Sigita Urdze. Findings of Electoral Observation Missions: Are they relevant for the EU?

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1 4-7 September th ECPR General Conference 2013 (Bordeaux) Panel 101: Electoral Observation Missions in Promoting Democracy: Do they Work? Sigita Urdze Findings of Electoral Observation Missions: Are they relevant for the EU? FIRST DRAFT, PLEASE CITE BUT DO NOT QUOTE. TU Darmstadt Institut für Politikwissenschaft Dr. Sigita Urdze Residenzschloss Darmstadt Germany Phone: Fax:

2 Sigita Urdze Findings of Electoral Observation Missions: Are they relevant for the EU? Since the beginning of the 1990s external democracy promotion has continuously become more important for the EU s external relations. The basis for these EU activities can be found in the treaty of Maastricht which states in Article J.1.2 that one of the objectives of the common foreign and security policy (CFSP) will be: to develop and consolidate democracy and the rule of law, and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Since Maastricht, the EU s external democracy promotion has undergone several developments, whereby it has been both widened and deepened. The Treaty of Lisbon states in Article 21.1 (TEU): The Union s action on the international scene shall be guided by the principles which have inspired its own creation, development and enlargement, and which it seeks to advance in the wider world: democracy, the rule of law, the universality and indivisibility of human rights and fundamental freedoms, respect for human dignity, the principles of equality and solidarity, and respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter and international law. In Article 21.2 (TEU), a clear task is formulated for external activities: The Union shall define and pursue common policies and actions, and shall work for a high degree of cooperation in all fields of international relations, in order to: (b) consolidate and support democracy, the rule of law, human rights and the principles of international law;. In order to promote its goal of the external democracy promotion the EU can draw from a broad range of instruments including inter alia diverse types of incentives, sanctions, supportive (cooperation) programmes and political dialogue. As a general rule we can see that the more formal and the more supposedly influential an instrument type is the more attention is paid towards it in scientific literature. There are many publications dealing with access conditionality (e.g. Schimmelfennig and Scholtz 2010; Kneuer 2007; Noutcheva 2012), sanctions (e.g. Patterson 2013; Leonard and Kaunert 2012; Warkotsch 2010), programmes such as TACIS, European Neighbourhood Partnership (Instrument), Development Cooperation Initiative/Instrument (e.g. Sasse 2013; Chaplinskaya 2007) or the European Initiative/Instrument for Human Rights (e.g. Kotzian, Knodt, and Urdze 2011; Kurki 2011; Bicchi 2010). Far less attention is paid to more informal instruments such as political dialogue (e.g. Pape 2013; Gomes 2013), some such as Council Declarations are frequently even merely listed in instrument overviews but only briefly touched upon (e.g. Börzel and Risse 2004). Election Observation Missions (EOMs) as a measure of external democracy promotion are even less dealt with in the context of EU external democracy promotion. One reason for this is 2

3 certainly that in literature on EU s external democracy promotion there is a strong focus on the EU s relations to its southern and eastern neighbours neighbours to which the EU has only occasionally sent EOMs, most missions are sent to African and Latin America. The only EU EOMs towards eastern and south-eastern Europe as well as towards the CIS have been three EOMs to the Russian Federation (1996, 1995, 1993), one to Azerbaijan (1999, 1998), one to Armenia (1999), one to Bosnia-Herzegovina (1998), one to Albania (1997) and one to the Ukraine (1994) (European Union External Action 2013). In its Handbook for European Union Election Observation the European Commission explains this as follows: Each EU Member State is also a participating State of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Election observation within OSCE participating States is undertaken by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR). As the EU and the OSCE/ODIHR use a comparable methodology, the EU does not deploy missions to observe in the OSCE region. (European Commission 2008) This means that even though the EU itself hardly ever sends EOMs to its eastern neighbours the EU does not draw on the results of EOMs in these countries. Against this background this paper wants to answer two questions: 1. In which cases and how does the EU reflect the findings of OSCE EOMs? 2. How can the character of EU s reaction on the findings of OSCE EOMs be explained? In this context I will test three hypotheses that build on the work of Knodt/Jünemann (Knodt and Jünemann 2007) and have been further explicated by Knodt/Urdze (Knodt and Urdze 2013). In answering these questions I will focus on declarations issued by the Council of the European Union. Of course there are also other ways by which the EU takes account of OSCE EOM reports such as the accession preparation reports. Nevertheless I focus on the declarations because this is an instrument that the EU might potentially use towards all members of the OSCE and not only towards those already in the accession process. Furthermore unlike for singular statements of Commission or Council members it is possible to perform a systematic research in EU databases for this document type and therefore to include all relevant documents of this type. For explaining similarities and differences in reactions between the OSCE EOM reports and the Council of the European Union s declarations I first of all I claim the Council s reactions are influenced by normative motivation meaning that the bigger the problems are that have been found in the clearer the reaction of the EU will be (for hypotheses see Knodt and Jünemann 2007; Knodt and Urdze 2013). This goes back to the concept of normative power Europe introduced by Manners (2000). Secondly I claim that the Council s reactions are influenced by the EU s security interests meaning that the more security interests the EU has in a specific country the 3

