ABSTRACT
Problems with election fraud and election integrity are of increasing concern in both established and transitional democracies (Lehoucq, 2003; Alvarez et al., 2008, 2012; Birch, 2011; Norris, 2014, 2015). In many transitional democracies, independent
electoral management bodies (EMBs) have been championed as a key institutional reform measure to successfully strengthen election integrity, and as a result independent EMBs are now the most common institutional model for electoral management in the world (Lopez-Pintor, 2000; IDEA, 2006, 2014). In established democracies as well, the role of electoral management in safeguarding election integrity and promoting citizens’ trust in elections is a topic of increasing concern. The 2000 presidential elections in the USA sparked a debate on the need for improved electoral management and restoring citizen trust in electoral processes (Alvarez et al., 2008; Hall, 2012; Bowler et al., 2015), and electoral management failures in Britain have drawn increasing attention too (James, 2013, 2014a, 2014b; Clark, 2015).1
