carry sanctions or so fully consolidated as to enjoy widespread acceptance. Instead, it must be upheld by a collectivity of international actors—states, international organizations, and international Non-Governmental Organizations.
2 electoral management bodies (EMBs) in Venezuela and Nicaragua implemented a major change after their 2006 national elections by limiting the role for international groups to a new role of electoral accompaniment.3 Election accompaniment entails a more symbolic presence of international witnesses whose primary role is to lend gravitas to an important occasion but not judge election quality or voice criticism of election administration, and it is focused largely on election day proceedings. By contrast, election monitoring entails a comprehensive and systematic collection of information throughout the election cycle in which the goal is to assess electoral administration at every phase in order to encourage advance remedy of problems that could reduce the quality of the election, and ultimately to arrive at credible conclusions about the process as a whole and recommendations for the future, and make them public.
Progress toward institutionalization of international election observation as the norm in Latin America must be reassessed in light of these cases. Should the new regulations in Nicaragua and Venezuela be understood as defection from and non- compliance with the international election monitoring norm that is posited to be operative in the Western hemisphere? Or do they represent an example of norm localization in which sovereign pushback adapts the norm to a framework asserting nationalist identity or democratic maturity?
International Election Monitoring as a Norm
As part of the Esquipulas peace agreements signed by the Central American countries, the government of Nicaragua invited international observers to monitor its
3 For more extensive analyses of the shift to electoral accompaniment and the accompanying electoral crises in these two countries, see McConnell (2013) on Nicaragua and McCarthy and McCoy (2013) on Venezuela.
3 1990 electoral process from start to finish without impediment. The Organization of
American States (OAS), United Nations (UN), and The Carter Center collaborated in that extensive international election monitoring effort and helped assure that all parties found the conditions sufficient to participate despite Nicaragua’s extreme poverty and ongoing civil war. Through monitoring of electoral preparations and mediation between distrusting actors to resolve disputes throughout the process, international observer missions helped the election process stay on track despite the end of the government’s unilateral ceasefire and tensions generated by the US invasion of Panama. In a vote that riveted the attention of the global media, opposition candidate Violeta Chamorro won an upset victory that was accepted by the governing Sandinista National Liberation Front party and hailed internationally as cementing Nicaragua’s transition to democracy
(McConnell 2000).
A subsequent undertaking in Haiti would also yield positive results for democracy. Thus it was that the two least developed countries in the Western hemisphere, neither of which had been democratic before, would prove the value of international election monitoring as a means through which the community of democratic nations could build confidence and promote democratic principles and practices in sovereign countries. Soon other countries began inviting international election observers, whose missions in and outside of Latin America refined the modern practice of long- term, comprehensive international election monitoring, developing a toolkit of best practices that included systematic surveys of compliance with voting procedures and the use of statistical measures (so-called “quick counts”) to assist in verification of results.4
4Despite earlier small-scale missions by the OAS and large-scale domestic monitoring efforts in the Philippines and Chile, we are referring here to the development of large-scale, long-term, comprehensive international election monitor ing missions, beginning with Nicaragua in 1990.
4 International Election Monitoring (IEM) became more professional and widespread
(McCoy, Garber, Pastor, 1991; Santa Cruz 2005; Hyde 2011; Kelley 2012).
From 1990 to 2006, in a sample of 1,759 elections in 157 independent states with populations greater than 250,000, nearly 80% of national elections were internationally observed (Hyde 2011: 8). Many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean were among them, and routinely invited the OAS and often others (European Union,
Commonwealth, and NGOs such as The Carter Center, IFES, NDI, and IRI) to send observers to their presidential and legislative elections.
In the Western hemisphere, IEM developed alongside broader mechanisms for the collective defense and promotion of democracy. The 1948 OAS Charter already enshrined member states’ commitment to representative government, but prior to the
1980s it was honored in the breach. Through its Santiago Commitment and Resolution
1080, approved on June 5, 1991, the OAS made good on that commitment by calling for an institutional response in the event of a sudden interruption of the democratic order
(interpreted in practice to mean overthrow of an elected government via a military coup or presidential closure of the legislature). Election monitoring was listed as an OAS tool in the 2001 Inter-American Democratic Charter (IADC), which required that member states hold periodic free and honest elections based on universal suffrage and a secret ballot. Elections that could not be verified as meeting that standard were potential grounds for expulsion from the OAS – the deepest possible sanction that the organization could impose. However, the IADC did not require election-monitoring in member-states and has not expelled any country for problematic elections.5 The United States, Canada,
5 This set the IADC apart from the 1990 Copenhagen Agreement of the Organization of Security and Cooperation of Europe, which created a standing invitation by all member states to observe each other’s elections.http://www.osce.org/ odihr/elections/17165
5 Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay have never invited international observers, an omission that generally has not proven problematic because neither their political parties nor other member states have raised serious concerns about the quality of their electoral processes, with the exception of the 2000 U.S. presidential election.6 With these exceptions, the prevalence of the practice was such that in the Western hemisphere, at least, IEM began to be referenced as a norm (Kelley 2012; Santa Cruz 2005:199; Hyde 2011: 7).