4 less clear resp. the less sharp the reaction of the Council will be. Hereby I drive on realistic argumentations in which it is assumed that states always strive for security and power. The EU makes it clear itself in the goals of the CFSP that it in fact it does follow security interests in its external relations. Article 21.2 of TEU states: 2. The Union shall define and pursue common policies and actions, and shall work for a high degree of cooperation in all fields of international relations, in order to: (a) safeguard its values, fundamental interests, security, independence and integrity; ( ). In literature this argument has been reflected as well (e.g. Joenniemi 2007; Cremona 2005; Spanger and Wolff 2006). Finally I claim that the Council s reactions are influenced by economic interests meaning that the more economic interests the EU has in a specific country the less clear resp. the less sharp the reaction to the EU will be. The economic orientation appears from the beginning of the Treaties of Rome over the single market until today. From a rational-choice perspective I assume that the Council s reactions are influenced by an economic cost-benefit-calculation as has been discussed in literature previously (e.g. Moravcsik and Vachudova 2005; Algieri 2008). In the following I will first discuss methodological questions both in regard to document access and selection, in regard to document analysis as well as in regard to indicators for the independent variables EU normative motivation, EU security interests, EU economic interests. Afterwards I will compare the OSCE EOM reports and Council of the European Union declarations on the observed including the character of both document types. Finally I will try to explain similarities and differences between OSCE and EU documents by applying the three introduced hypothesis. Methodological remarks First of all I would like to make some remarks on the document access and selection: In this paper I will strongly focus on declarations by the Council of the European Union, more precisely on declarations by the Presidency on behalf of the European Union. I do this because this is the only document type publicly available in which the findings of OSCE EOMs are dealt with on a regular basis. In some cases there can be found some other documents as well such as statements by individual Commission members (e.g. Ashton and Füle 2012). Yet neither can these statements be found systematically in EU data bases nor can they be traced back for a long time in EU data bases which is a precondition for a systematic analysis. Regarding the analysis of OSCE documents I will usually draw on the Preliminary 4

5 statements/statements of Preliminary Findings and Conclusions published on the homepage of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights ( which is responsible in the context of the OSCE election observation. Preliminary statements/statements of Preliminary Findings and Conclusions are usually published immediately after the election and are later on followed by are far more detailed final report. I ignore these final reports because in those cases where in Council of the European Union declarations reference is made to OSCE documents it is to these Preliminary statements/statements of Preliminary Findings and Conclusions. And even if no reference is made explicitly the date of publication of Council of European Union declarations does usually not allow making reference to Final Reports as the latter is published a lot after the publication of the declaration. In the very few cases where the final report forms the basis for EU documents I take this into account. Finally I would like to point out that not in all cases the EU explicitly refers to the findings of OSCE EOMs. I will look at this in the analysis as well but as a rule include all Council declarations on in OSCE countries and compare them with the findings of OSCE EOMs. I do this because of the strong relation of the EU on OSCE EOMs which is cited above which makes it highly likely that the EU builds on the findings of OSCE EOMs whether this clearly stated or not. For characterizing the contents or OSCE EOM findings and Council of the European Union declarations an analysis of the contents of each of the documents is required. The OSCE EOM Preliminary statements/statements of Preliminary Findings and Conclusions usually start with a general assessment of the and then are followed by a more a detailed analysis in which this general assessment is explained in detail. I focus strongly on the general assessment because usually there are a few key sentences (usually on or two sentences) in it summarizing the whole statement. These key sentences I sort into six categories: weak critique, normal critique, strong critique as well as weak praise, normal praise, strong praise. Table 1 in the annex gives a detailed overview over these categories and the key sentences. In Council of the European Union declarations no such general assessment exists. OSCE formulations may or may not be repeated but declarations usually also contain a short characterization of the situation from the Council s point of view. Therefore in in the declarations I classify each of the sentences separately. I a second step I count how many praising or critical formulations can be found in each of the declarations. Formulations from the categories reference to conditionality, request, strong request, critique and strong critique I count as critical and therefore as negative, formulations from the categories 5

