Why do Electoral Observation Missions Occur? Some Possible Explanations

In the last years, questions dealing with the causes and consequences of fraudulent elections have won popularity among political scientists. However, there has been little attention in exploring why a country would allow a third-party to monitor the elections and, likewise, why an international institution – or NGO – would be interested in deploying a mission to observe such election. In this paper, I argue that electoral observation missions (EOMs) are observed when a particular set of conditions are met: in developing countries that need to enhance trade partnerships and increase foreign aid; in democracies with stronger opposition forces, and in young economically dependent regimes. These hypotheses are tested using a novel dataset and using a selection-model that takes into account the partial visibility of the data.