ELECTIONS IN CONFLICT-PRONE

CONTEXTS

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2011

12:15 P.M. ET

WASHINGTON, D.C.

WELCOME/MODERATOR:

Thomas Carothers,

Vice President for Studies,

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

SPEAKERS:

Susanne Mueller,

Political Scientist and Author

Benjamin Reilly,

Senior Visiting Professor of Southeast Asia Studies,

Johns Hopkins University – SAIS

Francesc Vendrell,

Former Special Representative of the European Union for Afghanistan and Former Head of the United Nations

Special Mission for Afghanistan

Transcript by Federal News Service

Washington, D.C.

THOMAS CAROTHERS: Welcome, everyone. I’m Thomas Carothers, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment. It’s my pleasure to be the host and the moderator of today’s session on elections in conflict countries. Over the last 25 years, within the democracy support arena, the issue of elections never goes away. Seems like every few years, there’s a wave of criticism, in a way, about support for elections or attention to elections with people stressing that elections aren’t everything. And that’s true, although I always feel it’s a bit of a straw man, and I don’t really know anybody who believes that elections are everything. But elections don’t go away because – it’s true they’re not everything, but if you’re a country in which authoritarian rule has collapsed and you’re moving forward and constructing a new political order, you’re going to face the question of holding elections. If you’re a country which is stuck in semi-authoritarian rule, the issue of how the elections do or do not function is fundamental to your political life, and so forth. So elections don’t go away for big reasons. [00:01:00] In the last 10 years, I think attention became particularly focused on the question of, are elections dangerous? Are elections, in some cases, ill-advised? Is the international community going astray in supporting them in certain ways? And there was a spate of writing on this topic, some of it informed, some of it less informed. And a number of cases were on people’s mind. I could – you know, there’s quite a few, actually, but just in the last, you know, five years, the case of Kenya in 2007-2008, sent a shock wave through some – I’d say eight agencies that had been counting on those elections to help Kenya move forward. And the idea that a country that is as politically developed and, in some ways, moving forward as Kenya seemed to be could experience the kind of horrendous violence after an election was shocking and upsetting to people and caused, once again, a look at this question of, are there things we know about elections in societies that are divided in different ways that can help us understand the likelihood of such violence, how elections might be structured that might avoid it, how outside actors can play a role that would be productive in such a situation, and so forth. [00:02:09] So the topic is there. And then, with the Arab Spring, of course, just – you know, obviously, elections of Tunisia which just happened, elections in Egypt coming up, elections in Libya next year, all of these questions are going to be played out in the Arab world as well. So when David Gillies came to me some time ago earlier this year and told me about this book, “Elections in Dangerous Places” that he had edited as part of work he’d been doing at the North-South Institute – he’d gathered together a series of distinguished writers to consider a series of case studies as well as thematic issues about elections in dangerous places – I thought it would be useful to have an event here at Carnegie to talk about it. And fortunately, he was able to provide some of the authors of some of the chapters of the book who are with us today who are going to be the presenters. But it’s really a discussion that cuts across all of the issues in the book. We’re going to try to keep it fairly freewheeling and relevant. And a lot of people in the room here work on these issues directly.

[00:03:09] I’m delighted to say that we have Bill Sweeney, who’s the president of IFES is here, and a number of his staff, as well as people from USAID, State Department and others. And so we welcome all of you and appreciate the work I think everybody has been doing in this field. And let’s try to make it a group discussion. We’re going to proceed in the order here. Ben Reilly is going to go first. Ben until recently was the head of the Center for Democratic Institutions and a professor at Australian National University. But fortunately for us, for personal reasons, he’s come to Washington for a while to do – his wife is a diplomat. And so we have the benefit of Ben’s present here – presence here in Washington, and he’s with Johns Hopkins SAIS as a visiting professor there. We’ll hear from Ben; then I’ll turn to Susanne Mueller, who’s someone I’ve known for a long time. She’s a political scientist with really the kind of extensive experience on the ground in both political and economic development that often goes unheralded but is really the backbone of so much of the work that goes into these kinds of support efforts. And Susanne has a tremendous amount of personal experience and in particular extends to Kenya, which is the subject of the chapter that she wrote in the book, and she’s going to talk about some of her experiences and perspectives. And then last but far from least, we have Francesc Vendrell, who just took the brave step of counting on Amtrak to get him here on time today – (laughter) – and as so, rolled in late, aggravated, and having left his glasses on the train and other such things. But we’re delighted to have Mr. Vendrell, who’s a very senior and distinguished U.N. diplomat, or diplomat with extensive U.N. experience as well as European Union. I can’t list the number of countries in which he’s worked. It’s extensive and he’s often played a key role in large-scale U.N. missions. He is the kind of person who, I think, in U.N. circles, European diplomatic circles and, more broadly, international policy circles, is well-known to many people as a decent and sober and sane voice on difficult issues. And so it was great they got him involved in the project, and we’re really delighted to have you here with us today. So without further ado, let me turn it over to you, Ben. [00:05:11] BENJAMIN REILLY: OK, great. Thanks very much, Tom. Hello everyone. Thanks for coming. I’ve been given pretty strict writing instructions that I’m not to talk too long or too much, so I’m really going to try and set the scene for some of the big issues facing us, the international community but also domestic actors, in terms of elections in conflict situations. And I know there are many people from the – who are specialists in the room today, so I will try to be fairly brief. Just to kick off: I think it’s useful for us to just step back at the start of a discussion like this and say, what are the functions of elections? What are they trying to do? And some of them are very obvious; some of them are less obvious. First and most obviously, elections are a means of choosing representatives to a legislature, a congress or some other representative forum. Secondly and also obviously, elections are a means of choosing governments,

executives. Thirdly and perhaps most importantly for the subject matter at hand, elections are a means of conferring legitimacy on a political system – not just a government, but an entire political system. What I want to argue today is that the way elections in dangerous places, in conflict zones, have been conducted, particularly in some very high profile cases in recent years, has pushed some of those, you know, fairly obvious objectives into tension with each other. Post-conflict elections have other roles as well as the three main functions I mentioned here. And at the heart of this book that David Gillies has done such an admirable job of editing is the tension between the expectation that elections will simultaneously promote democracy – in other words, political competition, ideas-based competition for office – and bring about peace. [00:07:20] And there is a – there is a fundamental kind of tension and dilemma at the heart of this expectation that all good things go together because, I think, as everyone in this room knows, elections are inherently conflictual, if they’re free and genuinely competitive. They’re about mobilizing social cleavages; they’re about mobilizing different ideas. They’re about a raw contest for power. How that process can simultaneously generate societal peace is, you know, a very tricky one. And I think it’s an intellectual dilemma that we’ve never really solved. We just kind of, you know, wanted to believe all things go together. A lot of the chapters in this book really highlight this tension. And I know Susanne and Francesc will be talking in detail about some of the cases, so let me just highlight, you know, Afghanistan and Kenya as two cases that certainly do highlight this tension. [00:08:19] There are a couple of second-tier issues that I think are also dilemmas for both domestic actors and the international community, and I want to just quickly run through a few of these here in the – in the short time that’s been allotted to me and try and tease out some of the – some of the problems. Question number one: election timing – if you’re in a conflict situation – the end of a civil war, for example; the start of an international intervention; the start of a new, free era in politics, an Egypt-style situation – when should elections be held? The old answer was, as soon as possible. And so the – for many years, I think for much of the last decade, there’s been enormous pressure in post-conflict situations to hold elections quickly, for reasons of both domestic pressure and also the interest of the international community in wanting a symbolic sign of progress and, in some cases, an opportunity to exit from particular countries. Recently, however, there has been a vast amount of scholarship, very serious statistical tests amongst others, that have highlighted a danger that I think many of us have been aware of without the scholars telling us, which is that elections held very quickly after the end of a conflict are much more likely to result in a relapse of that conflict, and elections held very quickly in a – in a society that’s been devastated by civil war are less likely to generate the kinds of developmental improvements that are needed than maybe a period of, say, two years grace between the end of a conflict and a civil war (sic).

