The Pseudo-Democrat's Dilemma: Why Election Observation Became an International Norm
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THE PSEUDO- DEMOCRAT’S DILEMMA THE PSEUDO- DEMOCRAT’S DILEMMA WHY ELECTION OBSERVATION BECAME AN INTERNATIONAL NORM Susan D. Hyde CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON Cornell University Press gratefully acknowledges receipt of a grant from the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, which helped in the publication of this book. The book was also published with the assistance of the Frederick W. Hilles Publication Fund of Yale University. Copyright © 2011 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2011 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hyde, Susan D. The pseudo-democrat’s dilemma : why election observation became an international norm / Susan D. Hyde. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-4966-6 (alk. paper) 1. Election monitoring. 2. Elections—Corrupt practices. 3. Democratization. 4. International relations. I. Title. JF1001.H93 2011 324.6'5—dc22 2010049865 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fi bers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Howard Leichter, Dawn Nowacki, and Elliot Tenofsky, who introduced me to this profession, and David Lake, my mentor CONTENTS List of Figures and Tables ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1 Signaling Democracy and the Norm of Internationally Observed Elections 28 2 Sovereign Leaders and the Decision to Invite Observers 56 3 Democracy-Contingent Benefits 89 4 Does Election Monitoring Matter? 126 5 The Quality of Monitoring and Strategic Manipulation 158 Conclusion: Constrained Leaders and Changing International Expectations 185 Appendixes A. Formalization of Signaling Game 211 B. Codebook 216 Selected Bibliography 225 Index 239 FIGURES AND TABLES Figures I.1. Internationally observed elections, 1960–2006 8 1.1. International observation, election manipulation, and probability of victory 43 2.1. Total number of elections per year, 1960–2006 66 2.2. Diffusion of elections and election observation by region 67 2.3. Regime type in observed elections vs. global average 70 2.4. Elections with pre-election concerns about fraud 71 2.5. Elections held by transitional government 72 2.6. Elections held following suspended elections 72 2.7. First multiparty elections 73 3.1. Changes in democracy-contingent benefi ts over time 94 3.2. Trends in observed elections and foreign aid to government and civil society 108 3.3. Percentage of bilateral offi cial development assistance devoted to democracy assistance 108 3.4. Negative reports, 1975–2005 112 3.5. Bilateral foreign aid to Haiti 118 3.6. Bilateral foreign aid to Togo 122 3.7. Noninviting countries, 2000–2006 123 4.1. Round one vote share for incumbent in monitored vs. unmonitored polling stations 142 x Figures and Tables 5.1. Average number of reported short-term observers per observed election, 1960–2004 167 5.2. Trends in international observation missions 171 Tables 2.1. Observed elections and Cold War alliances, 1962–1988 68 2.2. Observed elections and Cold War alliance patterns, 1989–1994 69 2.3. Binary logit, observed elections 77 2.4. Effects of country characteristics on the probability of inviting observers 80 2.5. Alternative explanations 83 4.1. Armenia round one observer coverage by region 139 4.2. Logistic regression of round two monitoring on background covariates 140 4.3. Effects of observations on vote share for President Robert Kocharian 141 4.4. Logistic regression of assigned-to-treatment group on registered voters 146 4.5. Carter Center observation coverage of villages in Indonesia 148 4.6. Summary statistics for all available village-level variables 149 4.7. Estimated effects of intent to treat on total votes for Megawati 151 4.8. Estimated effect of observers on total votes for Megawati in observed villages 153 5.1. Election manipulation and observer response 168 B.1. Descriptive statistics for table 2.3 221 B.2. Countries included in analysis 222 B.3. Excluded countries by reason for exclusion 223 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Although I did not know it at the time, this book began its life in the fall of 2001 as my fi rst research paper in graduate school. As a result, nearly everyone with whom I have come in professional contact has helped me write this book, and my debts are immense. I have been fortunate to re- ceive numerous sources of institutional support during the research, writ- ing, and rewriting. My research has been made possible by grants and fellowship from the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program, the Institute for Global Confl ict and Cooperation (IGCC) of the Univer- sity of California, and the University of California, San