Electoral Management

The challenge of running elections and it’s consequences had largely been overlooked by scholars of elections and electoral law until recent years. However, there is now an established body of cross-national studies which have defined electoral management as subfield and drawn out implications for the design of electoral organizations and laws. This chapter provides an overview of the state of the art of scholarly knowledge on electoral management. It reviews alternative conceptions of electoral management performance and charts the ways in which electoral management bodies vary around the world. It argues the quality of the delivery of elections can be shaped by the degree of centralization, workforce composition, independence, resources and capacity, deployment of electoral assistance and use of technology. These should therefore be prominent concerns for law makers around the globe seeking to improve the fairness and inclusiveness of electoral process.