I think this is a huge issue right now for some of the cases that Tom mentioned. Libya in particular is talking about going to an election within eight months; that’s extremely quickly by international standards. There may be good reasons for that in Libya, but I’d like to highlight it here as a – as a potential problem. And certainly, the scholarly evidence suggests it might be worth re-thinking that rapid timetable. [00:10:44] A couple of other issues: national elections versus subnational elections. Is there merit in holding subnational elections before you hold a national one, a sort of training wheels for democracy? Again, this is an area where scholars and policymakers have not always been on the same page. Increasingly, I think some of the more successful experiments in post-conflict democracy – East Timor, Kosovo – have run if not municipal elections, then some form of local-level consultation before national ones as a means of taking the heat out of national elections and having a sort of – a smaller step first. And again, I think this is an issue that bears further consideration for both the international community and domestic elites when considering questions of an election timetable. The third big issue is the question of the voting system, the electoral system to be used. This is a – this is a subject I’ve written about quite a lot over the years. Increasingly, elections, particularly those held under U.N. auspices, used one type of electoral system, normally highly proportional forms – PR – very proportional – list proportional representation – very fair to all parties, but often, when held on a national basis in particular, leading to a great fragmentation in the resulting parliament, a plethora of small political parties gaining access to representation, incentives for ethnic or religious and communal parties to form – because it’s very easy, even if you’re a small minority, maybe only 2 (percent) or 3 percent, under these sorts of systems, you can pretty much guarantee that if you’ve got 2 (percent) or 3 percent of the population voting for you, you’ll get 2 (percent) or 3 percent of the seats in parliament. [00:12:49] And I think there’s some real issues that are starting to become clear as to whether this model is really the best model for post-conflict societies. It’s certainly the easiest model in terms of running elections. It’s administratively very convenient. But if the overall aim is to produce stable governments that can deliver development and take decisions and govern, I think it’s worth us pondering whether this kind of extreme consensual, consociational model is really the best way of – best voting system for post-conflict elections. And again, I think some of the recent cases in the Middle East are a good example of this. Iraq, the 2005 election, I think, was held under what’s widely accepted to be now an inappropriate electoral system that was, in some ways, too liberal and did allow the sectarianization of the party system to some extent. Some of the proposals I’ve seen floating around for Libya suggest we should use this kind of model for the Libyans – not us; the Libyans should use this kind of model for Libya. I think a highly proportional electoral system introduced in a country like Libya would almost inevitably lead to a tribalization of electoral politics, so I’ll just put that out there as another conundrum for us to wrestle with. A couple of others and then I’ll stop. One is the administration of elections. I think this is an area where actually the – there’s a pretty clear right way and a wrong way to do things. Unfortunately, the American way is not the right way internationally on this subject. In other words, the American electoral administration model of using political parties as – basically putting the political parties together to make the – as the key to the electoral administration system rather than some kind of independent body does not have a good track record

internationally. And I think the results of many of international elections on this point are quite clear: You’re much better having a nominally independent electoral commission without direct ties to political parties, if that’s possible; it’s not always possible. And finally, there’s the often-underestimated issue of the effect of post-conflict elections on the development of civil society and political parties. And in a sense, this comes back to the issue of the electoral system that I – that I mentioned a minute ago. A lot of our aid efforts in post-conflict elections are very much focused on letting a thousand flowers bloom, letting all parties try and compete for office. But the scholarly findings on that approach are also very clear, that you’re much better off having a small number of aggregated programmatic political parties if you want to generate development long term than a situation in which every interest group and every segment of the community gets represented. [00:16:12] And again, this is a – this is a big dilemma. But I think the way a lot of our political party assistance has been conducted – and I know Tom has written about this extensively – really needs to grapple with this – these findings that development is much more likely under some kinds of party systems than others, and they’re not the sort of party systems that we tend to encourage in terms – when we – when there are big international interventions in elections. So just in conclusion, I – what I wanted to do – and it’s not really drawn from the books – David might not thank me for this – but I wanted to raise the dangers of the way we are doing this business, the way in which our approach to post-conflict elections, which has tended to be very inclusive, is increasingly focused on descriptive representation. If you look at a lot of – you know, Burundi or Nepal, Iraq, you know, there’s gender representation; there’s – there’s a lot of focus on representation of ethnic minorities, regional minorities and so on. [00:17:30] Whether this approach, which then leads to often very large power-sharing governments that have difficulty taking decisions – if you think about Nepal and Iraq, there’s been great difficulty in both of those countries in even forming a government in recent years, let alone governing – whether we need to start thinking differently about this highly inclusive approach to post-conflict elections, or whether we need to think much more about creating broad-based aggregative stable governments that are not necessarily as representative as the governments that are being generated by elections today in the hope or with the intention that we’re – our real interest is in generating basic development for the population and delivering public goods through the political system rather than just focusing on that first function of elections, which is representation. MR. CAROTHERS: Ben, thanks very much. You know, when I introduced Ben, I failed to mention his many really innovative and excellent writings. You know, sometimes you’ll be looking at a subject and you’ll think, I’m sure somebody’s looked at that. And if you’ve ever thought about voting systems and post-conflict situations and thought, who’s really thought carefully about what kind of voting system tends to have what sort of sociopolitical effects, here he is; that’s the guy who said a lot about that and written a lot about it – not the only one, but I think his writings really stand out, and you see some of that thinking here. There’s a lot of questions you raised that I’d like to back to, but let’s proceed. Susanne? SUSANNE MUELLER: Thank you.

