“How is it possible that the flourishing of elections has coincided with a decade of democratic decline” (p. 3)? This is the question posed by Nic Cheeseman and Brian Klaas in How To Rig An Election. A perfecting of the art of election rigging by autocrats (and some democrats), they argue, is one of the key reasons that low-quality elections are becoming the norm (p. 207). “Counterfeit democrats” are having their cake and eating it too, as they not only control the outcome of polls but also do so in a way that garners legitimacy through their compliance with international norms of democratic conduct, the authors posit.
The book is a treasure trove of stories of election rigging, based on years of data collection in the field, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, but providing examples from all other continents. The authors dig up damning evidence of premeditated rigging practices—some crude, some ingenious—such as a government’s refusal to give birth certificates to citizens in opposition strongholds, preempting their registration as voters by 18 years (p. 48); the placing of two candidates on the ballot with names identical to an inconvenient contestant so as to confuse voters (p. 31); or a bullet-filled envelope sent to an election commission president as a warning sign (p. 162). It is those extraordinary and nuanced stories of deliberate malpractice that make this study so memorable and impactful.
Each of the study’s six empirical chapters addresses a different (yet often complementary) strategy of election rigging, roughly ordered along an imaginary electoral cycle: preelectoral manipulations, such as gerrymandering, malapportionment, or tampering with the voter list (Chap. 1); clientelism (Chap. 2); coercion (Chap. 3); disinformation and hacking of digital election infrastructure (Chap. 4); vote inflation through ballot-box stuffing, multiple voting, or count fabrication (Chap. 5); and the pinnacle of rigging—its obfuscation vis-à-vis the international community and local audiences (Chap. 6). Each chapter displays an impressive sensitivity to historical detail and context, drawing on 500 elite interviews and descriptive analysis of secondary data sets (NELDA, V-Dem, Electoral Integrity Project, and others). Where quantitative data is used, the analysis is clearly explained for an audience without experience with such material.
While some chapters present subtypologies of particular practices, others introduce novel takes on established subjects, for instance, the idea of “latent coercion” (p. 98) as a rigging tactic. Yet others are a bit of a mixed bag, such as the chapter on “hacking the election,” which talks about everything digital, from disinformation to microtargeting to the hacking of candidates’ data, as well as China’s social credit system. Despite this variation, there is a clear thread that visibly runs throughout the book, as Cheeseman and Klaas build the compelling case that election rigging is widespread and still evolving, in electoral autocracies and some democracies alike. What is more, the authors successfully make the case that recognizing the trade-offs involved in rigging is key to safeguarding elections. To this end, they provide concrete policy recommendations in each chapter and again in the conclusion.
By judiciously weaving together findings from a great number of studies from different fields, Cheeseman and Klaas bring to general audiences the idea that elections do not, per se, entrench democracy. Instead, they may serve quite the opposite end if integrity is lacking. While autocracy scholars certainly know that nominally democratic institutions often are a strength, rather than a weakness for dictators, this will be news to many readers. In addition, highlighting some key examples and case studies from affluent democracies, such as the United States and Great Britain, drives home the point that election rigging occurs in places we might least expect—right in front of our doorstep, in fact. The authors even point to the tacit complicity of democracy-promoting countries in letting geostrategic considerations trump a serious engagement with election observer reports. Freeing election monitors from their political muzzles is one of the prime recommendations in the concluding chapter, in addition to strengthening domestic electoral-reform advocates and opposition parties, as well as making smarter use of digital election technologies.
At times, readers may find themselves wanting more in-depth discussion of some of the book’s core constructs and theories, and an explanation as to how they innovate the existing literature. One example is the concept of election rigging itself, defined as “illegitimate and undemocratic means of tilting the playing field clearly in the favour of one party or candidate at the expense of others” (p. 6; emphasis in original). The choices made in conceptualizing and operationalizing that concept, e.g., the explicit reference to “democraticness” as a benchmark, or the implicit reference to government turnover as a crucial indicator, all make good sense. Yet these choices are not explicated and put in relation to the well-established discussion of measuring election quality (see overview in Carolien van Ham, “Getting Elections Right? Measuring Electoral Integrity,” Democratization, 22[4], 2015). Similarly, it is not self-evident whether the authors’ shorthand for hegemonic and competitive authoritarian regimes, “counterfeit democracies” (p. 13), reminiscent of Susan Hyde’s “pseudo-democrats,” adds much analytical leverage to our understanding of how political regime types impact rigging.
In terms of theory, Cheeseman and Klaas present a fairly intuitive model for the allocation of election rigging. An autocrat cheats, in a nutshell, because he or she wants to ensure a win. This desire varies on the basis of the autocrat’s attitudes towards democracy, past corruption or human rights abuses, the level of intraelite threat, resource dependence, and other factors (p. 23). If determined to rig, an autocrat will allocate tactics based on a trade-off between their effectiveness in ensuring a win and their likelihood of detection (p. 33). The model predicts that subtle preelectoral tactics are chosen first, while the outright fabrication of results remains a last resort. Captious readers may point to factors missing from this model, for example, variation in state capacity and the strength of political machines, or that coordination problems and signaling games may lead to over-the-top rigging in cases where it is not even necessary. Indeed, there may be motivations for rigging other than winning. Such readers may argue that the calculus presented in the book leaves itself open to criticism, as it draws heavily on other formal models of electoral fraud (some reviewed in Scott Gehlbach, Konstantin Sonin, and Milan W. Svolik, “Formal Models of Nondemocratic Politics,” Annual Review of Political Science, 19, 2016) without necessarily advancing them.
Moreover, one could quibble over the absence of a falsifiable theoretical proposition, or that neither the book’s core puzzle nor its answer to it are particularly revelatory to any audience familiar with recent advancements in comparative authoritarianism. To be sure, this is nit-picking and should not detract from the great accomplishment of this timely and important study. Like a number of recent books in political science, How To Rig an Election successfully popularizes sometimes arcane scholarly insights to general audiences in a concise, thorough, and—above all—extremely engaging way. It is a recommended read for anyone interested in electoral integrity, democratization, and comparative authoritarianism.
