Can goes to show how you can make progress in one election and then a few years later the lack of followup or violence can restock and you can have a mess again. So, you know, it is very, very difficult to set the country on a path when we have fixed it and now they know how to run elections and it is just going to work. In candidate has been up and down with election monitoring. It is not the election monitors fault to say, but it is 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. What do you teach here at duke . Guest enter action the Public Policy, policy analysis, i help undergraduates right thesis. And that teach these types of topics like tools of international pressure, external actors to promote domestic reforms and other countries. Host my maturing democracy, you read you can float anywhere in the world. Why is that . Guest well, because i am a danish citizen, and danish laws require residency in order to vote. I am not an american citizen because the danish laws dont allow dual citizenship, and americas laws require citizenship to vote. I cant vote in either place. Had been an american living in denmark erotically activision to places, but i cant go anywheres. Host besides the Carter Center waters of the other major groups that monitor democracy that have a lot of legitimacy in International Life . Guest so, in the United States people might be familiar with the in the eye, the National Democratic institute. The our ally, the asa republican institute, these are agencies that are independent. They are not, you know, government falls, nongovernmental is, but they have a special status. And they do pretty good work. Europe we have dsc of various parliamentary organizations from the european parliament, council of europe. And, of course, the European Union as a lot of monitoring. The u. N. Still does monitoring, but not in the same high flashing away. It out, with public statements a lot anymore. They have toward assistance, and they do more in conflict setting, supportive of the modern organizations. We are seeing organizations popup all of the world. Regional organizations in africa , south African Development community, the african union, election monitoring, of secretariat. Even in asia we have organizations. Which ones are more credible . You know, it varies. I would put my money mostly on coming out on top. They do a pretty good job. The democracy and human rights arm. You have several different, you know, monitoring organizations come sometimes out of the same organization that sometimes contradict each other. The European Union, i had initially thought the European Union was going to be a great organization. Im a citizen of the European Union myself. The European Union has a lot of political clout but also a lot of political tentacles and a lot of ties and the law of constraints on what it can and cannot say. Yet some observers, people to work for the European Union often tell me that they get criticized if they dont follow the line of the European Union, what they are supposed to be saying after the election. It is not that they are not critical. When they dont want to be, you know, it is a good example of an organization that we think should have a lot of credibility but that has so many Different Things stake the sometimes they have to weigh things. And it is not a failure in the sense that these organizations are not, you know, mean, terrible people who want to go out there and lie and cheat and cover things up. It is that they have different ideals, different norms. To we want violence . No, probably not. Do we think that it is better to call the Glass Half Full than halfempty . If a country seems to be plugging along the we say that, yes, this was great what she did or do we point out the flaws . Which leg do we stand on . So that can be a difficult balance to find. And then you get different organizations that make different choices and get things like last year were you have different organizations coming out saying vastly Different Things about the quality of the elections. And that is sometimes, i think among the governments that is why they in by so many different monitors. There are some organizations that can be relied on to come in and be friendly to the governments. And so then the government can invite some good ones, some, you know, ones that they know are going to be critical. By good i mean friendly. Then they can stand them against each other. While i think you cannot fool all the people all the time, the lot of these organizations like the cis of the shanghai corporation, easily can fool western leaders, but you might be able to fool some of the people some of the time. Host what are the nuts and bolts of monitoring elections . Guest there are two waves of it. The longterm and shortterm monetary. A Good Organization will comments make multiple visits. You know, if you go back to south africa historic elections, a whole year before coming in, looking at the loss, meeting with different types of people, trying to understand the electoral landscape. And they come back. And then maybe three or four months before or two months before depending on the magnitude of the election there will send a smaller team that will stay there and follow everything as it is developing. In the short term observers, and a few days before. That is the, like, really big groups that descend on the scene. Many of them may not even speak the local language, never been out of the country before, may have some experience an election monitoring, but maybe not. They are then distributed throughout the country to try and observers going on. They go from one station to the devastation to the next station. And then there is usually a team that stays a little after word. The shortterm relief, but depending on how the election is unfolding that he may stay longer if there are issues that have to be resolved. But the observation goes on a lot of levels. Observers are aware that it is not just the ballot stuffing on the day, not just about counting of ballots. For longtime observers of been aware that the laws have to be written in a way that is conducive to competitive elections. The Voter Registration rosters have to be not have dead people on the mend things like this, but the commission has to be not stacked in favor of the ruling party. So they are looking at for sorts of levels of where and on a level Playing Field can occur. To observers have to be invited by the host government . They do. And sanctioned. They essentially have to be to be official observers they have to be invited and they have to be get some registration are some things of that they can go into the polling booth. Sometimes they dont get invited and they may work with domestic observers or any other sort of undercover ways, but it really is, you know, a sovereign decision on the part of the country. For example, egypt, a case in point that for a long time has been pressured to invite monitors and just refuse to do so. Even the u. S. President would say you ought to invite monitors. They