The Electoral Ecosystem

Chapter 8 examines the core principles of the Court to interpret the right to free and fair elections (Article 3 Protocol 1) and interrogates the long-standing minimalism attached to its substantive and procedural obligations, which is also translated in the wide margin of appreciation when the Court leaves it to the discretion of the governments to ‘mould’ their own model of democracy. A similar restraint in scrutinizing the purpose of interference in the proportionality analysis is observed and reflect the Court’s historical record of protecting only the existential conditions democracy. It lends further support to the argument that the Court’s interpretive equipment proves insufficient in the face of infrastructural erosion.