Weary. They had the oas which had been doing symbolic monitoring and this was western. They didnt want that and there was a pushback on the u. N. Being the watchdog, the overall monitor, and that led to fragmentation of the monitoring machine. So it game regional organizations, ngos that took up mantle of monitoring which led to issues down the road of who gets to act as a monitor and are they all of equal quality. Host where today does the authority lie . Guest nowhere. Nowhere really. Theres no accreditation that an International Monitoring organization host should there be . Guest probably be a good idea. There is a declaration of principles out of the United Nations and some organizations have signed on to that but that done in any way guarantee they abide by it. They could just sign on to it. Theres no auditing of whether that theyre actually following the practices the declaration seeks to aspires to. Then if you want to have an accreditation process, who does the a decreed accreditation . Who watches the monitors, right . Its the old question from the old clay about who is going to be watching the watchmen. Host Judith Kelley, when people in the u. S. Think of election monitoring they think of jimmy carter. Guest yes. Rightfully. So he deserves a lot of credit for building election monitoring. He and his center there, and theyve been on the forefront of helping to develop the standards the u. N. As well. They have been a major mover in election monitoring, dough finding what it is defining what it is. And carter has done a lot of important work. But its important to understand there is no organization out there that has complete ability to rid itself of any kind of constraints, impositions by concerns about donors, there are other operations within countries, et cetera. Even jimmy carter faces dilemmas about how to conduct his missions in different countries. Host so, lets start, where has it worked well . Guest so, it works best where it is least glamorous, and thats the problem from the perspective of organizations who are trying to thrive and survive. Its for somebodiesome of these organizations its theyre livelihood or its what they do. Even when theyre within intergovernmental organizations you have subagencies that, thats what they do. So it tends to work when the train is already in motion, shall we say. When there are reforms underway. When countries want to make reforms and theyre receptive to people coming in, way in advance, looking at their systems, providing them with advice, helping them with the voter registers, helping to build domestic monitoring capacities. So, this is not a revolutionary tool. It works on the margins, i would say insuring places where theres not a conflict that is just been quelled. It may still be simmering. Conflict is like the worst setting for this type of election monitoring because the observers are worried about stoking violence. So it works best when theres not a winner take all system, where everybody has an incentive to push for winning everything. So, in the middle ground in the middle countries that are trying to make advances, thats where it works best. Host we all remember purple fingers from iraq. Guest yes. Host were there election monitors in iraq . Host or have there been . Guest its not been a highprofile thing in iraq with election monitors. Theres been some but its not been a big issue there. Congo, 2007 im sorry, kenya, 2007. Guest that was a big kenya goes to show how you can make progress in one election and then a few years later, the lack of followup or violence can have restoked and you can have a mess again. So, in its very, very difficult to set a country on a path when we have fixed it and now they know how to run elections and its just going to work. And so in kenya its been up and down with election monitoring, and it is not the election monitors fault per se but its a good example of where they have been very worried about being critical because of the violent potential if they come out and condemn the elections. Host what do you teach at duke . Guest i decree introduction to policy, policy analysis, help undergraduates right honors thesis and teach these topics like tools of international pressure. Ways to provoke domestic response. Host you write you cant vote. Anywhere. In the world. Guest yes. Host why is that . Guest but a im a danish citizen, and the danish laws require residency in order to vote and im not an american citizen because danish laws do not allow dual citizenship and american laws require citizenship. Had i been an american living in denmark i could potentially vote in two places but i cant vote anywhere. Host besides the Carter Center, what are some of the other major groups that monitor democracy that have a lot of legitimacy in international eyes. Guest in the United States, people might be familiar with ndi, the national endowment, the International Republican institute, these are agencies that are independent, theyre not governmental nongovernmental organizations but have a special status. And they do pretty good work in europe we have the ose, we got very parliamentary organizations from the european parliament, council of europe, that do monitoring, and of course the European Union does a lot of monitoring. U. N. Still does monitoring but not in the same high flashing way. They dont come out with public statements a lot. Theyre call assistants. And they do more in conflict setting support of other monitoring