Overview
Over the past two decades, elections have increasing become accepted
through most of Asia as the basis for legitimacy of political leadership,
and, increasingly, these elections are meeting international standards.
At the same time, elections do not in themselves guarantee that a fully
competitive political process exists.
The Asia Foundation's
approach to elections views these events as opportunities through which
broader democratization objectives, including strengthening of civil
society roles, can be advanced. Citizen monitoring of polls and facilitating
regional observers has been one aspect of this. The Foundation has been
developing increasingly sophisticated empirical survey techniques to pinpoint
current citizen attitudes and knowledge, followed by nuanced and targeted
program interventions. The Asia Foundation has implemented these types of
elections programs in a large number of Asian countries.
While the
immediate objective of most elections assistance programs has been to ensure
that specific elections take place under conditions that are as free and fair
as possible, there has also often been an investment in building in institutional
capacity in the independent electoral commissions to conduct such elections in
the future. Thus far, the largest long term Foundation contribution in this
regard has been in Afghanistan.
Election events provide the opportunity
to focus the attention of both parties and the public on pressing social,
economic, and governance reforms. This is especially important in semi-democratic
countries where elections are unlikely to yield meaningful leadership, but
may help to sharpen public debate and increase public demand for action on
critical development issues.