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Beyond Free and Fair: Monitoring Elections and Building Democracy

Beyond Free and Fair: Monitoring Elections and Building Democracy by Eric C. Bjornlund

Publisher

Woodrow Wilson Center Press with Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004

ISBN

978-0-8018-8043-3 hardcover; 978-0-8018-8050-5 paper
Beyond Free and Fair: Monitoring Elections and Building Democracy by Eric C. Bjornlund

Overview

Chapters

Reviews

Beyond Free and Fair Elections: Monitoring Elections and Building Democracy draws on worldwide experience since the mid-1980s to evaluate international election monitoring and domestic monitoring, and their contributions to democracy promotion and democratic change. In this book, Eric Bjornlund provides an overview of what election monitoring is, where it comes from, and how it is currently conducted, and he educes general lessons for democracy promotion. Bjornlund reports on actual practice, including case studies of particular election monitoring efforts and the author’s own experience in the field, and on a few previous efforts to synthesize guidelines and lessons learned.

Case studies include Cambodia, Zimbabwe, the Philippines, and Indonesia, with the last especially providing an opportunity to show how domestic monitors can be supported by international monitors, funders, and advisers. Björnlund also devotes a chapter to the influential election monitoring work of former president Jimmy Carter.

The author criticizes the tendency to view elections and election monitoring narrowly rather than as part of broader strategies to build democracy. He makes practical recommendations about how election monitoring should evolve in the future if it is to continue to contribute to genuine democratization.

Eric Bjornlund is a founder and principal of Democracy International, which evaluates and assists democracy and governance programs worldwide. He has also been associate director and Asia director of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. He was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 2000–2001.

About the Author

Eric C. Bjornlund

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