Election Monitoring and Observation in Zimbabwe: Hegemony versus Sovereignty

Despite the pervasive trend of election monitoring and observation, especially in Eastern Europe and Africa since the early 1990s, there has been little, if any, academic discourse on this subject. Instead, the focus of intellectual and policy debate has been on macro political issues of political liberalization and democratization; the main concern being whether or not the democratization process started in the early 1990s in Africa is being consolidated. This article raises a three pronged thesis. Firstly, although monitoring and observation are inextricably intertwined in both theory and practice, they denote two different processes, hence it is imprudent to use them synonymously. Secondly, election monitoring and observation, especially the latter, do not apply uniformly and in a consistent pattern in developed and developing countries and this raises profound questions of international standards, norms and practices of democratic governance. Thirdly, although election monitoring and observation represent good practice at the micro level of democratization, they have also tended to be used as part of the political conditionality and leverage through which industrial countries impose their hegemony over developing countries and thereby undermine their already enfeebled national sovereignty. No other country portrays so vividly and poignantly the controversies surrounding the above three themes than Zimbabwe which recently went through two major elections, namely the 2000 Parliamentary election and the 2002 Presidential election.