Political Competition & Electoral Fraud

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxx:ii (Autumn, 1999), 199–234.

Iván Molina and Fabrice Edouard Lehoucq

Political Competition and Electoral Fraud: A Latin American Case Study For an activity that was (or

is) so central to the practice of politics in so many countries, electoral fraud remains poorly understood. Why and how politicians and parties violated (or violate) laws tofalsify electoral outcomes constitute a set of topics the importance of which few would deny. Understanding how they illegally increased their vote totals or decreased those of their adversaries is not only essential to the history of many democratic systems, but an ongoing activity in many others. The study of electoral fraud is an ideal way to shed light on whether political behavior is shaped more bysociological factors or by institutional arrangements, especially where and when survey data is not available. This study aims to begin lling this void by drawing upon a rich documentary source—the petitions to nullify electoral results (demandas de nulidad)—from Costa Rica, a country noted for its long history of democratic government. The petitions contain a wealth of material about thefrequency, nature, and geographical basis of accusations of electoral fraud. They were generally lodged by those with legal training and typically published by the daily government gazette (La Gaceta). They were one of the weapons most frequently used by the opposition to combat the prerogatives largely held by presidents until the mid-twentieth century, namely, the production of the electoral registry,the holding of elections, and the tally of the vote. They are valuable precisely because of their partisan origins: By virtue of what they say and
Iván Molina is Professor, School of History, University of Costa Rica. Fabrice Edouard Lehoucq is a Research Associate, Center for the Study of Institutions, Populations and Environmental Change (cipec), Indiana University. They are the authors ofUrnas de lo in esperado: Fraude electoral y lucha política en Costa Rica, 1901–48 (San José, 1999). This article draws upon research made possible by a Collaborative Projects Grant (RO-22864-95) from the National Endowment for the Humanities, for which the authors are grateful. The authors would also like to thank Patricia Fumero and Paulina Malavassi for superb research assistance and Barry Ames,Clark Gibson, Peter Guardino, Jonathan Hartlyn, John Markoff, Richard Stoller, and Charles Tilly for comments on earlier drafts. Lehoucq is grateful for the support offered by the National Science Foundation (SBR-9521918). © 1999 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of Interdisciplinary History.

200 | IVÁ N M O LI NA A ND FA B R IC E E D OUA R D L E H OU C Qdo not say, they trace the frontier delimiting acceptable from unacceptable behavior. Not surprisingly, some social scientists have been aware of the newspaper or archival evidence of electoral fraud. Virtually all of them, however, have shied away from using this information to make sense of politicians, parties, and their strategies. Indeed, some claim that electoral fraud cannot be studiedbecause, as an illegal activity, its footprints are too faint or jumbled to decipher. Yet, as we show, it is possible to extract several quantitative indices from the petitions to get a sense of who was accused of violating electoral laws, as well as how, where, and with what success the tampering occurred. Showing how the petitions can be used to shed light on political behavior is one of thisarticle’s key objectives. Another important goal is to determine whether this mundane, even “low,” form of politics was shaped by institutional change. Even if the classi cation of the petitions to nullify electoral results yields systematic patterns, it is not at all clear whether such patterns are a product of legal changes wrought by presidents and legislatures in a national capital. They could...