My discussion really is – goes beyond the sorts of technical factors that Ben discussed, all of which I think are extremely important, but the basic message of my talk is that even if you get all those technical factors right, there are other factors underlying them – mainly, political economy factors that may subvert them. And that’s really the message of Kenya. And I think before we get into that, it’s worthwhile just thinking about some basic characteristics of established democracies that are not actually part of every system in every part of the world. One is a willingness to lose. In other words, in established democracies, people agree to fight elections and then they lose. And killing people and doing whatever is necessary to win, including killing them, is not part of the agenda. And there is a general acceptance of a willingness to lose. [00:20:04] The second major characteristic of established democracies is, of course, honored in the breach – I’m not saying all of these things are perfect – is the paramouncy of the rule of law. In other words, there – law – elections take place within a society where the rule of law has some hegemony, has some clout. And therefore, institutions involved in elections are subservient, to some extent to – or a large extent, to the rule of law. So in situations where none of these characteristics exist or where they’re honored in the breach – some of the points raised by Ben and others in the volume – election management, even if it’s perfect, may be undermined by an elite consensus for stasis. And that’s – so the main – my main point of this discussion is that even though donors and others do a great deal to – and very important work to improve elections using formal legal changes in terms of electoral arrangements, electoral management, getting dead voters off the roll, trying to improve voting systems, all of this is terribly – all of these initiatives are terribly important. [00:21:25] But in cases such as Kenya and elsewhere, they’re often subverted by informal incentives to maintain the status quo. And – but what do I mean by informal incentives? I mean that you may have something on the – on the law and in paper that everybody’s agreed to change, but in practice, if I get punished for doing the right thing and adhering to – adhering to the rule of law and rewarded for doing the wrong thing, chances are that some or even all of those initiatives may be subverted. And I think Justice Kriegler, who has a paper in this volume, probably said it better than anyone. He said – concerning the 2007 elections in Kenya, he said, nominally, democratic elections took place within the old practices of a one-party state, even though rules were on the book that could have prevented that. So that is the basic point. And now going specifically to Kenya, I will – I realize not everybody in the audience is familiar with Kenya, but I’m going to have to be very short to adhere to the time. So how did Kenya get to the point where it blew up and election – good election practices were undermined and everything turned into violence? What were the characteristics of Kenya that led to this? One was, since the ’90s, there was what I call in the article diffused violence. Violence was used from the 1990s on to turn elections in the Rift Valley, in particular where President Moi came from. And he – or his – he and his

cronies hired gangs basically to displace and kill individuals so they couldn’t vote. That was partly because in order to win the presidential election, you had to get 25 percent of the votes in five provinces, win a seat and win the majority. So if you could get rid of your opponents, you were closer to that – and you could actually define who your opponents were by and large ethnically. [00:23:41] Secondly, since the time of President Kenyatta, institutions outside of the presidency had been deliberately – the constitution had been changed and there was a great deal of personalization of power around the presidency. So there were not institutions – they were not institutions where there were real checks and balance on the power of the presidency, or even on informal political behavior. And thirdly, there was a winner-take-all zero-sum ethnic game. In order words, going back to what Ben was talking about, political parties, even when one takes into account the alliances, were highly ethnicized and elections were often not necessarily – although people put a lot of emphasis on elections being about – obviously, they’re about power and rents, but they’re also about who you don’t want to govern. And so as things became increasingly ethnicized, both in terms of elections and outside of elections, particularly under the Moi regime – my win might be your loss, or you might perceive that my win would be your loss, and your loss, I might perceive to be my win. So therefore, they took on a very high-stakes matters. Now, since the 2007 election, I thought I would just briefly summarize what has happened around these main points in terms of violence, this diffused violence where Moi and company hired gangs to basically get rid of their opponents. [00:25:25] These gangs have persisted over time for many, many years and were reinvigorated – rehired, if you want to call it that – during the 2007 election. So there are more gangs, they’re more autonomous, and they’re implicated in terms of the political – the politicians who have hired them and the police who get kickbacks from them. It’s – it has all undermined the state in many different ways. In a recent poll, 67 percent of those polled said politicians finance armed gangs, 54 percent say that the police knows them, and 35 say they think they will re-emerge in the next election, with 20 percent of those surveyed saying they don’t know. And more recently, the International Policy Institute in New York has written a very interesting report extending what – my point. I mean, my main point here is that with this diffusion of violence, the state has lost its – what they called its monopoly of legitimate force. And in this report put up by the International Policy Institute, they have discussed other ways that the state is being eroded. And that’s through drug trafficking, money laundering, the – al-Shabab being in Nairobi and in Garissa, the importation of small arms. And their point is not just that this is going on, but that it intersect – that some of these individuals, including some of the drug – the drug kingpins named by Obama recently have actually – are trying to – are in power; they’re MPs in power. So this is – their point in this report is, these termites are not only undermining the state, eroding the state’s monopoly of legitimate force, but they are intersect – they are trying to gain power in parliament so they can effectively change the rules of the game to their advantage. And all of this has grave implications for elections and democracy. In terms of the future, I’m going to just ask a few questions, which I can’t answer, I might add. (Chuckles.) So one is in terms of violence, will – right now in Kenya the six individuals, high ranking political and administrative

officials, have – are before the ICC as suspects. And within the next few weeks they – the three-trial chamber will decide whether these suspects will go to trial or not. Right now they’ve just been through the confirmation of hearings charges. [00:28:26] And so the question is, will this ICC process and/or convictions, will this itself create new incentives or reinforce old ones, either in the case of success or failure? Right now, it’s impossible to answer that question. We know what the ICC process – and I don’t have time to go into it but anyone who wants to ask me – is this going to change the way institutions have been eroded? Is this going to make elections freer and fairer? Is this going to take violence out of elections? Right now, A, we don’t know the answer to that question. We don’t even know if the charges against these suspects will be tried, whether they’ll be convicted, what would be the effect if they were or they weren’t or if it were one-sided. So these are all things we can discuss in the discussion. Secondly, on – around new institutions, there have been changes in Kenya. There’s a new constitution that was passed last year. And there are constant tensions that keep surfacing between the attempt to change the status quo and the attempt to reinforce it. So will these new legal changes and these administrative changes that flow out of them, will – including all the changes in the electoral commission and a whole pile of other electoral bodies – will these – will these be – will they have a chance or will be they be undermined by the elite status quo? Right now you – there’s a new chief justice who happens to be somebody I know from when I taught at the University of Nairobi. And judges and members of the judiciary are now vetted. But will they be able to try high-profile cases – let’s say, if there were another close election, would people be confident enough or will somehow or other that be undermined? Also, the judiciary, however wonderful it might become, is still dependent on a series of unreformed institutions, including the police. In other words, if you’re going to have an investigation of electoral fraud you still have to have somebody who is going to investigate it. And there have been numerous attempts previously at subverting justice this way. [00:30:58] Already in terms of elections, per se, there’ve been attempts to undermine the constitution. For instance, there is right now an attempt to propose an amendment to change the election date from August to December. There was recently an error in the government’s printing in – of a new election map – an act, sorry. There have been constant discussions, less of substance and more about who will be appointed to the electoral commission of Kenya, the independent boundary commission, in terms of what? The very great concern about – there’s been an ethnicization of appointments. And then there was a watering-down of the political parties and election act. The intent in the constitution was to make political parties more robust and make it more difficult for individuals if they didn’t get nominated one – by one party to switch to another, which are commonly called briefcase parties. In other words, there was an attempt to increase the institutionalization of political parties. In terms of zero-sum ethnicity, politics since the last election seems to me to have become even more ethnicized, with these suspects who include Uhuru Kenyatta, and the secretary to the cabinet and prominent – Ruto, a prominent politician from the Rift Valley. There has been – there’s been constant electioneering around – ethnic

