Assessing Election Quality

Abstract

Many post-Soviet elections illustrate the perils of accepting the “electoral fallacy,” the notion that implementing elections is equivalent to introducing democracy. The “Colored Revolutions” that swept out the corrupt leaderships of Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan from 2003 to 2005 were sparked by evidence that systematic fraud substantially influenced election results. Post-“revolutionary” politics in these countries has diverged, with Ukraine showing signs of nascent, if contentious, democratic politics; Georgia again slipping toward authoritarianism; and Kyrgyzstan quickly returning to the cronyism and corruption associated with the toppled regime.