Trustworthy Elections

Electoral management bodies (EMBs), the institutions designated to manage political change inclusively and peacefully, must be trusted for election results to be accepted. Trustworthy Elections: The Role of Electoral Management Bodies explores how stakeholder feelings of injustice complicate transactions and information flow with electoral authorities and deplete the legitimacy capital that EMBs require to expedite democracy.

While the technical delivery imperatives of election administration are well understood, there is a wider range of stakeholder needs and expectations that matter for trust-building. In addition to delivery-oriented transactional trust, EMB trust-building must also include values-oriented relational trust and the predictability that allows for security-based trust. By highlighting stakeholder viewpoints, the book provides a social perspective to what has been seen as a technical and administrative problem and outlines a broader range of pathways for EMB trust-building policy and practice. Conceptually innovative, and drawing from a rich set of empirical data, it showcases the stresses and dynamics particular to elections and provides policy-oriented insights.

With this book, Therese Pearce Laanela aims to inspire and inform policy makers, practitioners, and scholars on strategies for electoral authorities to earn the trust needed for accepted elections and peaceful political transitions.

Therese Pearce Laanela, PhD, is Head of Electoral Processes at International IDEA, an intergovernmental organisation that works with election authorities worldwide. Through her work with leading bodies in the field such as IFES, The Carter Center, UNDP, and IDEA, Pearce Laanela has been deeply involved in the development of a variety of seminal publications, networks, databases, and training curriculum on electoral administration, including the ACE Electoral Knowledge Network and the BRIDGE course package. Her hands-on experience of organising elections began with United Nations missions in Cambodia and Mozambique in the early 1990s and has continued with international election observer and electoral assistance missions in Africa, Europe, and Asia for institutions such as the OSCE, the European Union, and The Carter Center. Her PhD from the Australian National University uses regulatory theory to investigate trust in EMBs, while her Masters degree from Stockholm University focused on the intersection between political financing, corruption, and electoral system design.