The emergence of the “event” of the international election observation has become a part of the reality of the new world and its new norms, where elections in many new sovereign states are accompanied by the practice of international monitoring.
This papers will analyze this applying Foucault’s method of eventalization and the breach of self-evidence as the main theoretico-political function of eventalization (M. Foucault, 1991). This will be combined with the topic of international governmentality studies (W. Walters, 2012, M. Dean, 1999) to provide an analysis of the practice of international election observation, its main principles, methodology and standards in order to understand the logic and mentality of this enterprise, beyond the declared goals of enhancing democracy in developing countries.
The author will argue that the practice and techniques of international electoral monitoring does not necessarily have direct impact on democratic development of the observed counties. Rather this election observation practice, which is intended to promote universal and democratic standards, norms in developing countries in fact, echoes a practice of colonialism in the third world countries (D. Scott, 1995, W. Mignolo, 2000, A. Quijano, 2007). Instead of an opened control and monopoly of power by developed countries over underdeveloped or backward countries we have a “democratic” practice of election monitoring. Even though the countries and organizations that conduct election observation have not had, until recently, the standards for this monitoring, they made (make) their assessments that have future impacts on the observed countries ability to join the ‘club’ of developed and established democracies. Moreover it creates an identity of opposition such as “us” and “them”, “here” and “there” (Gupta and Ferguson, 1992). These constructed differences between developed and underdeveloped, democratic and undemocratic, fair and not fair elections, are maintained to keep the power relations between the West and the Rest.
