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In recent decades, governments and NGOs--in an effort to promote democracy, freedom, fairness, and stability throughout the world--have organized teams of observers to monitor elections in a variety of countries. But when more organizations join the practice without uniform standards, are assessments reliable? When politicians nonetheless cheat and monitors must return to countries even after two decades of engagement, what is accomplished? Monitoring Democracy argues that the practice of international election monitoring is broken, but still worth fixing. By analyzing the evolving interaction

In recent decades, governments and NGOs--in an effort to promote democracy, freedom, fairness, and stability throughout the world--have organized teams of observers to monitor elections in a variety of countries. But when more organizations join the practice without uniform standards, are assessments reliable? When politicians nonetheless cheat and monitors must return to countries even after two decades of engagement, what is accomplished? Monitoring Democracy argues that the practice of international election monitoring is broken, but still worth fixing. By analyzing the evolving interaction.

Practitioners and politicians have long debated the wisdom of pushing countries to hold elections, with some arguing for its necessity and others warning of its futility and even danger. Yet, research on how varying types of international activities affect the conduct and structure of elections still has a long way to go to be able to inform this debate. This article discusses the myriad international forms of engagement with elections and reviews the research on their ability to improve election quality. It also explores the more nefarious international activities, which are even less well understood than the efforts to improve elections. Given the mixed outcomes and findings, much work remains to be done, especially in specifying the conditions under which various effects occur. Such work has both practical and theoretical merits and can shed light on broader scholarly inquiries about the international dimensions of democratization. Adapted from the source document.

Global performance indicators (GPIs), such as ratings and rankings, permeate nearly every type of human activity, internationally and nationally, across public and private spheres. While some indicators aim to attract media readership or brand the creator's organization, others increasingly seek to influence political practices and policies. The Power of Global Performance Indicators goes beyond the basic questions of methodological validity explored by others to launch a fresh debate about power in the modern age, exploring the ultimate questions concerning real-world consequences of GPIs, both intended and unintended. From business regulation to terrorism, education to foreign aid, Kelley and Simmons demonstrate how GPIs provoke bureaucracies, shape policy agendas, and influence outputs through their influence of third parties such as donors and market actors and, potentially, even broader global authority structures.

AbstractThis article takes the challenges of global governance and legitimacy seriously and looks at new ways in which international organizations (IOs) have attempted to 'govern' without explicit legal or regulatory directives. Specifically, we explore the growth of global performance indicators as a form of social control that appears to have certain advantages even as states and civil society actors push back against international regulatory authority. This article discusses the ways in which Michael Zürn's diagnosis of governance dilemmas helps to explain the rise of such ranking systems. These play into favored paradigms that give information and market performance greater social acceptance than rules, laws, and directives designed by international organizations. We discuss how and why these schemes can constitute governance systems, and some of the evidence regarding their effects on actors' behaviors. Zürn's book provides a useful context for understanding the rise and effectiveness of Governance by Other Means: systems that 'inform' and provoke competition among states, shaping outcomes without directly legislating performance.