electioneering. There have been ethnic hate rallies following the suspects going to The Hague. There have been divisions on – about the ICC. Kalenjins still refer to Kikuyus as foreigners. Ex-militaries, who were part of the – under the Moi regime, are still chafing from their dismissals when Kibaki came to power. Secondly, there’s been a partial – there’s – the constitution has stuff on the – there will be a devolution of power. So one has to ask, is this going to further fuel violent ethnicization by marginalizing minorities, which of course is not part of the formal legal aspect of the constitution? Will this then mean that you have weakened central institutions as well as weakened local institutions? And how will it affect elections? [00:33:54] These are the questions that I can’t really answer. But recent surveys support this feeling of uncertainty. They, first of all, support the idea that the most important factor in reducing violence would be a fair election. Twenty-eight percent say there should be a fair election and an independent electoral body, coming to 45 percent. However, 58 percent say government can’t conduct genuine investigations of the six suspects, meaning they still believe that locally there would be no punishment for the crimes that occurred during the last election. And when asked why they say: because the suspects are powerful people in government, 22 percent; because they don’t trust the courts, 33 percent; and because the government is corrupt. The support for the ICC is 65 percent. However, if one breaks it down by provinces, one finds in the areas where the suspects come from – mainly eastern Kenya, the Central Province and the Rift Valley – it’s in the 30s and 40s (percent), whereas in Nyanza and Western where Luos and Luhyas come from, it’s 73 and 66 percent. MR. CAROTHERS: (Off mic.) MS. MUELLER: So – yeah, I – I will. The implications for the elections – future elections in Kenya are that even if one goes ahead with some of the known types of reform that Ben are advocating, they may be undermined and that donors, obviously, need to think very seriously about these political economy factors and the incentives to adhere to electoral changes. And there’s a question about what, if anything – a question donors might want to think about – would – could be done to reduce zero-sum ethnic politics and the attempts to undermine. MR. CAROTHERS: Great. Thanks very much. Well, that takes Ben’s comments to the specific and frustrating case of Kenya. When I introduced Francesc Vendrell I forgot to mention that he was, in many other capacities, the EU special representative for Afghanistan. So he has a particular focus on that country and he’s going to talk about that today in the context of this general subject. [00:36:13] FRANCESC VENDRELL: Well, let me – let me first of all emphasize one thing. Not two situations are alike. And one should be very careful to draw general conclusions. I would love to have almost a discussion now with Ben because I didn’t quite agree with some of the things he said, although some – in some situations he was right. But in others, I think, you were not. I remember when I first joined the U.N. that in West New Guinea the secretary general of the U.N. allowed himself to be guided by Indonesia into holding an Act of Free Choice that was – that consisted of asking the people appointed by Indonesia in district councils in – across West New Guinea whether they wanted to remain with the

motherland or not, in the presence of the representative of the secretary general. Needless to say – this was 1969 – they all concluded they wanted to remain with Indonesia. The issue of New Guinea and of the – and the violation of the rights of the Papuans – continue to this day and this is one – and it took a great deal of effort by a colleague of mine and myself at the U.N. to prevent Indonesia from, again, trying to have the referendum in East Timor based on the findings of a three-person delegation from the U.N. Finally, we were able to hold it. We were able to hold a referendum with all the Timorese voting. And there, again, the amount of – we agreed on the referendum on the 5th of May, 1999 because of a variety of factors. The elections had to – the referendum had to take place before the (end of war was?) 1999 – in other words, three months, ordinarily the wrong approach – too fast. [0038:18] Second, the security situation remained controlled by the Indonesian army and the country was full of militias – pro-Indonesian militias. So we agonized as to whether to hold the referendum or not. Finally, with the support of Xanana Gusmao and Ramos-Horta – in other words, the Timorese nationalist leaders – we went ahead. And the outcome was 98 percent of participation and 79 percent in favor of independence. So I think it shows that in some situations – as we are seeing in Tunis at the moment and as we saw in Cambodia in 1993 – people, when given the chance, seize it and want to vote. But of course, the elections must be credible, must be free and fair. Now, turning to Afghanistan, I – when I became the secretary general’s representative – personal representative for Afghanistan in 2000 – early 2000, I found to my surprise, that successive resolutions of the General Assembly that started in 1995 had omitted any reference to the need for elections in Afghanistan. I found that very surprising – as if Afghans for some reason had some kind of defect in their brain that prevented them from voting – although they had actually voted in the 1960s and 1970s. [00:39:51] I went – my discussions with Ahmad Shah Massoud and with the former king of Afghanistan; they both pledged, to me, that there would be – that they were in favor of elections the day the Taliban was overthrown. The Taliban was overthrown faster than we expected for reasons that you know. And we then got to the Bonn Conference in late November 10 years ago. The conference, by the way, was not a peace conference. It was an emergency conference designed to lay down a path towards normalization in Afghanistan. A colleague of mine that was in the U.N. and I argued vociferously, almost – in quiet but vociferously – whether we should include elections in the Bonn Agreement in – as part of the transition. He was against it; I was in favor. He won in terms of the draft that we presented to the Afghans. But I managed to get the two Afghan delegations, the one representing the Northern Alliance and the one representing the former king, to agree that elections should be held and should be held at the end of the transition period. Now, of course, elections, per se, were not going to do the trick. It requires – they required a level playing field, and therefore these presuppose the need to have a proper disarmament process – this disarmament – the disarmament

of the militias that existed and had been used by the Americans to help in the overthrow of the Taliban. Unfortunately, neither the United States nor later NATO showed the slightest inclination in ensuring that the government of Afghanistan would have the monopoly on the means of violence. So the DDR process and its successive process called the DIAG, the Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups, remain on paper. Now, that meant that when elections were going to take place there would be a large number of armed groups. Now, in 2004 – I mean, I – when – in most peace settlements you need to establish a calendar – a calendar as to when things will happen, not as deadlines, but as target dates. If you don’t have a calendar, it’s going to be very difficult to move things forward. [00:42:39] The calendar in Bonn foresaw elections two and a half years after the agreement in Bonn, namely in the summer of 2004. However, DDR had not taken place and there were – there was no law on political parties. The U.S. representative at the time, who was an envoy of the Bush administration, insisted on presidential elections first, even though in theory they should have been held at the same time as the parliamentary elections. The elections – the reason for this was that the Bush administration wanted to show in November 2004 that there had been an electoral process and, more importantly, that their favorite candidate had actually won. This did happen. And I have to say that the elections were, on the whole, free and fair. And at that time the role of the U.N. was particularly important in the holding of the elections. By the time we got to 2005, the method chosen for – to hold – the electoral system chosen was a bizarre system that the president – President Karzai – insisted on, which was called the single, non-transferable vote. This system, which I gather is only used in Vanuatu and in Jordan, consists of anyone that wishes to stand, stand in with no political party affiliation. Each province send in a given number of representatives to the parliament. And the – and the people – and the candidates that win the largest number of votes in – according to the size of the province send representatives to parliament. This means that if, for example, one – the first candidate – in the province that sends five representatives to parliament, if in this province one candidate wins 65 percent, he gets in. But if the fourth candidate only gets 1 percent, he also – he or she also get in. And the result has been the atomization of the parliament and the lack of political parties – or, rather, the slow growth of political parties. [00:45:12] The problem, of course, with encouraging political parties was, and continues to be, the danger that warlords and commanders would become heads of parties, would – and use the pressure of weapons to get not only themselves but others riding on their coattails. Now, we now pass to 2009 and this is a few months after I left my job as the special envoy. I said in September, 2008, before leaving, that in my view presidential elections or parliamentary elections, in 2009, would not be feasible for the simple reason that a quarter of the districts in Afghanistan were in – either in the hands – under the influence of the Taliban, and that this meant, in turn, that half the Pashtun districts were, in fact, unreachable, at least unreachable in terms of being able to monitor what happened during the – on voting day. There was a possibility to have – for – if the Bush – if the Obama Administration had handled things differently, there was a possibility of demanding from President Karzai that he step down in May, 2009 when his term ended.