Why did states, and particularly those in Latin America, begin inviting international election monitoring on a wide-spread scale, reformulating the concept of sovereignty by inviting international actors to intrude in the most sovereign of acts – the choosing of a polity’s leaders? Explanations vary from ideational approaches focused on the interaction between normative systemic structures and shifting interests and identities of states (Santa Cruz 2005, Kacowicz 2005, Shaw 2004), to economic utility-maximizing theories of incentives (Hyde 2011, Kelley 2012). Kacowicz (2005) and Shaw (2004) suggest that Latin America has made distinctive contributions to global norms of sovereignty, nonintervention, pacific settlement of disputes, human rights, democracy, and transparency (anti-corruption). Santa Cruz (2005), argues that international election observation originated and developed into a norm in the Western hemisphere because the
“Western Hemisphere Idea” included the concepts of representative government and human rights in the claim to sovereign statehood.
In contrast, Kelley (2012) and Hyde (2011) highlight the incentives provided by powerful donor countries and multilateral banks that use political conditionality to reward and punish electoral behavior. Hyde argues that when states perceive they can increase
6 Chile did not continue international election observation after holding the 1989 plebiscite over Pinochet’s tenure and the historical 1990 elections marking the country’s transition to democracy.
6 their share of international benefits (e.g. foreign aid, investment, tourism, trade, membership in international organizations, legitimacy and prestige) they invite international observers in an effort to send an externally credible signal that the inviting state possesses desirable characteristics that include a commitment to the human right of competitive elections. These motives exist even for governments that intend to engage in some degree of fraud, so conforming to the norm means the government recognizes the norm’s existence but does not necessarily imply acceptance of the norm as legitimate or government willingness to institutionalize the norm in electoral law and administration.
With the increased attention to election practices, in the 21st century those wishing to manipulate electoral outcomes were forced to replace crude fraud, such as ballot box stealing or stuffing, with more sophisticated attempts to manipulate elections by restricting the universe of candidates, affecting the franchise through voter lists, or creating vastly inequitable campaign conditions through corrupt private financing or abuse of state resources. Such governments calculate that the risk of being caught with these harder to detect and measure behaviors is low relative to the benefits of the legitimacy bestowed by an international presence during the elections (Hartlyn and
McCoy, 2006; Kelley, 2012).
The adoption and dissemination of norms is a vast topic that has largely ignored the question of subsequent rejection of norms. Cortell and Davis (2005: 3-25) have shown that national values matter in international norm adoption, and a specific norm may be less likely to be adopted where there is no cultural affinity for it. Amitav Acharya
(2009) emphasizes the reciprocal nature of norm adoption. In his notion of “norm localization” international actors purvey norms in local contexts and local agents reshape
7 those international norms in the process of adopting them. Thus, Acharya employs “norm localization” to describe how local actors reconstruct foreign ideas through discourse, reframing, grafting and cultural selection. That is, norms evolve in the process of being accepted, and come to reflect local content. We are interested in the extension of these issues: At what point does localization of a norm alter it so much that the norm loses function, no longer matching the international pattern that was its genesis or constraining state behavior in the expected direction? When can we say that the norm has been changed to the point of being suborned?
Nicaragua
In 1979, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) overthrew Latin
America’s longest-running dicatorship and set about making a transition to socialism. It thus came as a surprise to many that in 1983 Nicaragua generated a legal framework that permitted pluralist competition for control of the government, and held partially competitive elections in 1984, predictably won by the FSLN and its leader Daniel Ortega.
The United States refused to recognize the results, instead deepening its support for the paramilitary Contras bent on overthrowing the Sandinista government by force of arms.
Six years later, the FSLN accepted its electoral loss and ceded control of the state, under the watchful eyes of the extensive international monitoring effort described above.
International observers were credited with helping bring about the transition to democracy, and their role was made permanent in Nicaraguan electoral law. Subsequent national elections in 1996, 2001 and 2006 were also observed, and the practice was not only accepted but much anticipated. In this sense, international election observation
8 might be considered constitutive for Nicaraguan democracy etched into the very definition of democratic politics, whereas elsewhere it was a regulatory norm (Searle
1995).
The 1996 and 2001 national elections were won by Liberals while the FSLN remained in second place with roughly 40 percent of the vote, and Daniel Ortega retained leadership of the party. His patience paid off in 2006 when the Liberals split and Ortega won the presidency with a plurality. Soon thereafter, unable to achieve a constitutional reform allowing a third term, Ortega appealed to the Supreme Court. In a process fraught with problems the Court decided in 2009 that the constitutional prohibition against immediate re-election and the two-term limit could not be applied to Ortega, making him eligible for re-election in 2011 and in perpetuity.
Fully three-quarters of the Nicaraguan public favored international observation of the 2011 elections (Cinco 2011). FSLN leaders, however, had harbored doubts about election observation ever since their traumatic loss in 1990, and the failure of observers to give credence to FSLN allegations of fraud in the 1996 elections. At a July 2006 anniversary celebration of the Sandinista revolution, Ortega recalled that election, saying it had been “scandalously fraudulent, irregular, corrupt and we denounced it, but our denunciation came to nothing because it was not echoed by the observers”(Pantoja 2006).
Two months later, in September of 2006, Ortega implied observers planned to delegitimize the upcoming November elections to thwart his expected victory. “With all due respect that many members of the OAS and Carter Center observation missions deserve, we have said that we do not believe in observers, we believe in political party pollwatchers to defend the vote,” Ortega said. He continued, “There are observers who
9 are totally interventionist, disrespectful and that exist simply to facilitate or create conditions so that the candidates of capital, of neoliberalism will win and avoid a victory by a force like the Sandinista Front” (El Nuevo Diario 2006).