just refuse to do so. Some countries say no. They have enough clout that they dont have to out to the system. But it is getting harder and harder. Even proven realizes that he cant just say no to these International Observers. He is obliged to invite. In previous elections sometimes it just makes logistics completely impossible of their refuse to go sometimes. And then in make sure he invites other observers so that he can, as i said before, spend them against each other. As the u. S. Invited International Observers . The u. S. Is also a member of the osce. It is technically obliged. They dont have to be invited. There is some declaration at some point a says that they can, and observe the elections, and the election that they want to a member state. And so they have observed elections in the United States a couple of times, especially, you know, since we have the floridian debacle and all those singing chants and all that stuff. Theres been more interested coming, but they dont get much publicity over here. And countries like the United States, so much domestic screwed in the situation, but it is actually interesting. Theyre is a project about harvard call electoral integrity they have just come out of their first report in which they did not monitor elections, but they sort of grated elections of last it in months. The United States, ranked light 26, you know, countries that have held elections. We could certainly use some help. Host what is your conclusion . The to the i think it is broken, but we are fixing. I dont know that we have a choice. Is here to stay for good or for bad. The important thing, i think, is to understand for Public Policy makers, journalists to understand that monitors are mixed bag. We have a tendency to think of the mess monitors. There are monitors. We think theres some our credit we can rely on what they say, but that is not so. We have to understand that they, too, are agents of donors, of states. And they have their constraints. And if there is any one thing that we can do to improve it, i think, it is to come up with a way to provide them with more independence from the people who finance them. Right now they end up having to go to places that they realize theyre not going to be effective in love with those places are sexy to go to, government wants them to go messy places. The monitors are not going to make a difference of all. And they are pushed to go from one to the other. They dont have time for good follow. So there are reforms that could be made to make the system better. We can stop it because it is out of the bank. There are organizations. If you start pulling back the good ones saying the system is working, thats just getting worse. Host Duke UniversityPolitical Science professor judith kelley, the book monitoring democracy when International Election observation works, and why it often fails is a collection of my columns says spokesman added over a 70 year period from the 90s through 2012. It started when i began a friendship with the managing edward editor of the paper at the time. Bailey wanted to build something that would be more substantive than what we had in the past the and he knew was interested in books. He said why dont you take all of this column, 700 words so we can and lets start a conversation with our local leaders about books and writers similar to what cspan booktv does. That is a wig began. My mandate was to cover local and regional writers but beyond that anything. The wonderful thing about the gulf coast is so under appreciated and that is goodk. because they give us a lot to write about the cities and places are all around a and new york is the literary capital but on the gulf coast from texas to the Florida Panhandle there rarely is a sense of melody. We have a similar environment similar treaties , sandy soil, salted and the air cover the gulf of mexico nourishes and supplies us with seafood. Estuaries and rivers like mobile bay is rich with tradition and culture. There have been books in and around all these things for hundreds of years. It is an extraordinarily rich subjects and then along comes the oil spill in 2010 were real are center stage and people begin to look at the gulf coast and think what is a like their . We didnt know we got so much good will and gas from their sows the nation became tune dan. Also i never will forget an interview with a kid right after this bill a fishermans son and was nine years old and said this is the end of our way of life. I thought how Many American kids talk about a way of life . I know what it meant the crawfish whale and the stuff that goes with louisiana above florida and alabama and coastal mississippi so on the alabama gulf coast have more in common with the word means and pensacola than perhaps montgomery and birmingham. Can wanted to approach it with a goal sensibility who is from here that not provincial but could look at larger issues to righty and talk about them but appreciate what we have is special and the prospective. There is the section called controversy and censorship because frequently and fortunately school board scandium certain books and as mark twain said first god created idiots said he created school boards. So i just had to Say Something about it the best way for me to imagine to tackle that is to have us scrap of the newspaper where they have been vacant so the kids cannot read about their struggles of those columns are personal in a way to defend a literature from ridiculous attacks and respect and recognize not every book is appropriate from all ages but i did feel that steinbecks work was classic for a middle school kids should be accessible. Bus and several and one dash wrote the, the book is still banned if anyone from the school board is listening please stop that injustice. The rafflesia an english professor at the university of alabama who wrote a short story collection. And it turned out he played drive plagiarized from an older book the who was down from the ivy league dan roche very eloquently. This young professor i believe plagiarized in all innocence. Like of postmodern typewriter that was far away from earlier writings and to the head is explanations were garbled and model to Say Something about where modern english scholarship is but i thought how to make this grave of a mistake . But despite the fact do was innocent but this to be was the worst day. That iconic seen where he breaks off the insignia so this young man unfortunately really did suffer that fate and was fired from where he was teaching at that time in boltzmann they went abroad to teach english as a second language there. Some people really regretted the way that had played out that perhaps to give leniency from church says prospective they wanted to protect themselves from copyright violation. I was not down on the professor but a lesson to give credit where it is due in real though that artists and writers have always borrow from one another. This was so egregious how does a ph. D. Make that mistake . Is there something missing how they a