Electoral governance matters: explaining the quality of elections in Latin America

This paper provides a systematic cross-national analysis of the role of electoral administration in explaining acceptable democratic presidential elections in 19 countries in Latin America since 1980 or the first pivotal, transitional election. We provide two alternative measures of election administration, as well as other key factors to test partial proportional odds ordered logit models predicting the probability of an acceptable, flawed, or failed electoral process. Our results show an important positive role for professional, independent electoral commissions on electoral outcomes in Latin America, controlling for other socio-economic and political factors.