The FSLN presidential victory in November 2006, together with the party’s dominance of the electoral branch, created an opportunity to translate such anti- observation sentiments into policy. Resistance to observation began in earnest with the
2008 municipal elections, to which the government declined to invite established international observers or accredit credible domestic observer groups. Opposition charges of widespread acts of fraud marred those elections, and in their wake European and US donor countries conditioned aid on improvements in the electoral process.
Instead the Nicaraguan government began to institutionalize new terms for election observation. The election observation regulations for the Atlantic Coast regional elections held in March 2010 were significantly more restrictive than past rules, and in
2011, the CSE began to use the term “accompaniment” in place of “observation”.
President Ortega linked election monitoring to historical US interventionism. “If they want to accompany us they should do so, but we don’t want controllers,” Ortega said in his state of the union speech in January 2011 (La Nación 2013). He went on to recall the
1928 elections, supervised by occupying US Marines and seen by some scholars as the cleanest Nicaragua held in that period. “We are grown up now. We aren’t going to allow a repetition of the history of the elections when Nicaragua was invaded and when Yankee troops came to organize the electoral authorities.” Addressing the plenary session of the
Sao Paulo Forum four months later, Ortega stated even more clearly that he associated international election observation with foreign intervention. “Here in this region and in
10 particular in Nicaragua, the Europeans, the Americans, intercede and they do it through their representatives, among whom in Nicaragua you have to list the interventionist forces of election observers,” (Baca, 2011).
Whereas in past elections observation groups had received clear invitations eight to ten months in advance of the vote, and set up their offices in Managua three to five months in advance, for the November 2011 national elections the Supreme Electoral
Council delayed publication of the regulations for election observation until August 16 of
2011, by which time registration of parties, candidates and voters, as well as verification of polling site assignments, was already concluded. The new regulations radically altered the terms of engagement in ways that substantially reduced the capacity of observers to mount an effective monitoring mission for the remaining election preparations.
Moreover, key elements were internally contradictory, leaving substantial ambiguity in the text. The partisan nature of the election authorities created concern that those gray areas would be interpreted in the most restrictive fashion possible.
Some elements of the 2011 regulations appeared to restrict election observers in ways that contradicted the spirit and sometimes the letter of the Declaration of Principles for International Election Observers, announced at the United Nations in 2005 after extensive collaborative drafting by all the major international election observation agencies, including the OAS, EU and The Carter Center. As noted in a public statement by The Carter Center in September 2011, these contradictions included: The Supreme
Electoral Council would determine the number of delegates that organizations could bring, a calendar on which accompaniment activities could be implemented; and the routes along which both domestic and international observers could travel. International
11 accompaniment organizations would be required to provide a draft copy of any final report to the Foreign Ministry, and reach consensus with the election authorities concerning its publication.
The tone and content of the regulations produced consternation among international observers as they sought to determine whether and how they could credibly monitor the elections under such conditions, but the FSLN government very much wanted at least some of them to do so. Three days after the regulations emerged, the
Nicaraguan government addressed the concerns that had been voiced publicly by The
Carter Center and behind closed doors by other international observer groups, and sought to persuade observers to come, though without changing the stated terms and in oratory that was none too reassuring. In a nationally televised speech opening the election campaign, President Ortega said, “Here we are not going to expel anyone for coming to scream and shout four or five times, for coming to slander,” and that it was Nicaraguans who would practice oversight on the elections, though observers “can say what they want.” He specifically addressed The Carter Center, saying it “could come here as it has always done, without limitations.” (Martínes, 2013).
From a legal standpoint the CSE and not the president of the republic was empowered to establish regulations for election observation, and in subsequent days the
CSE would reassure the press that the regulation implied no limitations on observation routes or free speech, and as such there was no need to re-issue the regulation (Picon and
Baca 2011). However, verbal reassurances made to the press could hardly be expected to trump the letter of the law if a conflict emerged between the government and international observers during the process. The Carter Center issued a press statement
12 saying that it could observe under the conditions that had applied in the past, with a suggestion that the CSE replace the 2011 regulations with ones that accurately reflected the absence of limitations that Ortega had claimed as the correct interpretation of the text
(Carter Center 2011). This echoed the demands made by civil society groups in August, as well as the leading business association, which had been rejected by the CSE.
Although informal government communications had tried to persuade The
Carter Center to apply to accompany the elections, the government replied via private letter to make it clear that the regulations would not change (Ministerio Público de
Nicaragua, 2011). Given the late publication of the regulations, logistical challenges it posed, and apparent violation of the Principles for International Election Observers, The
Carter Center decided not to apply for observer credentials (Carter Center 2011). Instead it sent a small study team to learn what they could from well-informed Nicaraguans, and make a record of what occurred (Carter Center 2012). One of the two most experienced domestic observer groups (Ethics and Transparency) also did not apply for credentials, while the second (IPADE) applied but never received an answer from the CSE.
The EU and OAS each negotiated a memorandum of understanding, as has been their custom, through which the Nicaraguan government assured them of conditions adequate to monitor elections, though too late to assess the crucial pre-election stages of the process. The Nicaraguan government’s treatment of IGOs failed to follow through on promises of unimpeded access. The OAS reported that ten of the fifty OAS observers fielded were blocked from entering and observing the selected polling places for the morning hours, and the EU observer mission reported that its personnel, along with poll- watchers of the political parties, had been prevented from effectively observing the
13 summation of the vote tallies in the municipal counting centers subsequent to election day (European Union 2011; Organization of American States 2011).
