The electoral cycle stretches far beyond activities undertaken on Election Day. It encompasses a whole series of activities and processes leading up to an election, which also includes the time between and after elections - referred to as the entire electoral cycle.
The main challenges for fragile countries in a transitional phase facing elections are usually identified as lack of experience and having a knowledge gap. The international community is keen to provide assistance to elections in these countries, but the knowledge and experience on their side is limited, and support often result in short-term and costly interventions focusing on isolated electoral events.
However, the possibilities of providing long-term support and developing local capacity in between elections, has slowly but safely gained consensus among practitioners and development agencies. To support the efforts, International IDEA and the European Commission (EC) developed a visual planning and training tool in 2004 that could help development agencies, electoral assistance providers and electoral officials in partner countries to understand the cyclical nature of the various challenges faced in electoral processes. This tool has become known as the Electoral Cycle Approach.
Today, it has become the manual for Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs); assistance providers and donors, to determine the most effective form of electoral assistance required in any given country, assisting with advocating long-term support strategies rather than supporting ad hoc projects aimed at specific electoral events.
Following the recommendations from The Effective Electoral Assistance Conference in Ottawa 2006, and using the Electoral Cycle Approach as framework, IDEA, together with EC and UN Development Programme (UNDP) has further developed an Electoral Assistance Training module for reorienting bilateral and multilateral development agencies towards long term process driven support. The training course especially targets development agencies, electoral assistance providers, donors and EMBs. It was piloted in Brussels and Tanzania in 2006. Because of its popularity, an eLearning course was developed in 2008.
Recent activities include IDEA being active in influencing the policy agenda on electoral assistance through the OECD-DAC Governance Network, assisting with the Draft Principles on International Elections Assistance in March 2010. Discussions on these draft principles were facilitated at the 5th Global Electoral Organization Conference hosted in Botswana in March 2011, where more than 270 election practitioners from across the globe were gathered.
IDEA engages consistently in global discussions about how to provide effective electoral assistance. In this respect IDEA has been a leading voice advocating a paradigm shift from supporting elections as one off technical events to supporting the entire electoral cycle – from the design of a country's legal framework, to the implementation of an election, and through to subsequent reform processes.
