Experimenting in Democracy Promotion: International Observers and the 2004 Presidential Elections in Indonesia

Randomized field experiments have gained attention within the social sciences and the field of democracy promotion as an influential tool for causal inference and a potentially powerful method of impact evaluation. With an eye toward facilitating field experimentation in democracy promotion, I prese...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Perspectives on politics 2010-06, Vol.8 (2), p.511-527
Main Author: Hyde, Susan D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Democracy
Democracy promotion
Election fraud
Elections
Experiments
Field experiments
Field work
Fraud
Indonesia
Inference
International observers
Monitoring
Political elections
Political parties
Political science research
Presidential elections
Presidents
Research methods
Social Sciences
Strategic planning
Voter behavior
Voter fraud
Voter registration
Voting
Voting Behavior
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Summary:Randomized field experiments have gained attention within the social sciences and the field of democracy promotion as an influential tool for causal inference and a potentially powerful method of impact evaluation. With an eye toward facilitating field experimentation in democracy promotion, I present the first field-experimental study of international election monitoring, which should be of interest to both practitioners and academics. I discuss field experiments as a promising method for evaluating the effects of democracy assistance programs. Applied to the 2004 presidential elections in Indonesia, the random assignment of international election observers reveals that even though the election was widely regarded as democratic, the presence of observers had a measurable effect on votes cast for the incumbent candidate, indicating that such democracy assistance can influence election quality even in the absence of blatant election-day fraud.
ISSN:1537-5927
1541-0986
DOI:10.1017/S1537592710001222