The concept and definitional characteristics of international electoral standards

Abstract

It is indicated that, despite the military aggression launched by Russia against Ukraine, our country continues the irreversible course of European integration, which results in the objectification, contextualization and convergence of the domestic legal system, including the introduction into national law of unified normative approaches to the understanding, regulation and implementation of the most important issues of democratic state-building developed by the international community. In this regard, an important place is occupied by international election standards, which derive from international legal standards, and represent standards for citizens to exercise their political rights to elect and be elected, the right to participate in state management, parameters of behavior of subjects of electoral relations in matters of appointment, training , conducting and determining election results, issues of election financing, determining the circle of participants in the election process and their access to mass media, the participation of representatives of foreign states, international intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations as observers of the conduct of elections, etc., which are aimed at ensuring legitimate, free, fair national, regional and local elections, and, accordingly, these are the standards of democratic formation of representative bodies of state power and local self-government bodies.That is why the article is devoted to the study of the legal nature of international election standards. The work highlights and characterizes the features of international election standards. It was concluded that they represent a legal value reference for the democratic formation of representative bodies of state power and local self-government. Based on the scientific approaches of domestic and foreign scientists, as well as the identified features of international election standards, the author’s definition of their understanding is proposed.It has been established that international election standards are principles and norms enshrined in international acts, textually unified and functionally universal (including at the regional level for certain international associations of states), developed by the world community based on the practice of developed democratic countries and requirements of the modern democratic development of the world community, which fix the normative and value orientation (minimum necessary or desired measure) of the behavior of the state, its bodies, subjects of the election process regarding the formation of representative bodies of state power and local self-government, which act as obligations of the state, taken by it within the framework of international agreements to ensure the exercise of people’s power in the country and foresee legal or political sanctions for their violation.