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Constitutional Structures, Sovereignty, and the Emergence of Norms: The Case of International Election Monitoring

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2005

Arturo Santa-Cruz
Arturo Santa-Cruz
Affiliation:
Pacific Studies Department at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico, [email protected]
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Abstract

International election monitoring (IEM) has partially redefined sovereignty. In this article I locate the origins of this change in the Americas, claiming that the Western Hemisphere's normative structure, what I call the Western Hemisphere Idea, was particularly conducive to this new understanding of state sovereignty. In the first section, I introduce the continental normative structure, highlighting the way in which it contributed to the eventual emergence of the monitoring practice in the early 1960s, and I discuss methodological issues. In the second section, I briefly review the emergence of IEM, looking at the pioneering work of the Organization of American States (OAS) in election monitoring. In the third section, I review the subsequent appearance of IEM outside the regional organization. The convergence of intergovernmental organizations and international nongovernmental organizations in election monitoring is then considered in the fourth section. Finally, I present the conclusions and theoretical implications of this piece.I would like to thank Peter Katzenstein, Lisa Martin, Valerie Bunce, Mat Evangelista, Aida Hozic, Kathleen O'Neil, Hector Schamis, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on previous versions of this article.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , July 2005 , pp. 663 - 693
Copyright
© 2005 The IO Foundation and Cambridge University Press

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