Electoral Rights in Europe: Advances and Challenges

The book’s main aim is to explore the ways in which the election of politicians can be made more fair and credible by adopting a human rights approach to how elections are conducted. Contributors unpack the ‘right to free elections’ by examining it from a variety of disciplines and methods, ranging from thick, empirical case studies to comparative legal and political analyses. The first part of the book, Institutions that interpret norms:  Hard and Soft Law Human Rights Standards relating to Elections discusses the various standards for the conduct of elections which have been devised at the international level, focusing on their application within Europe. The second part, National and Regional case studies, presents a number of cases which demonstrate how problems that occur might be amendable to solution through the adoption of an approach based on the existing or potential hard and soft law standards. The case studies relate to jurisdictions within Europe, especially Central and Eastern Europe, and there is a focus on countries emerging from conflict or from an authoritarian past. The third part of the book, Challenges to election integrity: comparative perspectives, looks at some pertinent electoral issues from a comparative perspective, attempting to deduce from those studies emerging principles which might guide countries towards electoral systems which are fairer and have greater integrity and reliability. Edited by Helen Hardman, Glasgow University and Brice Dickson, Queen's University Belfast, the book is to be published in 2017 by Routledge in their "Elections, Democracy and Autocracy Book Series"