Elections: a continuous cycle

The electoral cycle approach has become the gold standard for Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs), assistance providers and donors to determine the most effective form of electoral assistance required in any given country. This approach considers not only those activities undertaken on Election Day, but also the whole series of activities and processes undertaken after, between and leading up to each election – in other words, the entire electoral cycle. Electoral assistance projects in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, East Timor, Sierra Leone and Togo, which were considered successfully implemented, were informed by the electoral cycle approach.

In the late 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin wall, many countries organized multiparty elections for the first time. The main challenges that faced those elections were identified as lack of experience and a knowledge gap. The international community was keen to provide assistance to these elections, but the knowledge and experience on their side was also limited, and support often resulted in short-term and costly interventions focusing on isolated electoral events.

Recognizing the obstacles to the implementation of long-term assistance, 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.

“We drew a circle on the wall,” says Paul Guerin, IDEA Senior Programme Manager. “It’s a simple visual tool that has been adopted by main assistance providers and donors, such as the European Commission and United Nations Development Programme, and to which the UN Secretary General’s report to the General Assembly in 2009 refers.” (see page 28). 

The concept of the electoral cycle, which focuses on the post-election period and the possibilities of providing long-term support and developing local capacity in between elections, rapidly gained consensus among practitioners and development agencies. Its conceptualization was completed with the publication of the European Commission Methodological Guide on Electoral Assistance, the International IDEA Handbook on Electoral Management Design and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) Electoral Assistance Implementation Guide. This approach was officially endorsed by the EC and UNDP for every electoral assistance project from the moment the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of Electoral Assistance was signed in April 2006.

As a means to spread the knowledge about the approach IDEA worked with the EC and UNDP to build a five day training course on the subject specially targeting development agencies, electoral assistance providers, donors and Electoral Management Bodies.

It was piloted in Brussels and Tanzania in 2006. Since then it has been held in Accra, Dar es Salaam, Maputo and Milan. Because of its popularity, an eLearning course was developed in 2008 as a means of widening access to such training.

The “paradigm shift” towards the electoral cycle approach has now taken root. There is still considerable work to be done before this evolution can be completed however; capacity building, both at the development agency and partner country level, will be the way forward to continue its implementation.