Democracies’ support for illiberal regimes through sovereignty-protective regional institutions: the case of UNASUR’s electoral accompaniment missions
| Author | Giovanni Agostinis,Carlos Closa |
| DOI | 10.1177/13540661221084871 |
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661221084871
European Journal of
International Relations
2022, Vol. 28(2) 417 –443
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/13540661221084871
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E
JR
I
Democracies’ support for
illiberal regimes through
sovereignty-protective
regional institutions: the
case of UNASUR’s electoral
accompaniment missions
Giovanni Agostinis
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile
Carlos Closa
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Spain
Abstract
Why do democracies agree with contested illiberal regimes on the creation of regional
institutions for election monitoring? This article tackles this puzzle by analyzing the
creation of the Union of South American Nations’ (UNASUR) Electoral Council
(ECU) and its electoral “accompaniment” missions. The case of the ECU is particularly
relevant, since its missions allowed for the legitimization of illiberal electoral practices
in a region predominantly populated by democratic states that have pursued democracy
consolidation through regional cooperation. We show that the emergence of the ECU
resulted from the interaction of the following conditions: Venezuela’s leadership; the
mobilization of the transgovernmental network of South American electoral authorities;
and the interaction between different sets of state preferences regarding election
observation, which reached an equilibrium around an institutional design that did not
impose a diminution of sovereignty on the contracting states. The article sheds light on
the genesis of sovereignty-protective institutional designs, showing how they allow for
the reconciliation of non-coincident preferences even in a sensitive field like election
observation. The article also contributes to the literature on international election
observation by explaining why democratic states may favor the emergence of monitoring
mechanisms that contribute to the erosion of democracy in a region. In so doing, the
Corresponding author:
Carlos Closa, Instituto de Políticas y Bienes Públicos, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
(CSIC), C/Albasanz, 26-28, 28037 Madrid, Spain.
Email: carlos.closa@csic.es
1084871EJT0010.1177/13540661221084871European Journal of International RelationsAgostinis and Closa
research-article2022
Article
418 European Journal of International Relations 28(2)
article adds to the literature on regime-boosting regionalism, illuminating the conditions
under which democratic regional organizations (ROs) create institutions that can boost
illiberal regimes’ legitimacy. In particular, our findings show that secondary powers,
like Venezuela, can strategically exploit transgovernmental networks’ mobilization to
pursue their domestic and geopolitical interests (including illiberal ones) within ROs.
Keywords
Regional election monitoring, democratic erosion, institutional design,
transgovernmental networks, Latin American regionalism
Introduction
Regional organizations (ROs) across different world regions, ranging from Latin America to
Africa, Europe, and Central Asia, have created mechanisms for election observation. While
several of these bodies have assisted democracy consolidation, in other cases, they have
rubber-stamped unfair elections, boosting illiberal regimes’ legitimacy (Cooley, 2015;
Daxecker and Schneider, 2014; Debre, 2021; Debre and Morgenbesser, 2017; Kelley, 2012).
The literature has investigated the connection between authoritarian/illiberal regional pow-
ers and the establishment of manipulated monitors in ROs predominantly composed of non-
democratic states (Diamond et al., 2016; Obydenkova and Libman, 2019; Tansey, 2016).
However, the emergence of regional monitoring mechanisms becomes puzzling when dem-
ocratic states cooperate with contested illiberal regimes to create them. Why do democracies
agree with illiberal regimes on the creation of regional institutions for election monitoring?
The establishment of the Union of South American Nations’ (UNASUR) Electoral
Council (ECU) and its electoral missions offers an excellent opportunity to identify the
causal mechanism that explains the emergence of a regional election monitoring mecha-
nism that resulted from an interstate agreement between democracies and contested illib-
eral regimes. The case of the ECU is particularly relevant, since its missions allowed for
the legitimization of illiberal electoral practices in a region predominantly populated by
democratic states that have pursued democracy consolidation through regional coopera-
tion (Closa and Palestini, 2018; Heine and Weiffen, 2014; Legler and Tieku, 2010;
McCoy, 2006). In 2008, the 12 South American states took part in the creation of
UNASUR, an RO that has undergone a severe political and organizational crisis since
2016. Eight member states have so far left the organization, whose disintegration is due
to the perceived bias of its involvement in the political crisis experienced by Venezuela
since 2013 (Mijares and Nolte, 2018). The deployment of an ECU monitoring mission in
Venezuela’s presidential elections of April 2013 stands out as UNASUR’s most contro-
versial initiative in the Venezuelan crisis. The most credible international election
observers (e.g. the Organization of American States (OAS), the EU, and the Carter
Center) either were not invited to observe Venezuela’s presidential elections or refused
to deploy a full-scale mission due to the limitations imposed by the Venezuelan electoral
authority on observers’ autonomy (Planchuelo, 2017). UNASUR’s mission ultimately
legitimized the results of a dubious electoral process marked by widespread irregularities
and political violence (The Carter Center, 2013), providing an essential backing to
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