Measuring the formal independence of electoral governance

Abstract

In numerous countries over the past two decades, the independence of electoral management bodies (EMBs) has emerged as a crucial and contentious issues of democratization. Often inter-party conflicts have revolved around the formal rules that govern the appointment of top national election officials. Breaking the almost complete silence comparative politics has kept on issues of electoral governance, the present paper develops an indicator of EMB independence applicable in cross-national large-N research. In its first section, it explicates the “thinness”, but defends the validity, of EMB appointment procedures as indicators of EMB independence. In its second section, it develops its operational proposal. To read appointment rules as measures of EMB independence from governmental control, it argues, we have to take into account prevailing structures of political alignment. We have to complement our knowledge of legal rules with information about election results and party-systemic structures. The result is a dichotomous measure of institutional independence that nevertheless recognizes various modes of independence: the control of EMB composition by judicial actors, civic associations, or opposition parties. It also includes the possibility of power sharing and power dispersion arrangements. In its third and final section, the paper applies the coding procedure to Latin American election commissions since 1980. The resulting picture is one of stable and diverse independence of electoral governance.

En muchos países, como en México, la creación de un organismo electoral independiente constituyó uno de los temas y conflictos cruciales de la transición a la democracia. El presente trabajo desarrolla una propuesta concreta para medir el grado de independencia formal de organismos electorales en el mundo. La propuesta ―innovadora y compleja, pero suficientemente sencilla para alimentar comparaciones con una N grande― se aplica de manera ilustrativa a varios países de América Latina (de 1980 a 2000).