organizations. Were seeing organizations pop up all over the world now, regional organizations in africa, south African Development community, different the african union, of course, does election monitoring, the commonwealth secretariat, and even in asia we have organizations popping up. Which one are the moe credible one the more credible ones . Its veries. I would put my money mostly i think the Carter Center does come out on top in terms of the most reliable. Ose does a good job. Not the Parliamentary Assembly of to the ose but the democracy and human rights arm. Ironically, several different monitoring organizations coming sometimes out of the same organization, that sometimes contradict each other. The European Union i had initially thought the European Union would be a great monitoring organization, and im a european citizen of the European Union myself, and the European Union has a lot of political clout and a lot of political tentacles and a lot of ties and constraints on what it can and cannot say, and its observers are people who work for the European Union tell me they get criticized if they dont follow the line of the European Union, what theyre supposed to be saying after the election. So, its not that theyre not critical. Theyre critical when they want to be, but when they dont want to be, its a good example of an organization that we think should have a lot of credible but credibility but that has so many Different Things at stake that sometimes they have to weigh things. At it not a nefarious in the sense that these organizations are not these are not mean, terrible people who want to good out there and lie and cheat and cover things up its that they have different ideals. Different of different norms theyre trying to weigh. Do we want violence to break out . No, probably not do we think its better to call the Glass Half Full rather than half empty . If a country seems to be plugging along, do we say that, yes, this was great or do we point out all the flaws . Where do we which leg do we stand on . So, that can be a difficult balance to find. Then you get different organizations that make different choices and things like in ash azerbaijan you hat different organizations saying Different Things about the quality of elections and thats sometimes the governments rely on that. Thats why they invite so many different monitors in, because we have sort of this what i call in my book, the shadow market developed whether some organizations that can almost be relied ton come in and be friendly towards the government, and so then the government can invite some good ones, some ones they know are going to be critical by good i mean the one that are friendly and then they can spin them against each other. While you cant fool all of the people all of the time, and with a lot of these organizations like the cis or the shanghai corporation, you cant fool the leaders but might be able to fool some of the people some of the time, especially if you have a good grip on your domestic media and you can talk about organizations that endorse your election, et cetera. Host what are the nuts and bolts of monitoring elections . Guest so, there are sort of two ways. The longterm and the shortterm monitoring missions. A Good Organization will come and make multiple previsits. If you go back to south africays historic elections, they started like a whole year before, coming in, looking at the laws, meeting with different types of people, trying to understand the electoral landscape and then leave and come back and leave and come back. And then maybe three or four months before or two months before, depending on the magnitude of the election and the event, they will send a smaller team that will then stay there and follow everything as its developing. And then the shortterm observers come in just a few days before, two or three days before and thats like really big groups that descend on the scene, and many of them may not speak the local language, never been in the country before, may have some experience election monitoring, maybe not, and theyre then distributed throughout the country to try to observe what is going on and they go from one station to the other station to the next station. They only in the station for a short period of time, trying to cover as much ground as possible. And then there is usually a team that stays a littlard are afterwards so the shortterm Mission Leave but depending on how the election is unfolding a team may stay a longer time there if there are disputes. But the observation goes on at a lot 0 of levels. Observers are aware its not just at the ballot stuffing or counseling ballots. Observers have been aware that the laws have to be written in a way that is conducive to competitive elections, that the Voter Registration texas the rosters have to not have dead people on them and things like this. That the commission has to be not stacked in the favor of the ruling party and these types of things. Theyre looking out all sorts of levels of where an unlevel Playing Field can occur. Host do observers have to be invited by the host government . Guest they do. Host sanctioned. Guest they essentially have to be to be official observers they have to be invited, and they have to get some registration or something so they can go into the polling booths. Sometimes they dont get invited and they may work instead with domestic observers or in other sort of undercover ways, but it really is a sovereign