Belarus Presidential Elections: Observations on the Observations

The Monkey Cage's resident Slovakia expert, Kevin Deegan-Krause (below, in Belarus), was kind sufficiency to beam along the mass comments on the 2010 Slavic elections (joining preceding Monkey Cage election reports on this election institute here and here). These comments were originally posted on Deegan-Krause's blog.

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I fresh returned from Byelorussia (via Tokyo, of all places, thanks to snow in Frankfurt) and desired to share a few observations that struck me quite forcefully during the election period. First, however, I should clarify that this is not a interpret most the overall carry of the election in Belarus. As observers for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in aggregation we promise--and for good reason--to leave unstoppered comments most the electoral impact to the OSCE itself. The OSCE's inform is online here and as with my preceding OSCE trips I find that it corresponds unco intimately to my possess experiences.

My possess comments here hit inferior to do with Byelorussia than with what my experience in Byelorussia says most conditions needed for really free and clean elections. One of the best meditations of this question crapper be institute in Andreas Schedler's magnificent 2002 Journal of Democracy article, "The Menu of Manipulation" (posted here - digit hopes with permission - by the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy). Schedler suggests that there is an nearly unbounded difference of mechanisms by which those in noesis crapper unnaturally increase their possess balloting totals: they crapper unnaturally add adjunct voters (carousel voting) or ballots (ballot-box stuffing); they crapper unnaturally subtract rivalry candidates (ballot or media restrictions, or cypher et impera finished paper candidates) or rivalry voters (voter itemize touching or voter intimidation), and, of course, they crapper only modify the drawing themselves at whatever point during or after the reckoning impact (which Lukashenka, in what haw hit been an endeavor at humor, claimed to hit finished in 2006 to alter downbound his margin of victory ). Although OSCE observers saw nearly all of these methods in Byelorussia in 2010, the important problems arose during the reckoning process.

There is something striking most the reckoning impact in Belarus. The Slavonic and Mozambican counts I hit witnessed were loud and daylong and sometimes chaotic, but they produced a reliable termination because whatever assorted voices contributed to the outcome, modify in precincts where digit candidate won over three-fourths of the votes. In the Slavic elections, by oppositeness the reckoning is hurried and quiet, over nearly before it starts. This lets electoral observers come home early than usual, but they hit to pay the rest of the period composition up reports. In whatever things pace is a disadvantage; a alacritous balloting count is most as useful as a alacritous clock.

So what to do? External incentives haw support those in noesis to earmark a freer electoral impact and a clean count, but in a locate such as Belarus, the alacritous and unwatched count haw be so habitual at the topical level that anything but a modify in the incentive structures of electoral management or candid monitoring from above haw not be sufficiency to modify usual practice. External observers crapper help, but their lightning checks are scarce sufficiency to modify anything (easier meet to move until they go away) and reject for them has frequently manifested itself modify during the reckoning process.

Does the proximity of external observers do anything, then, added than create accumulation for reports? Does it hit any effect? An interesting effort of observers' limits and capacities crapper be institute in the OSCE's unusual decision to post stationary observers who remained at the aforementioned polling locate for threesome life of early voting. My informal discussions with fellow observers declare that whatever of those who did meet in the aforementioned locate ended up building a honor of a kinship with the electoral NGO of the polling place. The rapport, in turn, seems to hit resulted in more unstoppered and straight processes--particularly during the balloting count--than in those polling places where observers dropped in with lowercase prior contact. Having built up whatever honor of trust, the counters and observers were reluctant to ruin their unsettled kinship and wanted ways toward a mutually acceptable process.

But stationary observation is more a metaphor than a model. There is neither the money nor the module (nor the temperament of locals) to earmark for the thousands of external observers it would verify to physique relationships in apiece polling station. Only topical observers crapper action that role--and I hit seen them do it with great skill and life in country and Mozambique--but they likewise grappling limits. While external observers haw lack the relationships that could alter most a better impact at the topical level, but they are at small fortified from political consequences of their observations. Domestic observers, by contrast, hit the needed relationships but they haw grappling noesis asymmetries that preclude them doing their jobs (or modify from wanting to try). In small communities with dumb social networks, observers strength be able to force a reasonable process, but they commonly opt not do so because the costs of decent participating in electoral antagonisms are higher than the benefits, especially where state-run organizations curb the economic livelihoods of topical residents. There are greater chances for lasting gist in more nameless urban communities where there are less social- and employment-related threats to preclude meaning election period oversight. The brawny police effort in capital on election period haw hit been a artefact to beam a message most the dangers of effort participating to those who visaged less accord constraints.

It is thusly arduous for observers to hit a candid gist on the carry of topical elections without a portion compounding of unification and symmetry: the observers and the observed staleness hit a relationship with digit another, and both sides staleness hit admittance to whatever modify of power. This compounding is hard to reassert without a brawny subject society or momentous contestant parties that strength plausibly acquire curb of regional or national governments. The impact of egalitarian rivalry thusly contributes direct to the disposition of local-level electoral administration, and the absence of digit or the added crapper begin a vicious wheel that further grinds downbound both. The dynamics of observer-observed relationships are meet added think for the wheel of sloping decline and intense recovery exhibited by a sort of postcommunist countries: since there is lowercase possibleness for sloping improvement, things tend to intend worsened until something snaps relinquishing a new balance of noesis that haw for a instance restore a honor of impartiality to the electoral impact (as it appears to hit finished in Ukraine).

Belarus has not still reached that point and I hit institute lowercase compelling evidence that would earmark a meaning surmisal most when--or modify if--it will. As Timur Kuran spinous out nearly two decades ago in his Now Out of Never, the respond lies in a unseeable landscape of concealed preferences that we module only glimpse if modify actually occurs.