Power, Sovereignty, and International Election Observers: The Case of Zanzibar

In the international election observer process, the degree to which invasive observation rules of engagement are nego-tiated depends on host country dependence on the donor community, the willingness of the donors to exploit this relationship, the power of local opposition forces to assure that the incumbent government supports an international observer presence, or the honest commitment to "free and fair" elections by the incumbent government. In all of these cases, the relative power relations between donor and host states, and their conceptualizations of national sovereign-ty, are fundamental to understanding the international elec-tion observation process. This argument is explored in the context of the contentious and poorly organized 1995 multi-party elections in Zanzibar. In this election, international observers, for the most part, fulfilled the terms of their very limited mission and legitimized the electoral process as "free and fair" despite irregularities cited by the political oppo-sition and several observer missions.