6 offer of cooperation, praise, strong praise and reference to ease of conditionality I count as praising and therefore as positive. 1 Table 2 in the annex gives a detailed overview over formulations from these categories. Not included are formulations that I claim to be neutral such as notes, will continue to follow, asks for more information. Regarding Council of the European Union declarations another remark is necessary. Some sentences in these documents are about economic development etc. In the analysis I include only those formulations that in the sense of Czempiel s three domains (Czempiel 1981) belong to the domain of system of rule. Formulations that aim at the two domains of security and wellbeing are excluded here as in most cases they do not have directly to do something with the that are the focus of this paper. Finally about the independent variables: Three independent variables result from the hypothesis: 1. EU normative motivation, 2. EU security interests, 3. EU economic interests. As pointed out above I expect the size of the problems in an election to be influential on the EU s reaction towards the respective country. As the EU has no own observers on whose results it can rely and instead clearly denotes to the OSCE observers these results should be influential on the character of the Council of the European Union s declarations. Additionally I also include Freedom House values of the respective year, one year before the election and two years before the election as an indicator for normative motivation. I do this because the general situation and development of democracy, rule of raw, human rights and good government whose development and consolidation has been one of the goals of the CFSP since the Treaty of Maastricht as shown above might also influence the character of a declaration. If this was the case differences between OSCE and EU documents could be explained in that way that the EU does not only look at the respective election itself as does an EOM but takes a broader scope. I use Freedom House values because its assessments of the state of democracy, human rights, good governance and rule of law come closest to assessments that the European Union occasionally makes itself (Urdze 2010). In the hypotheses I claim that not only normative aspects influence the Council of the European Union s reactions in its declarations about recent in third countries but also EU s security interests. For security interests I use two indicators. As the EU is especially interested in security in its direct neighbourhood I take into account whether there is a common border with an EU member state. States sharing a border with the EU could be dealt 1 Declarations by the Council of the European Union are legally non-binding documents. Therefore by this document conditionality can be neither applied nor eased, it can only be referred to the possibility of application or easing of conditionality. 6

7 with differently from those that are farther away. However beyond that the EU is also interested in security and stability in general as also can be seen in the goals of the CFSP. Therefore I also take into account whether a third country is involved in international disputes. I use the CIA world factbook ( as a source for this as the factbook gives data worldwide and dates back far enough for the analysis. Just as for the Freedom House values I take the values of the respective year, one year before the election and two years before the election. I do this because problems in the field of security might also a couple of years later influence EU s activities towards a specific third country. In the hypotheses I finally claim that the Council of the European Union s reactions towards in third countries are also influenced by economic interests. For economic interests I use various data. First of all I use Eurostat s database, more precisely the share of the respective third country of the total imports/exports of the EU. Once again I here also include the two previous years. As energy plays an increasingly important role for the EU and its member states I also include in the analysis whether or not there are proved oil or gas reserves in the third countries and if so the respective amount based on the data of British Petroleum (British Petroleum 2012). For energy also I include the two years before the election took place. OSCE s and Council of the European Union declarations in comparison The first thing that becomes immediately obvious when comparing OSCE s and declarations by the Council of the European Union is that the EU is far from commenting on all observed by the ODIHR. Actually in the period between (the date of parliamentary and a constitutional referendum in Azerbaijan which is the first EOM documented on ODIHR s homepage) and (the date of parliamentary in Albania which is the last of the OSCE s that is included in this analysis) the ODIHR has published statements on as many as 198 various types of in non-eu member states. In the same period however only 38 declarations on these were published by the Council of the European Union. Additionally there is one declaration by the Council on parliamentary in 2007 and another one on presidential in 7

8 2008 in Russia (Council of the European Union 2007, 2008) for which no OSCE EOM statement is available. 2 Table 1: Number of per country observed by an OSCE EOM resp. commented upon by a Council of the European Union declaration Country OSCE Council of the European available Union declaration available Afghanistan 4 3 Albania 11 1 Armenia 10 3 Azerbaijan 8 2 Belarus 6 3 Bosnia and Herzegovina 9 0 Bulgaria 4 0 Canada 1 0 Croatia 9 2 Cyprus 1 0 Czech Republic 2 0 Estonia 2 0 Georgia 9 5 Hungary 2 0 Iceland 2 0 Kazakhstan 7 2 Kyrgyzstan 9 2 Latvia 2 0 Lithuania 1 0 Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia 12 1 Moldova 10 2 Mongolia 1 0 Montenegro 14 1 Norway 2 0 Romania 3 0 Russian Federation 8 4 Serbia 12 3 Slovakia 6 0 Switzerland 2 0 Tajikistan 4 2 Turkey 3 0 Turkmenistan 4 1 Ukraine 8 2 United States It has to be noted that only such declarations by the Council of the European Union are included here in the analysis that comment on past. All declarations about future (e.g. (Council of the European Union 2009)) are excluded here as these cannot be compared to the OSCE s. 8