Despite these obstacles, credible domestic and international observers were able to detect serious irregularities and concluded that the opacity made them unable to verify the election results. The Carter Center found it particularly telling that many of the problems stemmed from the election authorities rather than being remedied by them
(Carter Center 2012).
No party other than the winning FSLN accepted the results, and international reactions were either warm (from the ALBA countries), tepid (from elsewhere in the hemisphere) or downright cool (in Europe and the United States). Nonetheless, Nicaragua paid few international costs. It defended the election rigorously to the OAS Permanent
Council, and the OAS made no public move to censure Nicaragua via the Inter-American
Democratic Charter. The United States hesitated over renewal of property and transparency waivers that Nicaragua needed, and made cuts in its already much-reduced aid, but ultimately did not use its full capacity to punish Nicaragua economically as it had when the Sandinistas were in power during the 1980s (McConnell 2014).
Nicaragua’s reversal of openness toward international election monitoring can be seen as part of its broader regression toward electoral authoritarianism, as evidenced by pacted political institutions, declining rule of law, and erosion of free, fair and honest elections. However, this does not help us sort out cause and effect; no- doubt there is a reinforcing relationship such that becoming authoritarian made Nicaragua reduce electoral accountability and reductions in election accountability made it more
14 authoritarian. Yet if this were simply a matter of authoritarianism, why not just refrain entirely from issuing invitations to credible international election observers?
One answer, that Nicaragua might have wanted to retain foreign aid by complying with international expectations in cosmetic ways, is not satisfactory. That ship had sailed.
After fraud in the 2008 municipal elections and a repetition of key problems in the 2010
Atlantic Coast regional elections, most European donors had already closed up shop, the
United States had made substantial cuts and Nicaragua had switched its aid dependency to Venezuela and Russia whose money came without electoral strings.
More likely is that the government wanted to permit the minimum conditions to be recognized internationally. Nicaragua did not need conditioned aid from the Western donors given the alternatives available to it, but it did need international recognition including by the US and Europe. This would not require a stamp of approval from the international missions, but did require an absence of proof of fraud. In fact, despite the
EU’s strong criticism that the election was so opaque they could not verify the results, no country broke relations or otherwise censured Nicaragua diplomatically.
International election monitoring also has high levels of genuine support among
Nicaraguans, so much so that any politician who bans it outright would expect to pay a price at the polls. A CID-Gallup poll in January of 2011 showed 72% and in May 74% of Nicaraguans disagreed with Daniel Ortega impeding international observation.
Ortega’s attempt to attract the same international monitoring groups who had helped provide domestic confidence and legitimacy in the past, but on his own terms, may have reflected a strategy of playing to the strong anti-imperialist message that resonates with
15 his base while attracting undecided voters by reassuring them that the election would be monitored.
Limiting access to international observers, refusing to change the accompaniment legal regulation, but negotiating on an ad hoc basis with each observer organization allowed the government to frame its stance within the pre-existing Sandinista worlview of Nicaraguan sovereignty under siege, while simultaneously meeting the minimal obligations for low-level compliance with the international norm that would preclude diplomatic censure. At the same time, restrictions on domestic and international oversight preserved the possibility of the government resorting to potentially undectable electoral manipulation if needed, to avoid a repeat of the shock of the 1990 electoral loss.
Venezuela
After forty years of competitive elections managed without international supervision, Venezuelans invited international observers to the 1998 elections. Those elections took place amidst a serious drop in average income, a fragmenting political party system, the rise of independent presidential candidates including Hugo Chávez, the introduction of an automated voting system, and a recently installed electoral authority.
Prior elections had been perceived as manipulated on voting day by officials from the dominant parties practicing ‘acta mata voto’ or ‘the tally sheet kills the vote’. The new professional electoral council thus invited the OAS and The Carter Center to send observer missions for the first time.
16 Under the newly elected Chávez government, political polarization intensified and distrust deepened.7 To add legitimacy to electoral outcomes, the Chávez government continued to invite (and tolerate) election observers through the 2006 presidential elections. The OAS and The Carter Center sent large observer missions to monitor the
1998 presidential elections, the 1999 constitutional referendum (OAS), the 2000 multi- level elections, and the 2004 presidential recall referendum. The OAS and EU also monitored the 2005 National Assembly elections, which were boycotted three days before the vote by the opposition political parties, and they and The Carter Center all observed the 2006 presidential election. Then the invitations stopped.
After 2006, under the argument of national sovereignty, the National Electoral
Council (CNE) replaced the practice of international observation with that of international accompaniment -- inviting high profile “personalities” to witness election- day activities in a program organized and paid for by the CNE. For the 2012 presidential election, the CNE also invited a more independent accompaniment delegation from
UNASUR, the regional integration body Union of South American Nations, and other distinguished guests, to fulfill the role of international accompaniment. This was
UNASUR’s first electoral mission and its 40-member delegation was comprised of election officials from member-states who witnessed election-day activities, as well as participated in some of the pre-election audits. Its Chief of Mission, Carlos “Chacho”
Alvarez, described the role of the mission as not to “supervise” the election but, rather, to learn from it to disseminate the best examples and practices of the election to UNASUR countries (El Universal, September 20, 2012). In general, Alvarez spoke quite highly of
7 The government and the opposition invited a tripartite coalition of the UN, OAS and Carter Center to mediate the po litical conflict following the 2-day coup against Chávez in April 2002.
