When Guardians Matter Most: Exploring the Conditions Under Which Electoral Management Body Institutional Design Affects Election Integrity

Abstract

Problems with election fraud and election integrity are of increasing interest in both established and transitional democracies. In many transitional democracies, independent electoral management bodies (EMBs) have been championed as a key institutional reform measure to successfully strengthen election integrity. However, empirical findings regarding the impact of EMB institutional design on election integrity are mixed. While regional studies have found a positive impact of independent EMBs on election integrity in Latin America and Africa, global comparative studies appear to show that EMB institutional design is either negatively, or only very weakly related to election integrity. In this paper, we examine the effects of EMB institutional design on election integrity using the new Varieties of Democracy dataset and data from the International IDEA. We find that the mixed findings on EMB institutional design are due to the differences between transitional and established democracies on the one hand, and regimes with low and high quality of government on the other. The paper concludes with a reflection on results and a discussion of implications of these findings for the debate on electoral reform in Ireland.