Electoral integrity resilience: Protecting elections during global risks, crises and emergencies

Emergency situations caused by natural and technological hazards have often been thought to pose a major threat to democratic practices. The COVID-19 pandemic was a critical case which was thought to pose as a major threat to election quality and democracy worldwide. Although there have been many country-specific studies of the effects of the pandemic, cross-national analysis has been limited due to the unavailability of data. This article introduces the concept of electoral integrity resilience as the configuration of actors, resources and properties which enable societies to adapt to an external shock which could damage electoral integrity. It then uses a new original dataset to identify the effects that the pandemic had on electoral integrity in national elections during 2020-22, which covers the whole electoral cycle. It finds that the electoral campaign was the most affected aspect of the elections. It then identifies the properties of polities which had the greatest resilience to the pandemic. The article has important lessons for the study and praxis of how future national and global risks can be prepared for and the construction of strong institutions.