International actors provide substantial technical and financial support to elections in authoritarian regimes. From Afghanistan to Sudan, international actors procure ballot boxes, train poling staff and provide advice on electoral systems design. However we still lack a sophisticated understanding of its impact and interaction with central contextual factors, such as statehood. How does the impact of international electoral assistance to authoritarian regimes depend on statehood?
Assessing complex second-order effects of this kind poses huge ontological and methodological challenges. Therefore, this paper proposes an innovative research strategy based on insights from recent literature in the field of comparative politics and International Relations. A theory-based approach to development program evaluation is centered on a refinement of Schedler’s typology of authoritarian elections. In the light of two exploratory case studies (Sudan and Libya) with original data, new hypotheses about the interrelation between the impact of international electoral assistance and authoritarian statehood are developed. Preliminary findings suggest that international electoral assistance might have a higher impact in the context of weak statehood than in authoritarian regimes with high levels of control over state capacity.