17 the Venezuelan electoral system. For the April 2013 elections a similar UNASUR mission, with the same chief of mission, accompanied the process. The governing PSUV party and opposition coalition (MUD) also invited international guests who received accreditation from the CNE to accompany the election.
Why did Venezuela buck the international trend and its own experience of the previous eight years and stop inviting international election missions? If Chávez was the
“pseudodemocrat” that many accused him of being, why would the government not continue to invite observers for the international legitimacy that he clearly valued, and simultaneously try to manipulate the outcome in non-obvious ways (following the thesis of Hyde 2011 and Kelley 2012)? Alternatively, if elections were honest and Chávez was confident of winning, why not continue to invite observers to confirm their honesty and bestow legitimacy?
For the government, the concept of electoral accompaniment fits with Chávez’s elaboration of Bolivarianism as an anti-imperialist ideology. In this understanding, institutions such as the Organization of American States and the European Union are part of a ‘Western regime’ marked by dominant powers using such organizations to tutor the rest of the world about democracy (Robledo 2012).
The National Electoral Council made two arguments to explain its decision to modify its concept of international election observation, and concomitantly the concept of sovereignty (McCoy, personal conversations between 2007-2012). The first centered on the issue of reciprocity: if the U.S. and Europe did not invite Latin Americans to observe their elections (which were painstakingly deficient in the U.S. at least), what right did they have to demand that Venezuela invite them to “judge” its political processes?
18 The new concept of “international accompaniment” aimed to create a more reciprocal process. In this model regional organizations such as UNASUR and Uniore, the Union of Inter-American Electoral Organizations, would form accompaniment missions comprised of election officials to witness and learn from each other’s elections, and individuals would be invited to witness the democratic process in Venezuela. None of these would form systematic evaluations of the election processes based on long-term and widespread presence in the country, or issue public reports and recommendations.
The second argument given by election authorities was a change in conditions and a questioning of the necessity of observation: whereas from 1998-2006, political fragmentation and distrust motivated authorities to invite outsiders to help raise confidence in the process, the National Electoral Council had made great strides in rebuilding confidence in the electoral process through greater involvement of political parties and national observer groups, the holding of systematic audits with the party experts, and elaborating a means for citizen verification of the vote on election day
(Carter Center, 2012). Venezuelan authorities argued that they were not ‘like Haiti’ needing international handholding or oversight. Instead, like their neighbors in Chile,
Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, they had demonstrated their capacity to conduct competitive elections with full citizen participation and confidence.
Amidst these developments, the opposition continued to request international observer missions during key national elections. It struck a critical but system-oriented posture. While from 2006-2012 the opposition promoted participation in elections, it did not necessarily accept the government’s argument that elections fulfilled optimal standards.
19 Public opinion polls captured some elements of the changing conditions. In 2012,
Datanálisis reported the CNE as the best rated public institution in terms of its work for the country—67.9 percent rated its performance positive (Datanálisis, Omnibus Sept-Oct,
2012). Nevertheless, positive perceptions were not uniform across political sectors: in a
June 2012 poll, Datanálisis broke down confidence (a different question than evaluation of performance) by political sector and found that of the 54 percent with confidence in the CNE at that time, 87 percent were Chávez supporters and only 2 percent were
Capriles supporters; while of the 38 percent lacking confidence in the CNE, 69 percent were Capriles supporters and only 5 percent were Chávez supporters. Prior to the
October 2012 presidential election, both candidates expressed confidence in the reliability of the voting system, and said before the elections they would respect the results. Still, 72.7% surveyed said the presence of international observers would contribute to the credibility of the results. For this question, 66.7% of the pro-government supporters polled and 82% of the pro-opposition supporters felt this way. (Datanálisis,
Omnibus June-July 2012)
The move away from international observation effectively shifted monitoring responsibilities to national actors. In addition to political party oversight, domestic observer organizations, first appearing in 2000, grew more experienced and professional; political parties negotiated ever-increasing participation in pre- and post- election audits of the automated voting system, as well as providing party pollwatchers on election day;
NGOs played a particularly strong role in monitoring campaign conditions during the
2012 election; and citizens verified their voter registration and participated in election
20 night verification of the paper receipts to compare with the electronic vote tallies in individual precincts beginning in 2006.
A test of the effectiveness of this substitution of national for international monitoring would come in the special Presidential election of April 14, 2013, held to fill the rest of Chávez’ term after his death in March 2013, which turned out to be hotly contested. Challenger Henrique Capriles lost by only 1.5% to interim president Nicolas
Maduro in an election marred by allegations of abuse of state resources, an unlevel playing field, and intimidation on election day. Capriles refused to accept the results unless a complete audit of the votes were carried out – a confusing concept in an election that is completely automated. The CNE proposed an expanded audit that failed to satisfy the opposition. The Capriles campaign filed a case with the Supreme Court. The Court rejected the case on procedural grounds, a highly unusual basis for dismissal in
Venezuelan jurisprudence. The opposition refused to accept Maduro as the legitimate president.
International reactions were swift. The day after the election, the UNASUR electoral accompaniment mission endorsed the results (UNASUR, April 15, 2013).
Governments throughout Latin America and the Caribbean followed suit and recognized the Maduro victory after his proclamation on Monday, April 15. In contrast, OAS
Secretary General José Miguel Insulza called for an audit and full vote recount and offered OAS assistance to carry it out (OAS, April 15, 2013). The United States called for a full recount of the vote and, along with Canada and initially Spain, refrained from recognizing the Maduro victory (White Press Briefing, April 15, 2013; New York Times,
April 17, 2013).