9 Country OSCE Council of the European available Union declaration available Uzbekistan 4 1 SUM The values in table 1 make it clear that while the OSCE sends EOMs to all directions even though a closer look there also reveals some differences the EU exclusively comments on in countries to its east and to its southeast. Furthermore almost all of the states that meanwhile have become members of the EU were not commented on at all either the only exception to this is Croatia to which the OSCE sent 9 EOMs and the EU commented on twice. Thus as a first answer to the question posed in the heading of this paper do the findings of EOMs matter to the EU I can note at this point that at least for the declarations published by the Council of the European Union they do not matter in regard to its own member states and also not in regard to states already closely associated to the EU. One possible explanation for this pattern could be that the Council of the European Union focuses in its declarations on those and those countries where some serious problems exist. Otherwise the issuance of a declaration might seem unnecessary or other measures such as direct talks or accession reports might seem more useful. Nevertheless this does not explain why for those countries for which we can both on the basis of Freedom House values expect continuous problems with and which is underlined by OSCE s Uzbekistan would be an example for such a country we still find clearly less Council of the European Union declarations than OSCE s. Another explanation for the Council of the European Union focussing merely on non-eu member states that are not closely associated with the EU already could be that for the other states other types of communication might seem more appropriate. Another comparison that I want to make at this point is regarding the year of publication. As can be seen from the values in table 2 we can see both for OSCE s as well as for Council of the European Union declarations a peak at the beginning of the 2000s. Yet while in the case of OSCE s it does not become absolutely clear whether there is a general downward tendency in EOMs the year 2013 has to be excluded from analysis as further EOMs may still publish their statements there seems to be a clear trend towards this regarding declarations by the Council of the European Union. While through the creation of the post of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy at the end of 2010 the Council may feel less responsible for commenting on in third states this cannot explain why this drop began already a couple of years earlier. 9

10 Table 2: Number of per year observed by an OSCE EOM resp. commented upon by a Council of the European Union declaration Year OSCE Council of the European available Union declaration available SUM Table 3 is a somewhat more detailed version of table 2. It shows how many per year and per country the Council of the European Union has reacted upon with declarations. It makes it clear that towards some countries the EU reacted earlier with declarations than to in other countries yet there seems to be no general pattern of an increased focus on merely some countries after a while. The rise of attention at the beginning of the 2000s was a general trend and the drop before the beginning of the 2010s was a general trend as well. So as a second conclusion in regard to the question posed in the headline of this paper do the findings of EOMs matter for the EU? I can note that there seemingly was a period during which EOMs at least from the point of view of the Council of the European Union did matter more than it was previously the case and is the case today. This seems to be a general trend and not be limited only towards a specific group of countries. 10

11 Table 3: Number of per year per country commented upon by a Council of the European Union declaration Afghanistan Albania 1 Armenia 2 1 Azerbaijan 1 1 Belarus Bosnia and Herzegovina Bulgaria Canada Croatia 1 1 Cyprus Czech Republic Estonia Georgia Hungary Iceland Kazakhstan 1 1 Kyrgyzstan 1 1 Latvia Lithuania Former Yugoslav Republic of 1 Macedonia Moldova 1 1 Mongolia Montenegro 1 Norway Romania Russia Serbia Slovakia Switzerland Tajikistan 1 1 Turkey Turkmenistan 1 Ukraine 2 1 United States Uzbekistan 1 An interesting comparison is to look at which types of were monitored resp. commented upon. Table 4 gives an overview in absolute numbers and in per cent. Naturally not all types of take place as often constitutional referenda are clearly held less frequently than parliamentary. Nevertheless we can identify some interesting points. Both the OSCE EOMs as well as the Council of the European Union focus strongly on parliamentary and presidential a lot more than on local and municipal 11

12 which does not come much as a surprise as the latter from an international perspective might seem to be less relevant. Yet while there were 80 EOMs sent to regular parliamentary by the OSCE and merely 50 to regular presidential this difference is a lot smaller for the Council of the European Union which has published 17 declarations on regular parliamentary and 15 on regular presidential. In the case of the OSCE the difference between statements on parliamentary and presidential grows if repeat, early and pre-term are taken into account as well, in the case of the Council of the European Union the difference diminishes even further. Thus here we can conclude at this point that those findings of EOMs are given more attention by the Council of the European Union that cover presidential in comparison to parliamentary. Noteworthy is that the Council of the European Union has not published a single declaration on referenda monitored by the OSCE. The number of 6 OSCE EOMs that were sent to referenda of various types is too small in order to claim that the Council of the European Union is continuously ignoring this type of election. Nevertheless due to the importance of constitutional referenda of which 3 were monitored by the OSCE could have resulted in the expectation that the Council of the European Union takes account of these events as well. In this paper unfortunately I will not be able to explain these differences between election types observed by the OSCE and commented upon by the Council of the European Union as the answers probably lie in a more institutional direction than the hypothesis that will be dealt with in the next section. Table 4: Election type observed by an OSCE EOM resp. commented upon by a Council of the European Union declaration in absolute numbers and in per cent of all observations resp. declarations Election type OSCE available Council of the European Union declaration available Parliamentary 80 (40.4%) 17 (42.5%) Repeat parliamentary 2 (1.0%) 1 (2.5%) Early parliamentary 13 (6.6%) 0 (0%) Pre-term parliamentary Parliamentary and constitutional referendum Parliamentary and referendum Parliamentary and presidential 1 (0.5%) 0 (0%) 1 (0.5%) 0 (0%) 1 (0.5%) 0 (0%) 4 (2.0%) 0 (0%) 12

