DEMOCRATIC DESIGNS
INTERNATIONAL INTERVENTION AND ELECTORAL PRACTICES IN POSTWAR BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
By Kimberley Coles
University of Michigan, 2007, 297 pages
Review by Michael Beach
Democracy is neither natural nor intuitive (5)
For those of us who lived our entire life in a country based on democratic principles, the idea that democracy would be thought of as unnatural and counter intuitive seems itself to be counter intuitive. Coles makes a compelling case when one considers all the thought and effort it takes to create an election. An election is really three separate processes, voter registration, voting, and results tabulating. All are complex. Each are made up of many actants (people, objects, processes).
Parts of the international community have a fundamental belief of democratic society as the best power to bring about peace (237). Bosnia-Herzegovina seemed to outsiders as somewhere that could be improved through the imposition of democratic principles since in the 1990s it suffered from war, authoritarianism, and communism (33).
Coles argues rather convincingly how the need to create complex labor-intensive processes, and a perceived need to impose democracy through negotiation and external experts (or even internal experts) would seem to question naturalness. So many places along the election path are fraught with both innocent and intentional process ambiguities and deviations. Many options along the planning and execution paths are open to design and interpretation based on assumptions by system architects and implementers.
Since democracy was a new approach to Bosnians, fears of unfairness or interference led to a desire for transparency. This transparency was bodily symbolized in form of the (sheer, mere, peer) presence of international experts (88). This is similar to the point made by Rist about the need for technical measures including scientific (or expert) knowledge.
Coles argues not only a need to use experts, but also how these experts are knowledgeable about processes that are used in virtually any setting using a cookie-cutter approach (16). The agencies seeking to facilitate the democracy machine approach argue that using ‘standard’ practices makes the effort apolitical or acultural (77) much as Ferguson describes. Technicality equates to depolitization (152).
The intent of holding an election is to translate voter will into political authority so long as those imposing democracy deem the outcome as desirable. The process has to be perceived as valid, but who’s perception matters? Whoever judges validity, in Coles argument the process and outcome needs to be perceived as free and fair. The election is not discretely either free and fair or not free and not fair, rather processes need to be free enough and fair enough to create confidence (155). Mathematically, that is more likely if there is some level of transparency (though total transparency is not really possible). How transparency is measured is another ambiguous concept. So long as the difference between winners and losers is well outside the margin of error perhaps there is more trust. When races are more closely contested then trust is probably more an issue.
INTERNATIONAL INTERVENTION AND ELECTORAL PRACTICES IN POSTWAR BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
By Kimberley Coles
University of Michigan, 2007, 297 pages
Review by Michael Beach
Democracy is neither natural nor intuitive (5)
For those of us who lived our entire life in a country based on democratic principles, the idea that democracy would be thought of as unnatural and counter intuitive seems itself to be counter intuitive. Coles makes a compelling case when one considers all the thought and effort it takes to create an election. An election is really three separate processes, voter registration, voting, and results tabulating. All are complex. Each are made up of many actants (people, objects, processes).
Parts of the international community have a fundamental belief of democratic society as the best power to bring about peace (237). Bosnia-Herzegovina seemed to outsiders as somewhere that could be improved through the imposition of democratic principles since in the 1990s it suffered from war, authoritarianism, and communism (33).
Coles argues rather convincingly how the need to create complex labor-intensive processes, and a perceived need to impose democracy through negotiation and external experts (or even internal experts) would seem to question naturalness. So many places along the election path are fraught with both innocent and intentional process ambiguities and deviations. Many options along the planning and execution paths are open to design and interpretation based on assumptions by system architects and implementers.
Since democracy was a new approach to Bosnians, fears of unfairness or interference led to a desire for transparency. This transparency was bodily symbolized in form of the (sheer, mere, peer) presence of international experts (88). This is similar to the point made by Rist about the need for technical measures including scientific (or expert) knowledge.
Coles argues not only a need to use experts, but also how these experts are knowledgeable about processes that are used in virtually any setting using a cookie-cutter approach (16). The agencies seeking to facilitate the democracy machine approach argue that using ‘standard’ practices makes the effort apolitical or acultural (77) much as Ferguson describes. Technicality equates to depolitization (152).
The intent of holding an election is to translate voter will into political authority so long as those imposing democracy deem the outcome as desirable. The process has to be perceived as valid, but who’s perception matters? Whoever judges validity, in Coles argument the process and outcome needs to be perceived as free and fair. The election is not discretely either free and fair or not free and not fair, rather processes need to be free enough and fair enough to create confidence (155). Mathematically, that is more likely if there is some level of transparency (though total transparency is not really possible). How transparency is measured is another ambiguous concept. So long as the difference between winners and losers is well outside the margin of error perhaps there is more trust. When races are more closely contested then trust is probably more an issue.
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