21 This election brings into focus a problem common to new or highly polarized democracies: the degree of discipline required to move from a hot contest to the consensual acceptance of the outcome is extraordinary. Several reinforcement mechanisms can help, including the media, the legal system, academic community, international observers, and messages from foreign governments (Whitehead 2006;
McCoy 2006). In the Venezuelan case, a politicized judiciary and electoral authority, a polarized media, mixed messages from foreign governments, and the absence of comprehensive international observer missions meant that these reinforcement mechanisms were weak or non-existent in 2013. In the same vein, the distrust created by political polarization limited the potential benefits of the country’s national model of party, civil society, and individual citizen oversight.
In this context of weak domestic reinforcement mechanisms, could the presence of comprehensive international observation missions have made a significant difference in the process and the reactions to the outcome? An international observer mission in
2013 is not likely to have made the opposition accept the results or made the CNE repeat the elections. Realistically, an international observer mission might have made, at most, two indirect impacts: modify the political risk calculations of all the main actors by offering an outlet of independent information to counter or validate different claims, and facilitate communication over the conditions before the election and the disputes after.
Repercussions of the Nicaraguan and Venezuelan Elections for Regional and International Norms
22 The two cases of deviation from the international election observation norm explored here can help us improve our approach to studying norms and gauging the strength and scope of the international election observation norm. We find the following:
1. A Western Hemisphere norm of international election monitoring was never
as universal or as institutionalized as conventional wisdom posits.
Scholars of IEM norms, such as Santa Cruz (2005), Hyde (2011) and Kelley
(2012), presume that international election monitoring is “normalized” and point to its continued spread in the first half decade of the 21st century, including the spread to the
“pseudo-democrats” as evidence of its strength. Both Kelley (2012) and Hyde (2011) have argued that the international norm of international election observation became strong enough on a global basis that even “pseudodemocrats”, or those willing to cheat to win elections, will risk inviting observers to “signal” their (false) democratic credentials.
But international observation can be costly to states interested in preserving the option of manipulating elections, and who are caught with negative international observation reports. 8 It also became costly not to invite international missions because the state would then be assumed not to be democratic and suffer potential consequences. That is, in their view, only clearly non-democratic states, or clearly mature democracies do not follow the practice of inviting international election missions in the 21st century. Both gray zone and democratic transitioning states are, according to the literature, expected to hold internationally observed elections.
8 We note that it is also costly to states to invite international missions and receive a negative report from the observer s, as seen in electoral protests and electoral revolutions in the Caucuses, suspended aid in Haiti 1997 and Togo 1993, an d exclusion from international organizations (reinstatement of Honduras to the OAS after the 2009 coup and of Paragua y to UNASUR after the 2012 “express impeachment” were conditioned on elections deemed satisfactory by the respect ive organizations).
23 Yet, the norm was never universalized in the Western Hemisphere, since several major countries have consistently declined to invite OAS or other major international observer missions on the basis of being “established democracies” or without a legal framework to invite (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile and the United States). Likewise, civil society suggestions to make invitations to OAS observer missions an automatic or standing practice, along the lines of the OSCE practice, were never seriously considered by the Permanent Council.
2. An institutionalized norm should have costs of non-compliance; yet there have
been inconsistent and relatively low costs of non-compliance in the Western
Hemisphere.
Hyde (2011) finds that non-compliance with the norm has rarely been tested.
Nevertheless, several recent cases actually do test non-compliance, with varying results.9
The Venezuelan and Nicaraguan cases are prominent among them as they both stopped inviting international observer missions to national elections after 2006. The Venezuelan election council introduced its concept of international accompaniment in its regulations for the 2010 legislative elections, followed by 2012 and 2013 presidential elections, while continuing to allow domestic observation on a restricted basis and almost full political party observation and access. The Nicaraguan election council, on the other hand, not only restricted international missions to accompaniment in its 2011 elections, but also declined to authorize the country’s most experienced and non-partisan national observer organizations to participate at all beginning in 2008 and impeded opposition party pollwatchers from gaining adequate credentials and access.
9 Egypt’s transition since the Arab Spring involved contradictory messages and intermittent limits on election observat ion, and Russia stopped inviting the OSCE from 2005-2011; neither faced serious costs as a result.
24 Nicaragua paid higher costs for its non-compliance, losing some Northern foreign aid as a result of alleged election fraud in its 2008 municipal elections and constitutional crises involving presidential reelection and appointment of election authorities from
2009-2010. However, the change in its international observer regulation in 2011 was not in itself costly: only The Carter Center rejected the invitation; the OAS and EU accepted individually negotiated terms for a short-term observation. The opacity of the 2011 elections, with serious questions of (not provable) manipulation were strongly criticized by the EU accompaniment mission and the Carter Center independent study mission, yet no significant further consequences occurred. In part, this was because donors had already cut significant portions of aid and were loathe to reduce any further humanitarian aid to a poor country. In addition, Nicaragua more than made up for the loss in Northern aid with lucrative investment deals, cheap oil and off-the-books financial resources from
Venezuela, Russia, China and Iran.