Instead, the Western countries went along with the opinion of the Supreme Court – which has no credibility, unfortunately, in Afghanistan – that the president could remain in power until the next president was sworn in. [00:46:59] The result was that the elections were run by an electoral commission considered to be independent but actually all appointed by the president in a – in a – in a confused reading of the provisions of the constitution which only gave the right to the president to appoint the commission prior to the establishment of parliament. The result, we have seen it. The first – the presidential elections were not considered credible even if, probably, President Karzai might have won them anyway. The parliamentary elections have been an extraordinary mess, as you probably have – those of you who have followed it. And the parliament has only been established, finally now, 15 months after – or 12 – or 14 months after the elections actually took place. The outcome of this is that neither the presidency, the legislature or the supreme court have any legitimacy. And that makes the situation in terms of discussion with the Taliban and eventually potential to remove them all the more – all the more difficult. And the precedent for free and fair elections in Afghanistan is, I fear, not particularly bright. Thank you. MR. CAROTHERS: Thanks. Thanks very much. Ben, would you like to comment on the question of generalizable lessons? And I sympathize, I tried to do that myself – come up with generalizable lessons – but I face the problem that he raises that it is hard to generalize. Yet, some of yours were – you know, I was focusing, for example, on what you said about maybe the focus on inclusivity is being overdone in some circumstances, and you used the term “aggregative” as an alternative to that. So would you just say a bit about the question of generalizable lessons? And then tell me, what’s the difference between an inclusive and an aggregative process, so I understand it better? [00:49:03] MR. REILLY: Well, I think – thanks, Tom. I think – I think Francesc is absolutely right. And there’s absolutely not one applicable lesson for every case. And I mean, if you take a country like Egypt today – I was in Egypt recently on behalf of IFES – Egypt’s a country that needs elections now. They needed them earlier, actually. They’ve been delaying them. But the Egyptian state hasn’t been destroyed. The Egyptian – you know, you – the water’s running and the, you know, the state capacity is intact. That’s the not the case in really severe cases of – like Libya or other end-of-civil-war situations. And I think that – so the generalizable lesson really talks to those sorts of situations when it comes to timing. When it comes to the question of inclusivity, this is – this is – everyone – I think we all agree and I agree, it’s very good to include minorities. Of course, you know, we need women. Of course descriptive representation’s important. These are all – no one would disagree. But if we reify them to such an extent that the inclusivity itself is the goal, rather than a functioning government, then we’re just doing our – the people of that country a terrible disservice. And that is what has happened in Nepal, Burundi, to some extent in Afghanistan through a different process because of this idiotically – you know, this crazy electoral system leading to this idiotically fragmented parliament. So I don’t want to be up here as the – as the person who’s booing Santa Claus, but the – at some point we need to decide whether having every shade of opinion, ethnicity and every other form of descriptive representation included

is more important than a government that can form, choose its own prime minister – I mean, a number of these countries that we’re talking about have not even been able to reach that step and govern. So it’s not an overturning of the apple cart, but maybe just a – you know, whether we have our priorities exactly right. MR. CAROTHERS: All right, we’ll see if Santa Claus wants to speak for himself out there. (Laughter.) Yeah, let me get a few comments. And you don’t have to disguise questions – comments as questions. You can just make them as comments, too. That’s all right here, this is a discussion. And who’d like to start that? I’ll get several of you – yeah, right there – and if you could just introduce yourself to the crowd that would be great. [00:51:21] Q: I’m Bill Goodfellow at the Center for International Policy. And, as always, Francesc, I agree with you on Afghanistan. I think if anything you’re optimistic. The big problem is, how do you have elections in the middle of a civil war – which is what we have in Afghanistan. 2014 is the next elections. And it’s an enormous challenge. It seems to me, until you settle – have some sort of political settlement, sort of – it doesn’t make much sense going ahead with the elections. And also looking at Afghanistan – I was stunned when I was there in August to learn, I guess I sort of – I knew it – Karzai appoints everybody – every governor, every mayor – or perhaps a better word is auctions off every position. And it’s – and I sort of came to the conclusion that there’s literally more democracy in Cuba than in Afghanistan right now. So it’s an enormous challenge. How do you – how do you move ahead in Afghanistan with elections – credible elections – without bringing some political settlement with the Taliban? MR. CAROTHERS: Yeah, why don’t we come – actually, Francesc, why don’t you address that? I mean, I was struck over the last seven or eight years how often Iraq and Afghanistan were referred to in the same category of post-conflict countries when both had ongoing civil wars. And we seem to have a set of intellectual and practical machinery for post-conflict cases, and we just decided these were going to be part of that, but – without identifying them as a different kind of problem. And that’s what you were grappling with, 2005, 2008. Could you comment on that? MR. VENDRELL: Oh, right. I agree with Bill that elections are not feasible now and that – I mean, credible elections. They weren’t feasible in ’09 and ’10 and they’re not going to be feasible for the time being – for as long as the insecurity reigns across the country. So the answer would have been, in my view, the establishment of a government of national unity – much as I fear the Kenyan and other precedence – but some kind of government that would have a consensus behind it in terms of what to negotiate with the Taliban about and about the red lines. So even if it’s not perhaps a government of national unity as such, a government with a national consensus behind it on these key issues. [00:53:33] I certainly don’t see how an election now would be possible, nor do I think that the Loya Jirga, another Afghan institution, would – could probably be held in situations that would – and give it enough legitimacy. MR. CAROTHERS: I mean, Susanne, bringing you in, I mean, the question in, I think, many people’s mind in Kenya is it – should we frown now on power-sharing agreements and say, well, gee, look at the Kenyan case; that hasn’t been very good – are you arguing it isn’t really the power-sharing arrangement, per se, that’s the problem, it’s underlying problems which pre-existed that which continue and have not been resolved? And so, you know, should