13 Election type Parliamentary and early presidential OSCE available Council of the European Union declaration available 1 (0.5%) 1 (2.5%) Presidential election 50 (25.3%) 15 (37.5%) Extraordinary presidential 3 (1.5%) 3 (7.5%) Repeat presidential election 1 (0.5%) 0 (0 %) Presidential and provincial Presidential and municipal 1 (0.5%) 1 (2.5%) 1 (0.5%) 0 (0 %) National Assembly Elections 1 (0.5%) 0 (0 %) Federal 2 (1.0%) 0 (0 %) Mid-term congressional 2 (1.0%) 0 (0 %) General 8 (4.0%) 0 (0 %) Constitutional referendum 3 (1.5%) 0 (0 %) Referendum 2 (1.0%) 0 (0 %) Referendum in Chechnya 1 (0.5%) 0 (0 %) Local 11 (5.6%) 1 (2.5%) Local government 1 (0.5%) 0 (0 %) Municipal 7 (3.5%) 0 (0 %) Municipal by- 1 (0.5%) 1 (2.5%) Finally I shall say a few words about the character of OSCE s and Council of the European Union declarations as shown in table 5. Unlike so far where I included all the cases in the period from until in the following I only include those cases for which there are both OSCE s as well as Council of the European Union declarations available. This brings the total number down to 37 for OSCE EOM statements and to 36 for Council of the European Union declarations. The difference in numbers results from the fact that the OSCE published two Statements of Preliminary Findings and Conclusions on 2003 presidential in Armenia (OSCE/ODIHR and Council of Europe 2003a, 2003b) before the Council of the European Union issued a declaration (Council of the European Union 2003) as there were two rounds for this election. I am very well aware of the fact that the number of the cases is quite limited which strongly limits the explanatory power of any results of the analysis especially in regard to the hypothesis trying to explain differences which I will try to do in the next section. Yet I do believe that it is nevertheless worthwhile to take a closer look as the European Union is an 13

14 important international actor and the Council of the European Union an important institution within the European Union and what I show here is what this institution at least in regard to declarations makes out of OSCE s. Table 5: s and Council of the European Union declarations (in chronological order) Country Year Election type Character of OSCE EOM statement Character of Council of the European Union declaration (number of positive formulations/number of negative formulations/sum of positive minus negative formulations) Kazakhstan 1999 Presidential election Strong critique 1/5/-4 Croatia 2000 Presidential election Weak praise 2/1/1 Russia 2000 Presidential election Weak praise 1/4/-3 Georgia 2000 Presidential election Normal critique 1/6/-5 Kyrgyzstan 2000 Presidential election Normal critique 1/5/-4 Serbia 2000 Parliamentary Normal praise 3/0/3 Moldova 2001 Parliamentary Strong praise 3/3/0 Montenegro 2001 Parliamentary Normal praise 2/3/-1 Croatia 2001 Local Normal praise 4/3/1 Belarus 2001 Presidential election Strong critique 2/6/-4 Ukraine 2002 Parliamentary Weak praise 3/1/2 Serbia 2002 Municipal by Normal praise 3/1/2 Macedonia 2002 Parliamentary Normal praise 3/3/0 Slovakia 2002 Parliamentary Strong praise 0/0/0 Serbia 2002 Presidential election Normal praise 1/1/0 Armenia 2003 Presidential election Weak praise/mild critique 4/4/0 Armenia 2003 Parliamentary Mild critique 3/2/1 Azerbaijan 2003 Presidential election Mild critique 3/3/0 Georgia 2003 Parliamentary Mild critique 1/8/-7 Georgia 2004 Presidential election Mild praise 8/3/5 Russia 2004 Presidential election Mild critique 7/3/4 Georgia 2004 Parliamentary Mild praise 5/3/2 Kazakhstan 2004 Parliamentary Strong critique 3/6/-3 Belarus 2004 Parliamentary Strong critique 1/7/-6 14

