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Electoral Governance MattersExplaining the Quality of Elections in Contemporary Latin AmericaUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The Carter Center and Georgia State University, Atlanta
Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis This article provides a systematic cross-national analysis of the role of electoral administration in explaining acceptable democratic presidential elections in 19 countries in Latin America since the year 1980 or the first pivotal, transitional election. The authors provide two alternative measures of election administration, one focused on the degree of partisanship or professional independence and another on formal—legal institutional independence, as well as on other key factors, to test partial proportional odds-ordered logit models predicting the probability of an acceptable, flawed, or failed electoral process. The results show an important positive role for professional, independent electoral commissions on electoral outcomes in Latin America, controlling for other socioeconomic and political factors; formal-legal independence matters when the rules of the game are likely to be respected. In addition, low-quality elections are found disproportionately where incumbents seek reelection and where victory margins are extremely wide rather than narrow.
Key Words: election administration • electoral governance • democratization • Latin America
This version was published on January
1, 2008 Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1,
73-98 (2008) |
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