This chapter draws together the main lessons learned from the evidence examined in this book, as well as outlining a range of strategic interventions that could help to strengthen electoral integrity. There is no single “one size fits all” solution to the problems that have been described, but nevertheless there are some remedies that could be attempted in every case under comparison. What remains to be determined – which is the task confronting the final volume in this planned trilogy – is the effectiveness of each of these measures and thus which types of reforms should be prioritized on the policy agenda.

Understanding Why Elections Fail

Damaging consequences arise from malpractices such as gerrymandering and malapportionment of district boundaries, lack of a level playing field in money and media access during the campaign, or stuffing ballot boxes and vote buying on polling day. The previous volume in this series demonstrated that such practices violate basic political rights and fundamental freedoms, weaken the accountability of elected officials, erode public faith in the electoral process, and catalyze street protests, social conflict, and regime instability. Several mainstream schools of thought have long dominated the extensive literature seeking to explain processes of democratization, and these arguments can be extended and applied to understanding electoral flaws and failures. Thus structural, international and institutional theories are reviewed and tested against the empirical evidence in this study, in the attempt to generate a more comprehensive theoretical framework that has the capacity to account for the complex phenomena of electoral integrity and malpractice.

The oldest tradition in political sociology, based upon modernization theories, emphasizes the constraints arising from fixed structural conditions that have long been thought to lie at the heart of processes of democratization. This approach focuses upon the challenges of holding elections meeting international standards in some of the world's ethnically divided societies with years of civil war, in developing countries with inequality, poverty, and illiteracy, and in oil-rich rentier states afflicted by the “resource curse.” Risks of contentious elections held under these conditions can undermine confidence in the fairness and impartiality of electoral authorities, as well as damaging citizen's faith in democracy.