Electoral Observation Missions (EOMs) are frequently employed by International Actors to give feed-back both towards observed countries as well as towards the International Actor itself. The reports form the basis for future activities towards the observed country in order to alter the future electoral dynamic. A question that is central for answering whether EOMs work in the context of democracy promotion is to which degree trace the influence of EOMs’ reports on the policies of International Actors towards observed countries can be traced.
The paper tries to answer this question by focusing on the relations of the EU towards the CIS-members and by breaking it down into two sub-questions. In the context of the CIS the EU rarely sends its own EOMs but instead frequently relies on OSCE EOM reports that explicitly form the basis for the publication of EU declarations. Yet neither is the character of EU declarations systematically parallel to the underlying EOM reports nor do all EOM reports build the basis for EU declarations. This results in the following sub-questions: 1. How can the character of EU declarations in the follow-up of EOMs be explained? 2. Under which circumstances does the EU issue declarations building on EOM reports?
In order to answer these questions a thorough analysis of the contents of EOM reports will be performed and the results compared systematically with the results of an analysis of EU declarations. Hereby a model will be used that has been previously applied in the analysis of EU external democracy promotion towards Central Asian states. In a second step three hypothesis will be tested that have also been applied to EU external democracy promotion in general. The outcomes will help to find out whether EU’s reactions have the potential for altering the electoral dynamics of observed countries.