15 Country Year Election type Character of OSCE EOM statement Character of Council of the European Union declaration (number of positive formulations/number of negative formulations/sum of positive minus negative formulations) Uzbekistan 2004 Parliamentary Strong critique 2/6/-4 Tajikistan 2005 Parliamentary Strong critique 3/5/-2 Kyrgyzstan 2005 Parliamentary Mild critique 3/3/0 Moldova 2005 Parliamentary Normal praise 4/4/0 Albania 2005 Parliamentary Weak critique 3/3/0 Belarus 2006 Presidential Normal critique 1/9/-8 Ukraine 2006 Parliamentary Normal praise 6/2/4 Tajikistan 2006 Presidential election Normal critique 2/3/-1 Georgia 2008 Presidential election Weak praise 3/5/-2 Armenia 2008 Presidential election Weak praise 2/3/-1 Azerbaijan 2008 Presidential election Weak praise 1/2/1 Albania 2009 Parliamentary Normal praise 3/3/0 A test for correlation between the values for the character of the OSCE s and the character of the Council of the European Union declaration results in a value for Pearson s Correlation of at a 2-tailed significance level of Thus we can find a positive correlation between the two values. Linear regression analysis produces a B coefficient of with an R Square of 0.305, an F of (Sig ). Both values indicate some relationship between OSCE EOM values and Council of the European Union values even though both clearly also show that there seem to be other factors influencing the relationship as well. In the following section I will try to find out more about these other influencing factors. 15

16 Explaining similarities and differences between the character of OSCE s and the character Council of the European Union declarations In the following I will analyse whether the independent variables EU normative motivation, EU security interests, EU economic interests help in explaining how the Council of the European Union reacts to that have been monitored by the OSCE. As already mentioned I only include those in the following that have been observed by the OSCE and been commented upon by the Council of the European Union with a declaration as this is only a number of 36 the statistical significance of all results is limited and can give at the best well-informed guesses about relations between the resulting values. However before starting with the analysis of the hypothesis I shall shortly look at three other factors that could help explaining the resulting character of Council of the European Union reactions as well that are of a more formal nature and which I therefore did not include into the hypothesis (for an overview see table 6). The first one takes note of the fact that EOMs sent by the OSCE to third countries are in many cases also sent by other international organizations. In other words the OSCE EOM documents included in this analysis in many cases have more than one author in the cases analysed here other authors except the ODIHR are the Council of Europe (sometimes: Council of Europe-Parliamentary Assembly), OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, European Parliament, NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Of special relevance at this point is whether the European Parliament is one of the co-authors as the Council of the European Union might be more inclined to concur with EOM results if they are co-authored by an institution belonging to the European Union as well. This is only the case for 13 s thus the reliability of results is even more limited which is underlined by the results themselves. Linear regression analysis produces a B coefficient of with an R Square of 0.396, an F of (Sig ). The R Square is a little bit higher than before when the differentiation between whether the European Parliament is one of the co-authors or not was not yet introduced but the other values indicate that this result has to be taken with caution. So overall the presumption that the character of declarations by the Council of the European Union is influenced more by the character of OSCE s in the case that these statements are co-authored by the European Parliament does not receive strong statistical support even though there might come some influence from European Parliament authorships. Such a relation would have to be validated in more cases which is unfortunately not possible as there 16

17 are no other s both co-authored by the OSCE and the European Parliament besides those already included in the analysis. The second more formalistic type of factor I shall briefly look at is whether in the Council of the European Union declaration the OSCE EOM mission is explicitly mentioned or not. OSCE EOM missions are mentioned in 24 declarations thus in 2/3 of the declarations. Yet including that as a variable in linear regression analysis the values compared to the inclusion of all documents in the analysis improve even less than in the case of European Parliament co-authorship: B coefficient is 1.267, R Square 0.313, F (Sig ). Therefore I conclude that OSCE s do not have a higher influence on the Council of European Union declarations that explicitly mention these statements. Finally I shall have a brief look at the election type and differentiate whether the influence of OSCE s on the character of Council of the European Union declarations differs depending on whether the monitored election is a presidential election or parliamentary election. The number of documents here is also quite limited yet results nevertheless are quite notable. For presidential B coefficient is 0.984, R square 0.137, F is (Sig 0.158). Thus there is no indication in the case of presidential that Council of the European Union declarations relating to this election type is influenced at all by OSCE s. In other words the character of OSCE s is not relevant in regard to the character of Council of the European Union declarations on presidential. We receive an opposite picture for Council of the European Union declarations commenting upon parliamentary. B coefficient is 0.994, R square is 0.420, F is (Sig ). R Square is somewhat higher than in the case of European Union co-authorship and the results are more significant. So even though the number of cases is limited there seems to be a clear indication that while for presidential the Council of the European Union is seemingly not very much influenced by OSCE s in the case of parliamentary there seems to be a clear influence by these statements. As was shown further above (table 4) the Council of the European Union focuses more on presidential than the OSCE does. This might indicate the Council of the European Union regards this election type as more relevant and possibly does not allow itself to be influenced by other international organizations in a field regarded as relevant. 17