we – what should the Kenyan case lead us to think about the general instinct that has come out in a number of African – Sub-Saharan African countries towards power-sharing agreements when there’s conflict over an election? MS. MUELLER: Well, I mean, it’s – I have a hard time answering that question because – MR. CAROTHERS: That’s why I asked it. (Laughter.) [00:54:25] MS. MUELLER: I tend not to like them because I consider them potential – having the potential to revert to a one-party state in a way. I mean, within this – it’s unclear who’s the government and who’s the opposition. And it’s – it has – but on the other hand – in other words, I’m not answering your question. MR. CAROUTHERS: OK. (Laughter.) MS. MUELLER: On the other hand, there was a tremendous amount of violence. And I think if you ask Kofi Annan, his aim was to stop the violence. And the question was, does the end justify the mean in that particular case? Is – do I think power sharing is a good idea? No, in general. But do I think maybe it was necessary at that point to keep the killing down? Possibly. And – but I do – basically the point of what I was saying is, I do think that underlying all of this are these factors where you have this architecture of constitutions, rule of law, electoral administrative procedures, which are constantly being undermined because – and I mean, the rewards. [00:55:34] If – let’s say I’m a civil servant. And I – it’s not that I’m stupid; I know what I’m supposed to do. But on the other hand, if somebody comes to me and tells me not to do it or I get the idea that I shouldn’t do it, and I lose my job and my kids can’t go to primary school and, in short, if I get punished for doing the wrong thing – I mean, doing – yeah, for doing the wrong thing – I mean, for doing the – yeah – punished for doing the wrong thing and not rewarded for doing the right thing. And so – and then, at the same time, the danger is that the architecture is constantly as this – I love this phrase from this report – termites at work. It’s constantly being eroded, and yet it’s not as though I’m saying that all these efforts in improving the quality of elections, for instance, having an independent election – electoral commissions – MR. CAROTHERS: Right, right. (Inaudible) – MS. MUELLER: – how could one be against that? MR. CAROTHERS: Right, but do – (inaudible) – MS. MUELLER: For mother and apple pie. I mean – MR. CAROTHERS: But these other factors, yeah. MS. MUELLER: – you have to try, but does that – that’s not the end of it, because if you see that the whole political system isn’t operating in terms of obeying the rule of law and conforming to new administrative procedures, and if you see that violence is taking over everything, it leaves everybody in a bit of quandary –

MR. CAROTHERS: Yeah, OK. Thanks. MS. MUELLER: – and so – you know, yeah. [00:56:55] MR. CAROTHERS: Yeah, we have a question right here; then I’ll come to you and get to you. Yeah. Q: HI, my name is Kate Pazoles. I’m a student at GW. My question is in regards to – I mean, obviously we see a lot of countries where these fragmented governments, because there’s such proportional representation, they can’t get anything done and they’re just sort of always in this stalemate. But in societies that are already, you know, sectarianized or tribalized that are so divided and fragmented, is it possible to create political parties that are not based on those lines? I mean, how would you go about sort of shifting that societal organization in order to break out of that in terms of – and when you translate it politically? MR. CAROTHERS: Ben, I’m going to ask you to answer that, but let me take another question or two, and we’ll come back to that. Yes, thank you – right there. Q: Hello, my name is Sara Reynebius (ph), and I wanted to come back to this question of timing a little bit in two aspects: one being security, another one being corruption. Because I think the most important question is not whether or not we should have this time in between the end of conflict and election, but why we should have it, to know what needs to be set up. We often think of elections kind of needed for democracy, but there are certain things that we need for elections, and one of them being just simple security. And it seems to me, it’s very hard post-conflict because a lot of times that security tends to come from an international actor and there’s not a belief within the country that it can itself made – make sure that its own people can security vote or join a party and actually participate. I – I’m from Guatemala, and I think, when I was back there doing research, I would often ask people about democracy and voting and especially in light of the transition, and they would tell me, well, democracy is something that they have up north in the United States. Democracy’s something that happens elsewhere; what we have here is corruption, but we’re going to keep on trying and we’re going to keep on voting and we’re going to keep on doing all these things, but we really have corruption; we don’t have democracy here. And so it kind of taught me that there was a belief that democracy existed as a system, but not an internalization of that. And so I think that really affects when setting up for first elections. [00:59:16] And then the other question that I had – MR. CAROTHERS: Briefly, please. Q: – yes, sorry –

MR. CAROTHERS: OK. Q: – very quickly, to do with corruption and I just wanted to raise the question of, I know that this is an evil word nowadays, but lustration or vetting as things that need to be looked upon for setting up first elections, especially when it’s a legacy of leaders that are gained from the past conflict. MR. CAROTHERS: OK, thanks. I’m going to take one more here – right here. Yeah. Q: Hi, Joe Brinker, USAID. I actually had a – just I wanted to loop back on a couple factual points on the Afghan elections and parliament; I don’t know if I should do that now or wait for the questions to be answered. MR. CAROTHERS: Nope, let it go. Q: OK. MR. CAROTHERS: I mean, go with it, yeah. [00:59:59] Q: OK. Just to come back to the seating of parliament, parliament was actually seated, I believe, in late December or early January, three or four months after the actual election. There was subsequently a continuation of a controversy due to the special elections tribunal that Karzai had established to contends – contest some of the election results, and this did drag out for a while. I just wanted to clarify that. And then also, I just would want to caution against putting the 2009 and 2010 elections together. I hear this a lot in Washington and in other places sort of removed from Kabul, but the 2009 elections were very problematic. The 2010 elections actually were fairly well-administered outside of areas that were insecure. It was – it was in the insecure areas there were remaining problems and those are issues that are – that are – that were very serious in some cases, but I did – don’t want to put the two together. I think often they are. They had different problems, and the extent of those problems were different, so I just wanted to make that point. Thanks. MR. CAROTHERS: Can I put you on the spot and take off your USAID hat and just speak as a human being – and what about this general question in Afghanistan: Is it – is it feasible to be thinking ahead to the next elections in 2014 if the civil conflict is in a state that it’s in today, or is this worth – you know, have we seen the value of this process in a situation of comparable – both feasibility and value of it? Q: It’s a good question. Where to start: First off, I think there are a lot of components to an election that’s still several years off that are encouraging. Some of the leadership within the IEC did quite a good job; they remain. There’s been quite a lot of capacity building that’s taken place over the years starting in 2004 with the electoral bodies, and a lot of that has been retained. Still a lot of work to be done. Encouragingly there’s a lot of thinking going on right now. [01:02:18] I’ve been involved in every election in Afghanistan since 2004. I was the chief of logistics for the Afghan presidential elections out of country. I was the head of the U.N election office in Jalalabad, and I’ve been with AID since 2009. This is the first time I’ve seen this much thinking in preparation for an election that’s still several years off. We’re still far away from that, but – and these are early days – but it’s kind of a hypothetical question. I mean,