situation on the part of the country, and for for example, egypt, case in point that for a long time has been pressured to invite monitors and has just refused to do so under mubarak. Even the u. S. President would say you ought to invite monitors and they refuse to do so, some some countries know they have enough clout that they dont have to bow to the. Put its getting harder some harder. Even putin realizes that he cant just say, no, to these international observers. A member of the ose is actually obliged to invite the ose, although he is in previous elections sometimes he just makes the logistics so completely impossible they refuse to go sometimes, and then he makes sure he invites other observers, too so he can spin them against each other. Host Judith Kelley does the u. S. Invite observers. Guest u. S. Is a member of the ose so it is obliged the ose doesnt have to be invited thatmilesanhour declaration that says they can come and observe elections in any election they want to in member states, so the ose has observed elections in the United States, a couple of times, especially since we had the florida debacle and all of those hanging chads and all that stuff. Theres been more interest come inning to the u. S. But they dont get much publicity over here, and countries like the United States, we have so much domestic scrutiny of the situation, but its actually interesting. There is a project at harvard called electoral integrity project run by tipper norris and just come out with their first report in which they they didnt monitor elections but sort of graded elections over the last 18 months, and the United States was like 26th of the countries that held elections. So, we could certainly use some help. Host what is is your conclusion in your book . Guest i think its broken but worth fixing. I dont knoll we have a choice. Its here to stay. For good or for bad, and the important thing is to understand for public policymakers, for journalists to understand that monitors are a mixed bag. We have a tendencies to think of them as monitors. Theyre all monitors, and we think theyre somehow aspread follow the same set of procedures and come out and we can rely on what they say. But thats not so. We have to understand they, too are agents of donors, of states, and that they have their constraints, and if theres any one thing that we can do to improve it issue think is to come up with a way to provide them with more independence from their from the people who finance them, because right now they end up having to go to places that they realize theyre not going to be effective in, but those places are sexy to go to, government wants them to go there, haiti, whatever, afghanistan. These are messy places. The monitors are not going to make a difference at all there, and theyre pushed to go from one place to the other and dont have time for good followup, and so there are reforms that could be made to make the system better. We cant stop it because its out of the bag and there are so Many Organizations that it if you start pulling back the good one, saying the system isnt working, then youre stuck with the bad ones and that is worse. Host Duke UniversityPolitical Science professor Judith Kelley, heres the book monitoring democracy when International Election observe observation works works works wf fails. This weekend, booktv is in mobile, alabama, with the help of our local cable partner, come cast. In the we sit down with author greg was selikoff to discuss the fort misdemeanor massacre and the red stick war from 1813 to 1814. Were at fort mims park, little five acre park in the southern end of alabama, the location of a major battle between the americans and creek indians in 1813. The fort itself was full of all kinds of folks taking shelter from impending indian attack, included indians that were allied with the americans, local settlers, militias from the mississippi territory and lots of slaves. About 500 people inside the fort, and in august on august 30, 1813, a faction of the creeks that was quite upset with the american policy toward indians, attacked the fort and there was a long battle and at the end some 250 to 300 people inside the fort were killed. And its largely known as the fort mims massacre in most older history backs. Thats how i first learned about it in fifth grade when i read about the fort mims massacre. But theres more to the story. The creeks, like most American Indians had to deal with the expanding american settlements in the late 19th century, and in this area the creeks were quite successful, as were the cherokees insuring at least some portion of them assimilating to american lifestyle. So quite a few wealthy creeks in this area owned slaves. They had big plantations, raised domestic livestock and largely were kind of accommodating their way of life to the american norms of agriculture and other things. But a large part of the creek nation didnt see the advantage to that. They wanted to maintain their traditional lives and there was a real rift in the creeks in 1813, a civil war broke out, and what happened here for them was a continuation of that civil war but did bring the americans into the war against the redstick creek faction that was antiamerican. There was a religious component to it. The shawnee prophet and his brother, tecumseh, were roth the tieing for a new religious way of life for American Indians and tecumseh came here and converted a lot of creeks to the religion, and so the w