ABSTRACT
Democracy promotion is a widely accepted tool of conflict prevention, conflict resolution and peace-building. It is even part of the exit strategy for peacekeeping operations. This chapter highlights several empirical patterns found in research on the global diffusion of elections and their implications for post-conflict settings. Elections in post-conflict environments are clearly risky, and careful attention to the relevant parties incentives to manipulate the process to their own benefit, credible commitment problems, and incentives to fake democracy may be more important than the decision to hold elections or not. International pressure for democracy, the spread of international election observation and the diffusion of a variety of best practices in the administration of elections means that stealing elections without provoking international reaction has become significantly more difficult. In general, some governments respond to international pressure for political change by sincerely pursuing those policies, whereas others attempt to adopt the form of those changes while evading the substance.