it’s pretty clear we’re going to have elections in 2014, possibly 2013. The way the electoral calendar is, we have elections possibly scheduled ’13, ’14, ’15, and there’s some discussion right now about merging those. So I would say, right now, you know, there’s at least some good things happening. Obviously it’s a huge challenge, and I think we’re a little bit too far out to really nail a lot of the questions down, but at least people are talking. [01:03:12] MR. CAROTHERS: Thanks. I appreciate the reflection. Ben, do you want to come back to the question that was posed over here, and then, Francesco, you might have any comments on that? MR. REILLY: Sure, well, so that – it’s sort of the $64 question really. So how do you create, you know, broad-based, nonethnic parties and – (chuckles) – I mean, as Susanne’s case, Kenya is a country that has grappled with and tried to do this, and it’s very difficult to do, but I would say in the kinds of countries in which the U.N. has an involvement, the international community has an involvement, there are a couple of things you can do that would help. Firstly, do not run, you know, Netherlands-, Israeli-style national PR elections where you need less than 1 percent of the vote to gain a seat because that will inevitably fragment – it would fragment the United States, it would fragment Australia and it will fragment pretty much anywhere that’s not an entirely homogenous country. Think about if you want to use proportional representation, having smaller districts where you need a higher threshold to gain election. That’s very doable. The reason the U.N., in particular, likes this model is it’s the most administratively convenient way of running an election, you know? What – you don’t have to draw boundaries, the whole country is one boundary; don’t have to have separate ballot papers, you just use one ballot paper. It’s very convenient. But it has all these, you know, undesirable political side effects. [01:04:29] On the second part of the question, for political parties, there are a range of things that can be done. Actually a couple years ago, we launched a book, here in this room, Tom, on this issue. I’ll just point out one amongst many: The Indonesians, after 1999, were facing this exact problem. They were really worried their country was going to break up. They put in place a rule, a law – that is administered, it’s enforced – that said the political parties have to have a national base across the entire archipelago and across most provinces before they can run in an election. You can form a political party; that’s fine. But if you want to run in an election, you have to show that you have some degree of cross-national organization, and that’s been quite successful in building a national party system or – in what is an incredibly diverse and potentially fragmented society. There’s lots of others, but those are just two examples. MR. CAROTHERS: Interesting, yeah. Thanks. Francesco, you want to come back – (inaudible). MR. VENDRELL: Well, I don’t deny the 2010 elections were probably better run than those in 2009. But the question is a matter of perception, and the perception continued to be negative. And secondly, it is unacceptable, in

my viewpoint – and it is unacceptable, I think, for many Afghans that the electoral commission should all be appointed by the president. That – now just briefly on the PR tendency of the U.N.: I would have thought that it – again, it depends. If you’re don’t have it – if you are voting for a constituent assembly, I would have – I would say that there shouldn’t be a threshold, that every views – view should be allowed to be – to be there. In the second election – that is, the one for a proper parliament – I think the idea of a threshold is good. But, again, you know, I know that you mentioned Indonesia, but in – coming from a country – coming from Catalonia in Spain, it depends how the threshold is put. The threshold is – allows certain regions to have their own percentage as opposed to a nationwide percentage, then it’s fine. But otherwise, you do risk depriving minorities in certain areas from representation of – due representation in the national parliament. [01:06:53] MR. CAROTHERS: I’m going to call on – let the editor speak for a minute here. David Gillies is the editor of the book, and he said he wanted to add a few comments. We’re going to go for a little more than 10 more minutes. I also see back there Eric Bjornlund who I want to put on the spot. Eric’s been involved in a lot of elections as president of Democracy International and work he did at NDI, and wrote a great book on election observing. And I’m sure you have a thought or two maybe about Indonesia or other places, Eric. So you’re on notice. But you haven’t raised your hand yet. But, David, do you want to go ahead? (Laughter.) DAVID GILLIES: Sure, thanks so much, Tom, and just a word of appreciation from the North-South Institute for your hosting of this event. There are other parts of the book that I thought I should briefly refer to because I think what you’ve heard today has been looking at some of the root causes, some of the contexts of electoral conflict and some of the lessons learned. There are other chapters in the book that look more at practical action that can be taken to mitigate a conflict, and it’s fair to say that there are very helpful chapters from representatives from IFES, from International Idea and indeed from a sitting judge, Judge Kriegler in South Africa. [01:08:00] I think one or two key messages come out of those practical actions, and I’m very mindful of Susanne’s comment that, you know, technical things have to be done. They’re not fixes, they’re necessary, but they may not be sufficient. I think, as an observer of the electoral world, one of the good things is, is that there is a learning curve, to use a phrase – use a phrase of Tom’s. And in this area, things are happening. The IFES paper, in particular, talks about the need to integrate conflict analysis with the electoral cycle – that is now standard practice in what we do. So there are interventions that can be done around issues to do with conflict analysis, conflict prevention, conflict mitigation and resolution that should be thought about and integrated into the electoral cycle more systematically than heretofore.

[01:08:53] For example, in Southern Sudan there was an attempt to bring together, across different sectors, different stakeholders involved in election monitoring and observing. The EMV (ph) of the election management body is key, but also the security forces and indeed the peacekeepers were all involved in something that was set up called joint operation centers. They would – they were thinking holistically about the risks of conflict and trying to take preventative action. I should briefly also quickly mention that out of adversity can come very helpful forms of innovation, and some of you will likely know the electronic platforms set up by Kenyan journalists in the wake of the 2007 conflict and violence, and that is called “Ushahidi.” It’s Swahili for “testimony” or “witness,” and this electronic platform is a social – it’s a mash-up, if you will, of social media, SMS and email with GIS mapping technology as a way to observe reported incidents of violence as they’re happening in real time – a very useful development. A final thing I’d like to say is, as someone who’s now left a think tank and finds himself working for a government aid agency is – it’s a kind of self-reflection – is a need to constantly be mindful of the dangers of complacency. A message from one of the other chapters in the book is that donors in Kenya around 2002, they saw a peaceful election, Grosomodo (ph), a peaceful referendum in 2005, and perhaps they were caught off guard with the events around 2007. So much more can be done to be mindful of the risks of conflict. Finally, I’d like to say that this learning curve that I mentioned is very real. Probably some of you will know that the UNDP, about 18 months ago, came out with a manual, a guide, if you will, to think more systematically around the dangers of conflict in elections. And indeed if you look on the USAID web page – I think I’m right in saying this – there’s now a Security Framework discussion which is available for planning in highly charged elections – very, very useful. Thank you. [01:11:16] MR. CAROTHERS: Thanks; I see Michael Henning smiling and nodding that they’re getting a shout-out for their – Michael’s head of – on the elections team in the – in the Democracy and Governance Center at USAID. Eric, you want to go ahead? ERIC BJORNLUND: Thanks, Tom, and congratulations to the editor and contributors to this volume. I think this is really great. I think – I guess, given the opportunity to make a comment or two, my main concern would be about the international community’s understanding the limits of what it can do and where it has influence in these kinds of situations and trying to respect the importance of standards and of integrity in this process. I think we have the opportunity, as the international community, in different forms, to engage often at the election stage of post-conflict scenarios, and it’s in the design of the election system or the administration of the – of an election process where we have the most influence and we’re often not thinking about long-term development implications of what we do. Ben made the point that we often will choose an election system largely based on administrative convenience, and he gave the example of Iraq, and there were unfortunate consequences of that. I think there are other examples, I

