International election observer recommendations: Coercion or authority?

Following the end of the Cold War, discussions about the moral obsolescence of traditional concepts regarding the organization of international relations became widespread in academic and political discourse. One of the main targets of criticism from developed Western countries and the Western-led international structures has been the principle of state sovereignty. In the wake of this criticism, the institution of international election observer recommendations emerged and quickly gained momentum. To identify the specifics of this institution as a distinct global phenomenon and, on this basis, assess the prospects for its development in the foreseeable future, the author examines it through the lens of M. Zurn’s theory of global governance. This article provides a detailed account of the development and legitimization of the institution of electoral recommendations as an instrument of liberal globalization in the 1990s. The author emphasizes that from the very beginning, the practice of electoral recommendations challenged the principle of state sovereignty: the benchmark for Western observers was not international treaties but norms adopted by supranational bodies independently, without approval by state representatives. Since the early 2000s, an increasing number of countries have begun to express dissatisfaction with the lack of transparency in the activities of Western observer missions and the peremptory nature of their ‘recommendations,’ either attempting to offer alternatives or simply sabotaging their implementation. In response, Western observer organizations created a diverse system of mechanisms to coerce states into implementing their commendations. This article provides an original typology of relevant instruments, including mechanisms of a political, economic, and pseudo-legal nature. The author concludes, however, that all these coercive measures have failed to ensure the effective implementation of international observers’ recommendations by states; instead, they have only worsened the crisis of this institution. A way out of this crisis is possible only through a compromise between states and transnational actors, but the position of Western international organizations so far leaves no room for such a compromise.