Constitutional courts are widely considered as beneficial institutions for democracy and they were introduced in many constitutions during the third wave of democracy. Few studies so far have however examined how constitutional courts perform and how they influence democracy in practice. My paper addresses the issue of constitutional courts’ influences on democracy with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa and constitutional courts’ roles in electoral processes. Most francophone African countries have introduced constitutional courts since 1990. These courts were vested with the power to verify elections and adjudicate electoral related disputes. Consequently, electoral periods are for many of these courts the moments when they attract the highest public attention. As all concepts of democracy agree that elections are a core institution of democracy, electoral matters provide a good example to analyze the constitutional courts’ influences on democracy.
The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, it will introduce an analytical framework to trace the influence of constitutional courts’ behavior on the democratic quality of elections. Court behavior is conceptualized by four dimensions: content, character, consistency and impartiality of decisions. The democratic quality of elections is constituted by three dimensions: participation, competition and legitimacy. The electoral cycle model serves as an instrument to systematically map how these democratic qualities are at stake throughout the electoral process and how they may be influenced by courts. The framework distinguishes functional and dysfunctional as well as direct and indirect influences of constitutional courts on the democratic quality of elections. Second, it will provide new empirical data by applying the analytical framework to Madagascar’s High Constitutional Court (HCC). Madagascar is a third wave democracy that introduced a constitutional court vested with electoral powers and that has been classified by Freedom House as an electoral democracy for the years 1993-2008. The HCC’s decisions on the presidential and legislative elections in the period between 1993 and 2007 will be examined. This analysis will be complemented with data from interviews, electoral reports, newspaper articles and other secondary sources.
