Models of Electoral Management: Problems of Typology

This article represents the first academic publication specifically devoted to the issue of typologizing models of state governance in the sphere of electoral processes. After a detailed examination of the so-called traditional tripartite typology of electoral management proposed by Rafael López Pintor in 2000, the author argues that this framework no longer corresponds to the state-of-the-art knowledge on state electoral policy. The application of this framework can be misleading, as it significantly overstates the role of governments in managing elections. Nevertheless, the author posits that this typology does not need to be discarded but rather refined, as it is founded on a valid premise: the critical importance of the degree of dependence of electoral management bodies on the government for classifying forms of electoral management. To address this issue, the author revises the methodology for constructing typologies of electoral management models by restating the above mentioned criterion and supplementing it with an additional criterion — namely, the collegial nature of the electoral body. The resulting paired coordinate typology, developed by combining two binary linear typologies, is empirical in its character and is based on a dataset of electoral bodies in the modern states. The article defines and characterizes four models of electoral management — independent collegial, independent single-person, governmental collegial, governmental single-person — and presents the global distribution of states across these models. The application of this refined typology allows for a more accurate identification of trends in the modernization of electoral management bodies worldwide.