18 Table 6: Bivariate linear regression analysis for the character of Council of the European Union declarations depending on the character of OSCE s All Council of the European Union declarations included (n=36) Council of the European Union declarations included relating to OSCE coauthored by the European Parliament (n=13) Council of the European Union declarations included explicitly mentioning OSCE EOM statement (n=24) Council of the European Union declarations included relating to presidential (n=16) Council of the European Union declarations included relating to parliamentary (n=18) B R Square Adjusted R Square F (Sig.) (0.000) (0.021) (0.005) (0.158) (0.004) After the more formalistic type of explanations turned to be of limited help for understanding the relationship between the character of OSCE s and Council of the European Union declarations I will now turn to hypothesis testing. As introduced above I claim the Council of the European Union s reactions are influenced by normative motivation. Partly I have already looked for such a relationship as I would expect that the bigger the problems are that are found in an election the clearer the reaction of the Council of the European Union will be. The results that were shown so far indicate that there indeed is such a relationship yet it can only explain 30.5% of the cases. So in a second step I will now look whether the Council of the European Union s reactions may also be influenced by the situation of democracy, human rights, good governance and rule of law and for doing so take into account the values of Freedom House (Freedom House 2013). As Freedom House works with two values one for political rights and one for civil liberties but there is no reason why either of these values 18

19 should be more appropriate for the analysis performed here I work with the average of both values. The number of cases is somewhat smaller than previously because Freedom House includes some countries only in later years in its analysis than there have been declarations by the Council of the European Union on in these countries. This is the case for example for Serbia which has been included in Freedom House data only since The results of the analysis are shown in table 7. There I included results both for all Council of the European Union documents for which Freedom House values are available as well as taking note of the results above performing an extra-analysis for merely parliamentary. Overall a somewhat mixed picture evolves. Generally the values for R square do not improve when compared to the values above in table 6. Therefore the general situation of democracy, human rights, good governance and rule of law does not seem to help in explaining the character of Council of the European Union declarations in the follow-up of in third countries. When looking at the Beta values for Freedom House in the year of election, one year before election and two years before election in comparison to Beta values for OSCE s it has to be noted that in those cases where all Council of the European Union declarations were included whether or not relating to OSCE s dealing with parliamentary the influence of Freedom House values is mostly even higher than that of the character of OSCE s. Yet this picture changes once the average is taken for the last three years of Freedom House values. I do this because I claim that either the view of the Council of the European Union on the situation of democracy, human rights, the rule of law and good governance is rather short term and in that case it would make sense to merely take into account the Freedom House value for the year of election or which I claim is more likely the Council of the European Union looks at the general development of a country in the past years and therefore an average value makes more sense instead of three separate values for three years. In the latter case the adjusted R square is even lower than when taking only a short time look but the influence of the character of the OSCE s is bigger than that of the Freedom House values. In the case of Council of the European Union documents relating to OSCE s dealing with parliamentary a somewhat different picture evolves. Here mostly the influence of OSCE s is bigger than that of the Freedom House values even though the value for the adjusted R square is also lower than in table 6. Nevertheless this general relationship once more indicates a special influence of the character of OSCE EOM statements on those Council of the European Union declarations that deal with parliamentary. In regard to the influence of the situation of democracy, human rights, good 19

20 governance and rule of law as an influencing factor in general analysis suggests at the very best a very limited influence in fact the value for R square decreases therefore I will put this factor aside in further analysis. For hypothesis 1 this means that we cannot find a bigger normative influence on the character of Council of the European Union declarations than has been the case so far already. Table 7: Multiple linear regression analysis for the character of Council of the European Union declarations depending on the character of OSCE s and Freedom House values All Council of the European Union documents included (n=32) Freedom House value in the year of election Council of the European Union declarations included relating to parliamentary (n=16) Freedom House value in the year of election All Council of the European Union documents included (n=32) Freedom House value in the year of election Freedom House value one year before election Council of the European Union declarations included relating to parliamentary (n=16) Freedom House value in the year of election Freedom House value one year before election B Beta R Square Adjusted R Square F (Sig.) (0.004) (0.028) (0.011) (0.077) 20

21 All Council of the European Union documents included (n=32) Freedom House value in the year of election Freedom House value one year before election Freedom House value two years before election Council of the European Union declarations included relating to parliamentary (n=16) Freedom House value in the year of election Freedom House value one year before election Freedom House value two years before election All Council of the European Union documents included (n=32) Freedom House value average of year of election, one year before election and two years before election Council of the European Union declarations included relating to parliamentary (n=16) Freedom House value average of year of election, one year before election and two years before election B Beta R Square Adjusted R Square F (Sig.) (0.019) (0.057) (0.006) (0.029) For the second hypothesis I analyse EU s security interests in a third country. As described above I expect a less sharp reaction towards in a third country the more security 21

