Suchergebnisse

In 2014 Ukraine conducted two national elections against a backdrop of political upheaval and a separatist conflict in which national minority concerns were voiced by some parties. In the context of the election process, reports by international observers did not reflect discrimination against national minorities as voters or candidates. However, a dearth of candidates campaigning as national minorities or including national minority issues in their platforms was observed, and can be traced to peculiarities of the legal framework that disadvantage smaller and compact political forces. It was observed that candidates of various national minority backgrounds may campaign and win elections, but few declare themselves to be representing the interest of a national minority. This was true for both the proportional and simple majority races during the parliamentary elections, in which only five candidates campaigning as national minority representatives were elected to parliament. Ultimately the main issue for national minorities in Ukraine's political process is not one of discrimination, but the realistic opportunity for robust representation and advocacy of their communities' concerns at the national level.

This article investigates the relationship between international election observation, election fraud, and post-election violence. While international electoral missions could in principle mitigate the potential for violence by deterring election fraud, the ability of international observers to detect manipulation may in fact induce violent uprisings. Serious irregularities documented by international observers provide credible information on election quality, which draws attention to election outcomes and alleviates coordination problems faced by opposition parties and society. When elections are manipulated to deny citizens an opportunity for peaceful contestation and international observers publicize such manipulation, violent interactions between incumbents, opposition parties, and citizens can ensue. Consequently, the author expects that fraudulent elections monitored by international organizations will have an increased potential for subsequent violence. This expectation is evaluated empirically in an analysis of post-election conflict events for African elections in the 1997–2009 period. Using original data on electoral manipulation and reputable international election observation missions, findings show that the presence of election fraud and international observers increases the likelihood of post-election violence. Matching methods are employed to account for the possibility that international observers' decisions to monitor elections are endogenous to the occurrence of violence in the electoral process. Results for matched samples confirm the findings in the unmatched sample. A variety of robustness tests show that the results are not influenced by the operationalization of independent variables and influential observations.