Judging Presidential Elections Around the World: An Overview

Abstract

While electoral management bodies have received an increasing amount of scholarly consideration recently, less attention has been paid to the institutions in charge of imparting electoral justice. These institutions are an integral column of the system of electoral integrity and the final check for achieving credible elections. This article offers an updated and systematic description of the institutions of electoral justice in all the presidential democracies around the world (19 countries in the Americas, eight in Africa, and four in Asia), based on an analysis of the accumulated total of 966 years of electoral legislation. I have traced the evolution of the institutions adjudicating election disputes from the time of the constitutional change immediately prior to the first democratic election in each of these presidential democracies following the start of the third wave of democracy in 1974. Contrary to the idea that specialized electoral courts are better suited than supreme courts for resolving election disputes, I have found that supreme or administrative courts are slightly more independent than specialized electoral courts, although this is not to deny the advantages that electoral courts may have in terms of expertise. I have also found an upward trend in the global average level of electoral autonomy since the late 1970s. Finally, since the late twentieth century, a whole wave of Latin American countries have adopted specialized electoral courts to handle election disputes, while most presidential democracies in Asia and Africa have relegated this task to their supreme courts.

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