Banca de DEFESA: Danillo Rafael Batista do Nascimento

When Electoral Integrity is at Risk: Democracy, Fraud, and Institutions in Latin America

Democracy; Latin America; Electoral Fraud; Electoral Integrity

How do Electoral Management Bodies characteristics affect electoral fraud? Considering that the relationship between a greater degree of democracy and the guarantee of electoral integrity is positive, the present work aims to identify the relationship between the Electoral Management Body (EMB) and electoral fraud in Latin America. Given that there are backsliding democracies, some may exhibit varying levels of electoral integrity. Assuming that institutions act to ensure electoral democracy, the work is interested in knowing how the institutional design of the EMB affects electoral fraud and thus seeks to identify the relationship between both and how the types of fraud behave in relation to the differences. Evidence in recent literature on electoral management and electoral integrity in democracies underscores the importance of Electoral Management Bodies autonomy over public administration and institutional design. The work will exclusively use the Electoral Integrity Project (EIP) database, selecting election observations from Latin American countries. For the development of the work, it is proposed to develop a descriptive association between the independent variable EMB and the dependent variable Fraud, in a disaggregated and aggregated way, as well as including variables of participation of electoral observers in order to identify patterns between these relationships in Latin American countries.