ABSTRACT
By 2005, 140 of the world's 192 countries now hold at least nominally credible, multiparty-elections. Election observers can operate superficially with potentially devastating consequences. More than journalists who 'parachute' into a crisis without extensive knowledge, observers are effective participants in the elections. Critics attack US-sponsored and observed elections, such as the constituent assembly vote in El Salvador in 1982. Observers overlooked that the 1982 constituent assembly election was a de facto exclusion of the left and constrained freedom of expression and assembly. Observers have helped to make free elections possible where they are invited and are permitted to promote competitive contests. The financing of observation teams is rarely consistent in terms of amount, type and direction of expenditures provided in different elections. To the extent that observers can avoid the superficiality and partisanship that characterized perhaps a majority of observations before the 1990s, the conventional wisdom of non-governmental organization election observers in postconflict settings holds true.