think, that we have made shortcuts to try to make sure that we get through the process, have the election happen, have some kind of – something result from the election that’s valuable, and some of those shortcuts have long-term consequences: certainly the process in Afghanistan of trying to resolve the mess that came out of the 2009 elections, where there was lots of controversy about the legitimacy of many, many ballots, and that election authorities, with assistance from the international advisors, made up some kind of audit process on the fly that enabled them to disallow a substantial number of ballots and come out with some kind of result. And that process was not really provided for in the law, wasn’t really well explained, wasn’t really well-understood, and to the extent that people tried to understand it, it really wasn’t legitimate, but it got through the – it got through the crisis of the moment. [01:13:33] The situation – it’s happened a couple times in elections in Haiti and most recently, when the election observers and the international community decided that the way the election authorities were reporting the results was in the wrong order and kind of came in and insisted that the candidate who they were saying came in third should come in second, and be included in the runoff. And I guess the larger point is that the way that these processes take place is very important and the legitimacy of them and the standards of them is very important, and the international community has to not just think short term about getting through the crisis but has to think a little bit about the implications of these processes and make sure that we’re reinforcing something that contributes to the longer-term development of democracy in the countries. Be interested in your reactions to that. MR. CAROTHERS: I don’t want to put Michael Henning on the spot either, since he’s Santa Claus back there – as the international community sitting right behind you, Eric. (Laughter.) And so – but – and Michael, if you want to comment on that, but I have – yeah, why don’t you go ahead and then I’ll come to you, sir. Here, yes. Q: I’d actually have the exact same set of points that I would make from Eric’s chair, and I think that when face these short-term crises and these sort of political or foreign policy imperatives, we – from the international donor side as well as – let alone, the ministries, the foreign affairs, are very quick to dispense with the long-term problems that are created by short-term solutions, and so that’s just a – I don’t know that that’s going to change anytime in the short term or medium term, but I think we can at least – if – my goal would be to see if we could have folks that are looking at that longer term in the room when those shorter-term decisions are made, the – a more appropriate balance and tradeoff can be – can be considered. And that’s a struggle within every sort of donor, within every ministry of foreign affairs. [01:15:28] And I – and I – you know, I think the most common struggle that we have – I mean, you know, the electoral system choice is really critical, timing is also critical and we’ve learned a lot. But, you know, when we choose a system that doesn’t allow for representation and accountability, which is a little bit harder to measure, then we have set up a problem for the long run and that, of course, creates lots of work for us, you know, decades in the future. But that accountability component is critical, and accountability to voters and to citizens, and that’s a metric that is more difficult. It’s easier to assign the – what the descriptive groups are and how they can be better represented as

a numerical game – but to get them to be actually representing those folks is a challenge that involves institutions and better accountability mechanisms that need to be built into the political system. So I think it’s a debate that’s actually not really well resolved; there’s a lot of debates on all sides within the political science community. So unfortunately, we can’t rely on political scientists to guide us out of this thicket and we have to look at, you know, balancing the analysis in political science that we know along with the real-life experiences. So that’s a struggle for folks that are straddling that world like many of those in the room. MR. CAROTHERS: Thanks, Michael, very fair comment. Yes, sir, right here in the front, you had your hand up. We’ll take maybe this final comment and then we’ll wrap up. Yeah. [01:16:52] Q: Dr. Donner (ph) with Pax Christi. And I wondered, would it make a difference if the international community ruled that – and the election was not credible, although they can seize power – that any law – they would not be eligible for any loans – that government – from any international bodies like the International Development Bank, the IMF, nor would any loans taken out by that government necessarily – once that government has ended – have to be paid by the people of that country? Would that make the elections a little more fair? MR. CAROTHERS: You know that point of view, if you look in Paul Colliers’ book on the deals with guns and votes – and he has three big proposals at the end, and the second of the three is that if a country, at least in sub-Saharan Africa, holds elections that don’t meet international standards, he nominates France, Britain and the United States should invade the country and overthrow the government. I was having lunch with Paul recently, and I asked him where in the world he got that idea from because, you know, a lot of bad elections are held and usually life goes on because there are other interests at stake and there are limitations of the effect of quote, “the international community” on these places. And so, I – you know, there – the amount – the price that countries pay for having bad elections varies tremendously and, you know, there is a – there is no enforcement of any general standard because of, you know, the imperfections of the international community. So I think it’s – you know, there’s been an attempt on the part of the international election support community to raise awareness of elections, the transparency and gradually the quality. But if you just did an X-ray of the elections in the world today versus 20 years ago, maybe there’s been an overall improvement, but there’s still so many bad elections that are held that we’re not at that place yet. [01:18:51] Why don’t we finish up by just any closing comments that you’d like to make. You don’t have to, but if you’d like to come back through, I’ll just go in this order. Francesc, any further final thought on this? MR. VENDRELL: Just simply to reiterate that every situation tends to – tend to be different. I simply also – since I have one minute – I wanted to mention the concerns I have about international observation of elections – haven’t been instrumental in getting the U.N. to monitor the elections in Nicaragua for the first time in any independent country. In 1990, those elections were actually very well monitored. But there is a huge danger in elections which are monitored and – by short-term observers, and a proper election needs to be monitored from the beginning to the end and it needs – you need a large number of short-term observers to be present across the country. This

doesn’t happen very often. There – and the danger also is that because many of these observers come from governments, and governments are somewhat afraid to jeopardize their relations with the government of the country in question, that there is a tendency to give a pass mark to elections that are often not really credible. [01:20:10] MR. CAROTHERS: Thanks. Susanne, closing thought? Just be brief. MS. MUELLER: Yes. Sure. I’m still struck by the fact that a lot of incumbents today understandably were on – sort of electoral management techniques when in fact there are places, including Kenya, where these are routinely undermined, and if the message still doesn’t seem to have got through that – I mean, if you look at the WikiLeaks cables in the case of Kenya, actually they’re very good and they’re very interesting and they touch on all sorts of things that maybe if they had been put together in one piece, would have suggested that this was a highly fragile, highly volatile situation that – and that, in the case of a close election, it might explode. And so I guess if – my final, in part, message would be, yes, continue with doing all these good electoral management techniques, but if you’re part of an organization that is looking at elections, you’d better look at the factors exogenous to elections that actually affect them, including deliberate attempts to undermine newly created institutions that are designed to improve elections. And – MR. CAROTHERS: (Inaudible.) MS. MUELLER: – that’s it. MR. CAROTHERS: Good, thanks. Ben – last word. [01:21:22] MR. REILLY: Just in reference to the – to the – to the last question, I think – I think we’ve got to get away from the assumption that if there’s a bad election held somewhere, the international community are necessarily the guys on the white horse riding in. You know, what do we do where the result of the international community wanted is arrived at by fraudulent means? And we – we’re not going to invade ourselves. I’m thinking of 2009 presidential election in Afghanistan. And for that matter, what if fair procedures deliver the wrong result, like Hamas winning the elections in Palestine in 2006? So I think we need to have a, you know, a different mindset and, you know, as a visitor in this country, it’s been inescapable to me to just see over the years that we’ve ratcheted down the bar for success in elections in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Originally, we were going to be creating a democracy, then we were going to be – (groans) – democracy, it was, you know, with floors; wasn’t going to Switzerland, it was OK. Now we really don’t talk about democracy that much. So what I – you know, I guess, a sort of realism /humility is in order. MR. CAROTHERS: The book is for sale back there. I just saw somebody buying it. Charge it to your organization if you can. I think it’s $30, which is actually not that bad these days, in the days of books. You know, if you can talk to David, maybe you can talk him into a discount, but the book is on sale back there. And I want to

thank Ben and Susanne and Francesc and also David. Congratulations for the good work and thanks to all of you for coming. We’ll see you again. MR. REILLY: Thanks. MR. VENDRELL: Thanks. (Applause.) (END) [01:22:58]