Authoritarian States and Voting From Abroad: North African Experiences

Abstract

While scholars have recently focused much attention on democracy promotion, far less interest has been directed to the extraterritorial expansion of voting rights. Absent from celebrations of ink-stained fingers in the 2005 Iraqi elections or from complaints about poor state organizational capabilities in Mexico's 2006 external voting have been serious analyses of the broader phenomenon?the increasing number of countries, many of them nondemocracies, which have accorded their expatriates the right to vote. Why do authoritarian regimes extend the franchise in this way? Are they driven by the same logic as democratic regimes, or are other factors at work? Exploring these issues contributes to a number of current theoretical debates. First, it is relevant to debates regarding elections and voting in democratic versus authoritarian regimes. Second, it addresses the trajectory of the evolution of citizenship, as increasing numbers of emigrants who had been excluded from formal political participation are offered the opportunity to rejoin the national community. Finally, a study of voting from abroad contributes to discussions regarding the evolving, multifaceted relationship be tween sending states and their diaspora communities. The question here is not the right to vote if one returns home?many states allow this as long as the national continues to be registered to vote. Instead, the issue is the extension of the right to cast a ballot from abroad. In some of the earliest examples, external voting was accorded to members of the military or other government em ployees overseas.1 Some countries still restrict such voting to these groups; however, increasingly the franchise has been expanded to include other citizens, especially labor migrants and refugees. As of May 2007, 115 countries and territories had legal provi sions for voting from abroad.2 (See Table 1.) Supporters of extending the franchise outside the national territory base their argu ment on the normative ground that the citizenship of emigrants entitles them to partici pate in elections. Opponents insist that while residency has generally not been sufficient for the right to political participation, it has long been regarded as a necessary condition. Those who are not directly subject to the implications of their vote should not have the right to participate in determining the composition of representative organs whose decisions are not binding on them.3 Elements related to the size and composition of the target population, as well as the means of conducting the elections, are directly relevant in attempting to understand why 81