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- Title
Signaling Democratic Progress through Electoral System Reform in Post-Communist States.
- Authors
O'Brochta, William; Cunha Silva, Patrick
- Abstract
The international community invests heavily in democracy promotion, but these efforts sometimes embolden leaders not interested in true democratic reform. We develop and test a formal model explaining why this occurs in the context of electoral system reform—one of the most important signals of democratic quality. Our formal model characterizes leaders as either truly reform minded or pseudo-reformers, those who increase electoral system proportionality in order to receive international community benefits while engaging in electoral fraud. We hypothesize that the international community will be more (less) likely to detect fraud when leaders decrease (increase) proportionality, regardless of whether there is evidence of numerical fraud. Using a mixed-methods approach with cross-national and case study data from post-Communist states, we find that the international community is generally less likely to detect fraud following an increase in proportionality and vice versa. We suggest that democracy promoters over-reward perceived democratic progress such that pseudo-reformers often benefit.
- Subjects
ELECTORAL reform; INTERNATIONAL cooperation on democratization; CORRUPT practices in elections; DEMOCRACY; POSTCOMMUNIST societies
- Publication
Political Research Quarterly, 2022, Vol 75, Issue 4, p1037
- ISSN
1065-9129
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/10659129211043865