In Venezuela, Chávez’ victory in 2012 was immediately accepted by the losing candidate as well as the international community, despite an absence of international election observation. The UNASUR mission did not issue a public report, and The Carter
Center’s study mission report documented serious inequities in terms of access to resources and media that favored the government candidate, as well as other irregularities, but did not question the vote count. In contrast, the closely-contested special election in 2013 was rejected by the losing candidate, and the victorious Maduro government paid some ‘soft legitimacy’ costs. Again the UNASUR accompaniment mission declined to issue a public report and in this sense failed to bolster the claims of the CNE about the absolute validity of the outcome in the wake of the disputed result. At
25 the same time, the emergency UNASUR summit meeting four days after the election both indicated the degree of regional concern over the electoral crisis and potential instability in Venezuela, and generated some questions about the region’s unity on the issue. Its April 18, 2014 declaration recognized Maduro as President, highlighted the
CNE’s April 18 decision to amplify the citizen verification process, made a call for dialogue, and stated that actors should channel their claims through the existing legal framework, starting with the CNE.
Overall, however, in contrast to the potentially serious domestic consequences in terms of polarization and political conflict, the international consequences for the
Venezuelan government were not damaging. All of the governments of the region almost immediately recognized the Maduro victory, and despite initial support to the opposition calls for a vote recount, Canada, Spain and the U.S. continued the same level of diplomatic interchange that they had before the elections. The government was able to contain UNASUR’s reaction, and with oil resources they are a “low leverage” state
(Levitsky and Way, 2010). Foreign investment is likely to be affected by political instability and economic policy uncertainty, but electoral legitimacy is unlikely to affect foreign investment decisions.
3. Motivations and political calculations of governments and individual leaders
differ. Both ideational (constructivist) and rational arguments about
international “benefits” deriving from election monitoring invitations
contribute to the explanation of state approaches to the norm.
26 The differences in the ways in which Nicaragua and Venezuela modified the international election observation norm imply very different needs for the “international benefits” alluded to by Hyde and Kelley as motivators for governments to invite international observer missions, and they do so in a very counter-intuitive fashion.
International legitimacy seemed, at first glance, to be of low import to the Nicaraguan government, despite being a poor country dependent on international aid, loans and trade.
Nicaragua suffered international sanctions after apparent electoral corruption dating back to 2008. In contrast, international legitimacy based on its electoral mandate has always appeared important to the Venezuelan government under Chávez, despite being a resource-rich country not dependent on international aid.
The explanation for these counter-intuitive results may lie in Nicaragua’s “black knight” (Levitsky and Way, 2010) funds from Venezuela and others compensating for the loss of traditional Western aid, as well as the individual-level variable of the Ortegas’ personal trauma after losing the 1990 elections leading them to seek electoral victory at all costs and the resentment from the international acceptance of the problematic 1996 election process. At the same time, the attempts to persuade the OAS, EU, and Carter
Center to mount accompaniment missions despite the new regulations in 2011 reflected the government’s desire to be recognized internationally, even while it did not need conditioned aid from the Western donors. The former , more minimal result, would not require a stamp of approval from the international missions, but did require the absence of proof of fraud.
For Venezuela, electoral legitimacy continued to be important both because of the role of elections in the Bolivarian concept of a majoritarian/participatory democracy (as
27 opposed to representative, liberal concept of democracy) and because of a history of democratic orientations of the population. The government desired international legitimacy but based on its terms of reciprocity and mutual respect. Thus it attempted to develop a model of national rather than international oversight, but continued to invite an international presence and to be extremely sensitive to international perceptions of its electoral processes. The absence of foreign aid and it’s oil wealth meant that Venezuela was not subject to political conditionality for foreign aid, and its experience taught it that foreign investment and trade was not dependent on electoral legitimacy per se, but rather economic policy and juridical certainty, as well as political stability.
Rational choice theorists might attribute Venezuela’s rejection of international monitoring and Nicaragua’s acceptance of it on limited terms as a reflection of
Venezuela’s greater power and the room for maneuver oil buys in the international system. Yet the case studies underscore the power of ideas that constructivists weigh.
Both Venezuela and Nicaragua have put forth an anti-imperialist rationale for the change in the norm, but the arguments differ in logic and tone. Venezuela claims its intent is to regenerate the sovereignty norm in a more “progressive” South-South manner, an argument accepted by UNASUR that is engaged in soft balancing against US hegemony.
The Sandinistas, on the other hand, have fitted international election observation into a pre-existing worldview of Nicaraguan sovereignty under siege. The seeds of that interpretation were planted in 1990 and 1996, and germinated once the FSLN regained control of the government and was positioned to reframe the international election observation norm in a process of norm localization that reads as more defensive than
Venezuela’s. The rule changes also reflect FSLN awareness of power politics and the
28 way that states engage transnational politics. The FSLN sees the election observation norm in tension with older norms of sovereignty and non-intervention that loom large in the Sandinista ideology and lived experience.
4. The concept of “international electoral accompaniment” does not yet
constitute an alternative norm, or even trend within Latin America.
The shift from international observation to international accompaniment does not appear to constitute a trend, even within the ALBA countries. For example, Ecuador and
Bolivia held recent elections inviting traditional OAS election observation missions. The
UNASUR mission to the Ecuadoran election also acted more like a traditional observation mission, publishing public reports and recommendations. Thus, the argument that international election observation missions are today driven by the
Northern countries (and in particular the United States), despite the fact that they actually began as a demand from the governments and societies of Latin America and elsewhere, does not appear to enjoy a consensus even within ALBA.
For South America, UNASUR is competing with the OAS as a regional political organ, though with much less robust promotion and defense of democracy mechanisms.