Diego’s School of Social Sciences and Department of Political Science, the University of California’s Washington Center, George Washington University’s Insti- tute for Global and International Studies, Princeton University’s Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance, and the American Political Science Association’s Centennial Center. Yale University, including the Department of Political Science, the MacMillan Center, and the Insti- tution for Social and Policy Studies, provided generous research funds, opportunities to present my research, and most important, time to write. The Carter Center’s Democracy Program gave me numerous opportuni- ties to serve as an international election observer, invited me to spend a summer in their offi ces in Atlanta, and gave me the unique opportunity to work with the organization during the 2004 Indonesian elections, which is refl ected in this book. I received extraordinarily helpful advice at a “book bash” in February 2008, sponsored by Ken Scheve and the Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy at Yale. For traveling to New Haven just for the workshop, I thank David Lake, Jon Pevehouse, Ken Schultz, and Duncan Snidal, all of whom read the entire manuscript and gave me extensive and exceptionally helpful comments, as did Sue Stokes, Bruce xii Acknowledgments Russett, Matt Winters, Nikolay Marinov, Ken Scheve, Karissa Cloward, and Jonathan Monten. I thank my editor at Cornell University Press, Roger Haydon, for his enthusiastic support and excellent comments throughout the process. The book was published with generous assistance from Yale’s MacMillan Cen- ter for International and Area Studies and the Frederick W. Hilles Publi- cation Fund of Yale University. At Yale, my colleague Nikolay Marinov deserves special thanks for many reasons, including working with me for the past fi ve years to produce the NELDA dataset, from which this book draws heavily. The research as- sistants on that project, particularly Shazan Jiwa, Mary Swartz, and Jerry Wei, deserve special thanks for their excellent work. I also thank my col- leagues Chris Blattman, Keith Darden, Alex Debs, Thad Dunning, Don Green, Greg Huber, Stathis Kalyvas, Pierre Landry, Ellen Lust, Jason Lyall, Nuno Monteiro, Susan Rose-Ackerman, Frances Rosenbluth, Bruce Russett, Nicholas Sambanis, Ian Shapiro, Susan Stokes, James Vreeland, and Jessica Weiss. During my year of leave from Yale, my cofellows at Niehaus, Arang Keshavarzian, Heather McKibben, Christina Schneider, Ben Shepherd, Branislav Slantchev, Camber Warren, and Matt Winters were extremely helpful. I also thank Larry Bartels, Sarah Bush, Rafaela Dancygier, Christina Davis, Kosuke Imai, Amaney Jamal, Bob Keohane, Helen Milner, Andy Moravcsik, and Grigore Pop-Eleches for their sup- port and comments on my research. At UCSD, Gary Cox, Kristian Gleditsch, Clark Gibson, Peter Goure- vitch, and Carlos Waisman played a crucial role in helping me start to think about this book. I also thank Karen Ferree, Miles Kahler, Mat McCubbins, Branislav Slantchev, and Phil Roeder, and my colleagues in international relations and comparative politics at UCSD, including Scott Bailey, Kyle Beardsley, Rob Brown, Barak Hoffman, Alejandra Rios-Cázares, Idean Salehyan, and Heather Smith. David Lake was my advisor and remains my mentor and my friend. I cannot thank him enough for all of his help, advice, comments, and support, and hope that I can someday do for someone what he has done for me. Emily Beaulieu, Carew Boulding, David Cunningham, Kathleen Cunningham, Irfan Nooruddin, and Elizabeth Saunders have endured all of the ups and downs with me and helped me work through every (im- portant and unimportant) detail. This project wouldn’t have been half as fun without them. I also thank Michael Barnett, Karisa Cloward, Suzanne Katzenstein, Judith Kelley, Sharon Lean, Tom Legler, Alberto Simpser, Jack Snyder, Zach Zwald, and my collaborators on other research projects: Mike Alvarez, Thad Hall, Emilie Hafner-Burton, and Angel O’Mahony. Acknowledgments xiii In addition, this book benefi ted from the advice, comments, and encour- agement from faculty and graduate students participating in a number of workshops and seminars. The project would not have come to fruition without the assistance of many members of the election observation community. Eric Bjornlund, David Carroll, David Pottie, and Avery Davis-Roberts deserve special thanks and have each had an enormous infl uence on my thinking on the subject. I also thank Glenn Cowan, Anders Erikson, Pat Merloe, Gerald Mitchell, Shelley McConnell, Jennifer McCoy, Vladimir Pran, and many others whom I cannot thank here. My parents and brothers have been a constant source of support. Annie helped me and this book along at a particularly crucial time.