22 interests the EU has there. For including security interests in the analysis I take for one the existence of international disputes on the basis of the CIA world factbook (Central Intelligence Agency 2013) and whether an EU member state has a common border with the respective third country. Table 8 shows the results of analysis. Once again all results for adjusted R square are lower than in table 6 indicating that including security aspects in regression analysis does not help explain the character of Council of the European Union declarations on. This holds true both for the existence of international disputes, for the existence of common borders with an EU member state as well as for the combination of both aspects. Moreover Beta values show that in all cases included in table 8 the character of OSCE s is more influential on the character of Council of the European Union declarations. The influence of whether or not an OSCE is dealing with parliamentary sticks to the same pattern as has been the case so far. What is interesting to note is that the B resp. Beta of security aspects is only in four out of six cases negative so it is not even clear whether the influence that might come from security aspects on the character of Council of the European Union declarations on is even a softening one at all as I assumed in the hypothesis. Table 8: Multiple linear regression analysis for the character of Council of the European Union declarations depending on the character of OSCE s, values from the CIA world factbook (existence of international disputes) and the existence of a common border with an EU member state All Council of the European Union documents included (n=36) International dispute in the year of election Council of the European Union declarations included relating to parliamentary (n=18) International dispute in the year of election B Beta R Square Adjusted R Square F (Sig.) (0.001) (0.016) 22

23 All Council of the European Union documents included (n=36) International dispute in the year of election OR one year before election OR two years before election Council of the European Union declarations included relating to parliamentary (n=18) International dispute in the year of election OR one year before election OR two years before election All Council of the European Union documents included (n=36) Existence of common border with an EU member state Council of the European Union declarations included relating to parliamentary (n=18) Existence of common border with an EU member state All Council of the European Union documents included (n=36) International dispute in the year of election OR one year before election OR two years before election Existence of common border with an EU member state B Beta R Square Adjusted R Square F (Sig.) (0.002) (0.015) (0.001) (0.017) (0.003) 23

24 Council of the European Union declarations included relating to parliamentary (n=18) International dispute in the year of election OR one year before election OR two years before election Existence of common border with an EU member state B Beta R Square Adjusted R Square F (Sig.) (0.043) The last hypothesis to test here is the influence of economic interests on the character of Council of the European Union declarations. Just as for security interests I expect a softening influence the bigger these interests are. For analysing these interests I look at the existence and amount of oil and gas proved reserves (British Petroleum 2012) as well as on import and export shares of the respective third country of EU s total imports and exports, more precisely I use Eurostat s database on EU27 trade since 1988 by SITC (Eurostat 2013). Table 9 shows the results of the analysis. Just as before the results of the analysis can be summed up briefly: Neither one of the values for adjusted R square provides a better result than already received in table 6. Yet it is surprising to note that the effect measurable due to economic interrelations with a third country is rarely a negative one as I originally expected. Only for the average of third countries import share of EU s total import share I could detect such an effect there the Council of the European Union s reaction becomes the softer the higher the import share of the respective third country is. 24

25 Table 9: Multiple linear regression analysis for the character of Council of the European Union declarations depending on the character of OSCE s, existence and amount of oil and gas proves reserves and import/export shares of third country of EU s total imports/exports All Council of the European Union documents included (n=36) Included in British Petroleum (2012) oil proved reserves at least once in year of election, one year before election or two years before election All Council of the European Union documents included (n=36) Included in British Petroleum (2012) gas proved reserves at least once in year of election, one year before election or two years before election 3 Cases included for which British Petroleum (2012) indicates oil proved reserves at least once in year of election, one year before election or two years before election (n=6) Average of oil proved reserves in year of election, one year before election or two years before election B Beta R Square Adjusted R Square F (Sig.) (0.002) (0.002) (0.656) 3 Cases are identical with those cases that were included in British Petroleum (2012) oil proved reserves at least once in year of election, one year before election or two years before election. 25

26 Cases included for which British Petroleum (2012) indicates gas proved reserves at least once in year of election, one year before election or two years before election (n=6) Average of gas proved reserves in year of election, one year before election or two years before election Cases included for which Eurostat provides statistics (n=32) Average of third countries import share of EU s total imports Cases included for which Eurostat provides statistics and Council of the European Union declarations relate to parliamentary (n=16) Average of third countries import share of EU s total imports Cases included for which Eurostat provides statistics (n=32) Average of third countries export share of EU s total exports Cases included for which Eurostat provides statistics and Council of the European Union declarations relate to parliamentary (n=16) Average of third countries export share of EU s total exports B Beta R Square Adjusted R Square F (Sig.) (0.678) (0.003) (0.206) (0.002) (0.019) 26