UNASUR has a democracy clause, but it appears to protect incumbents from coups more than citizens from incumbent abuse of power or other threats to democracy. UNASUR’s new Electoral Council had by early 2014 conducted four election missions: Venezuela in
2012 and 2013, Ecuador and Paraguay in 2013. Nevertheless, the Council bows to the wishes of the country, stating that its missions may be requested by member-states who
29 should determine the reach and objectives of such. Unlike the OAS, with clear methodologies and criteria, UNASUR is still developing its observation practices.
In Venezuela the UNASUR chief of mission made clear its role was to accompany, learn and share experiences, and made no public reports. In Ecuador, the
UNASUR mission gave substantive press statements following the election. In Paraguay, the intent of the mission was to provide inputs to UNASUR as it debated Paraguay’s reinsertion after its suspension in 2012 due to the impeachment of President Lugo. The mission, which was invited by the electoral council but not the government of Paraguay, issued a brief substantive report following its observation. UNASUR may yet develop more robust democracy protection mechanisms, but thus far its deliberations appear to privilege individual member-states’ political interests and desires over constructing universal principles and mechanisms to defend democracy and human rights.
5. Assessing international norm adoption, institutionalization, and defection
requires additional methodological and empirical tools.
Is the shift from international observation to international accompaniment a partial defection that falls short of prohibiting observation and championing old- fashioned sovereignty but nonetheless constitutes non-compliance with the norm as it is commonly understood? Or is it an example of the reciprocal nature of norm adoption in which international actors purvey norms in local contexts and local agents reshape those international norms in the process of adopting them, i.e. norm localization? We run the risk of non-falsification if we assume that every case of non-implementation of a norm represents localization rather than non-compliance. Yet without obvious costs for non-
30 compliance, it may become difficult to distinguish localization from defection. We have attempted to do so by process-tracing of the stream of decisions leading up to the change in national regulations in two cases, but our conclusions are naturally tempered by this limited case set.
We argue above that the shift to international electoral accompaniment in two countries does not provide sufficient evidence to conclude that norm localization is influencing the international norm, in part because the cases cannot be clearly classified.
In order to further determine whether this shift is an example of norm localization or defection, we call for bridging the gap between scholarship on international observation and that on national observation in order to develop models that accommodate both and express the relationship between them. Both Nicaragua and Venezuela abandoned the international observation norm but replaced it with different models, and here the treatment of national observers was telling. Venezuela allowed national observation with some limitations, and virtually unlimited party pollwatching; whereas Nicaragua declined to authorize impartial and professional national observation and in practice limited opposition party pollwatching. In this sense, Venezuela’s adaptation moves closer to a national oversight model arguably assumed by the Southern Cone and North America, along with international democracy promotion aims of strengthening local capacities to monitor their own democracies (Lean, 2011).10 This in principle positive development of
“nationalization” is belied, however, by the fact of continued political polarization in
Venezuela, and partisanship of electoral and judicial authorities that impede the capacity of local compensation mechanisms, especially in conditions of hotly-contested elections
10 Lean (2011) argues that in Latin America since 1988, 24 different civic networks have monitored election processes in 18 countries, though they have not achieved a replacement of international observation.
31 and high distrust (Whitehead 2006; McCoy 2006). As Lean argues, in politically polarized societies, “domestic monitors encounter difficulties in building the credible, nonpartisan reputation that monitoring projects require” (2011:6).
Nicaragua, however, is not attempting to develop a national oversight model.
With extremely weak and politicized institutions and fragmented opposition parties, and severe restrictions on experienced civil society election monitoring organizations,
Nicaragua faces an oversight and accountability gap that has made its democracy very vulnerable. Whatever measures we use for defection from the international norm of observation will need to capture both international and domestic observation because if we measured international observation alone we would conclude that Venezuela has defected but Nicaragua has not, when in fact the reverse may be true.
Throughout our examination of the cases we were reminded that domestic politics matter in determining adherence to international norms, an idea that is not new to the norms literature but which merits further work. Under what conditions are norms not just accepted but institutionalized and absorbed into political culture? It mattered that international observation was so key to Nicaragua’s transition to democracy that many
Nicaraguans cannot imagine an election without it. Nicaragua’s invitation to observers, however circumscribed, may have been a signal to the international community, as Hyde suggests, but of what and to whom? Instead of signaling its democratic credentials to the community of democracies Nicaragua may have been signaling that it no longer intends to be a passive norm-taker in the international community but instead seeks to itself shape norms of democracy based on persistent traditions of pacting and an alternative conception of what constitutes democracy. Another intended audience may have been its
32 ALBA allies, and particularly Venezuela as a generous donor, to whom Nicaragua may have hoped to signal its appropriate place within Latin America’s New Left politics. But we should not discount the FSLN’s need to reassure its own party militants that there would be no repetition of the 1990 debacle.
Although election monitoring in sovereign countries has been practiced for a quarter century, scholarship on it is lagging behind. We still lack a clear articulation of the norm or cluster of norms about election observation. An international presence is widely accepted at the minimum level of sharing experiences through professional bodies witnessing each other’s electoral processes. Beyond that, there is substantial diversity of views on the role of international actors in elections, and of appropriate election observation regulations and practice within the hemisphere, raising the tricky question of just how coherent these need to be in order to speak meaningfully about the existence of a norm at all. To gauge this we need to refine our methods of measuring and explaining norm acceptance, localization, institutionalization, and defection. Scholars and practitioners have begun to catalogue common practices, but there is no agreed upon classification system establishing types of observation nor any sense for how these may be associated with regime types or reflect degrees of adherence to the loosely constructed observation norm.
33
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