Cost of elections 2000

Updated November 2006

An extract from 'Multi-party Democracy in Southern Africa' by David Pottie; a paper presented to the International IDEA conference entitled Promoting Sustainable Electoral Democracy in Southern Africa, held on the 8 to 10 May 2000 in Gaborone, Botswana.

The high costs of transitional elections are often justified on the basis of initial high costs of putting infrastructure and personnel into place. Logistical obstacles raise costs and transitional elections require building confidence among participants. Such assistance drives up the costs of elections in developing countries and threatens the sustainability of the very democracy it seeks to support. By way of alternative they propose an emphasis on labour-intensive rather than capital-intensive solutions, on training rather than technology and to shift support to NGOs that operate on behalf of committed memberships (trade unions, producers' groups, woman's organisations, etc).

Hearn goes further in her critique of donor assistance, arguing that donor assistance in South Africa has, since 1994, contributed to the redefinition of democracy such that "a residual belief in social democracy is being eroded and replaced by the norms and practice of procedural democracy." Such a shift, while apparently in support of electoral democracy, will ultimately erode the basis for the much-needed socio-economic transformation of South Africa.

Both arguments raise important questions about the role and character of international donor assistance for democracy and development in southern Africa. To be sure, given the levels of economic development prevalent in SADC, financial and technical assistance to electoral management is generally welcome; indeed, it is often highly sought by national election commissions. While such funding may result in unsustainable systems, or in systems that are not reproducible throughout all of SADC owing to differences in levels of development (notably between South Africa and the rest of the region, as discussed below), the costs of the international community doing nothing may be too high. Gyimah-Boadi argues that the money spent in Mozambique in 1994 was money well spent and contributed to the end of the civil war.