Archive - Conference Papers

“Fifteen years of operation” in 2003. Ten years later operation is still on, electoral observation missions are more numerous and the Arab spring even offered new opportunities for election monitoring activities. How did the European Union get engaged in election monitoring? How did it emerge in the first place? How and why did it evolve?Up to 2006, 80% of elections in the world have been internationally monitored. Since 1993, the European Union conducted alone around 130 election observation missions around the world. Little has been said though on where they come from, how a mission works, what the host country gets from it, etc. Election observers and people involved in election monitoring do not function ex nihilo nor in a political vacuum and it seems important then to pay attention to the environment in which they evolve. The analysis of the construction of the instrument of election observation and electoral assistance tells us how the European Union envisages its role and how it differs from American organizations for instance. Its main identity seems to rely on the link made with human rights. But more than official texts, it also refers to a complex organization and process which involve at least three different European institutions as well as state members. The process of normative and strategic political construction of such an instrument appears as an evidence as one starts looking closer. Whereas in the existing literature, international actors are taken for granted and not analyzed as objects of study themselves, this paper will attempt to show how through the use of foreign policy instrument, the will of the European Union to appear as one unified actor is challenged. These challenges also impact the aspiration to appear as a neutral and autonomous entity when the reality shows how actors actually act both normatively and strategically. As a result, international politics also affects domestic politics in intended an unintended consequences. The third country to which this instrument is applied is not necessarily a passive one. Election monitoring becomes then rather a battleground whose ownership has to be discussed.