The Challenge of Closely Fought Elections

Laurence Whitehead

Journal of Democracy, Volume 18, Number 2, April 2007, pp. 14-28 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/jod.2007.0038

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THE CHALLENGE OF CLOSELY FOUGHT ELECTIONS

Laurence Whitehead

Laurence Whitehead is Official Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College, Oxford, and coeditor of the Transitions from Authoritarian Rule volumes (1986). He is the author of Latin America: A New Interpretation (2005), and coeditor, with Lourdes Sola, of State-Crafting Monetary Authority: Brazil in Comparative Perspective (2006).

A surprisingly large number of recent democratic elections have been

closely fought.1 Of these tight races, many attracted intense voter involvement and involved deeply consequential choices for their respective societies. Such elections have taken place worldwide and include the U.S. presidential election of November 2000; the Spanish parliamentary election of March 2004; the Taiwanese presidential election held the same month; the Puerto Rican gubernatorial election of November 2004; the Costa Rican presidential election of February 2006; the Italian parliamentary election of April 2006; and the Mexican presidential election of July 2006. Each elections outcome was a cliffhanger, and the results had far-reaching implications for the future course of democratic politics in each place. All these recent electoral contests, both in old and new democracies, concentrated the collective political energies of these societies. Voters made decisions of real importance concerning not only the alternation in office of professional politicians, but also the major issues of public policy. Voters responded not just as individual consumersfor whom the individually rational act might have been to stay home and free ride on the misplaced commitment of other votersbut as politically engaged citizens. There is no doubt that democratic political engagement requires involvement in other forms of public life aside from the casting of a vote once every few years. But these contests indicate that electoral participation, and indeed partisanship, remains a powerful driver of democratic politics in many countries. They also show how often the dynamics of an
Journal of Democracy Volume 18, Number 2 April 2007 2007 National Endowment for Democracy and The Johns Hopkins University Press

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election campaign can crystallize a significant split in public opinion that divides the electorate fairly equally and therefore offers a genuine opportunity for meaningful collective choice. Most of these closely fought elections also subsequently produced collective agreement among all parties to abide by the outcome. In certain important instances, however, the passions aroused during the campaign and in the aftermath of the tense postelectoral standoff did not fully subside. In such countries, how can democracy survive these rough contests and at length become institutionalized? Electoral politics is essentially a competition for state power through highly artificial and structured conventions. The conflict is contained within a tightly defined nonviolent framework, governed by closely monitored procedural rules, operated within a precise and generally preordained timetable, and resolved with a more or less ritualized process of postconflict reconciliation. But this level of institutionalization requires a great deal of coordination and effort. One only has to review the respective histories of the countries listed above to observe that civil war, partition, and state repression provide the backdrop to all these democratizations. In societies where politics has long been experienced and understood as an arena for the passions and licensed as a free-for-all, these institutional restraints seem contra natura. They are particularly difficult to accept when your side comes very close to winning, but does not quite make it. Thus one aspect of democratization that requires more attention and more comparative modeling than it has received so far is the two-phase process through which a democratic contest both promotes and controls the expression of partisan loyalties on the part of the electorate. As the preordained date for a national election draws near, the citizenry may find itself drawn into an unusually intense period of partisan confrontation and politicization. Yet these partisan passions are controlled both in form and rhythm by the structure of the electoral process. Once the count begins, this temporarily reinforced partisanship is abruptly replaced by equally intense collective disciplines aimed at the unification of all citizens around a legitimate outcome that binds winners and losers alike. This sequence, however, is far from self-evident or spontaneous. Societies in which the population is not yet accustomed to a perpetual cycle of authoritative, competitive elections must learn to internalize this strange and counterintuitive logic. Politics has to be converted into a perpetual democratic peace, in which each choice, however meaningful, is only another episode in a metaprocess of nonchoicesin other words, there must be a collective commitment not to bid for power outside the electoral framework. Adam Przeworski famously labeled this the institutionalization of uncertainty.2 But one might with equal

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justice highlight the reverse characteristic: All actors must learn to accept the certainty of institutionalization. According to standard democratic theory, in consolidated democracies fair electoral competition is the only game in town. The theory states that high political office is renewed or redistributed solely according to the outcome of periodic and neutrally organized public electoral contests, in which the sovereign preferences of the electorate within a territorially defined political community authoritatively allocate positions in the legislature (and in presidential systems, also in the executive). In the real world, however, this model may seem too good to be true or too idealistic to be able to function in practice. This article will consider several contemporary cases of countries in which these doubts and anxieties are likely to be particularly evident.

The Nature of Closely Fought Elections

Some elections are fraudulent or rigged. Sometimes the playing field is so tilted that the electoral game is palpably unfair. Yet for such cases there is in principle a democratic remedya set of responses and alternative procedures to which all supporters of democracy can and probably will rallyand though there is always a gap between normative theory and the messy realities of struggles for power, most deviations can be contained within tolerable limits. Most losers can be induced to acquiesce in the face of minor anomalies, perhaps on the calculation that next time the anomalies could turn out in their favor, or perhaps due to their fear of the reputational damage from becoming known as sore losers. Even quite gross inequalities (such as those that arise from gerrymandered boundaries or from a system of single-member constituencies, with its first-past-the-post, winner take all rules) may become so habitual that public expectations constrain the victims to limit their protests to ineffectual abstractions. In other words, people learn how to lose. Learning to lose 3 implies moving along an electoral continuum: At one end stand zero-sum conflicts in which no holds are barred and from which only one winner emerges, a winner (such as Alyaksandr Lukashenka in Belarus) who makes no concessions to those whom he defeats. At the other end of the continuum is an iterative sequence of electoral contests in which even those who suffer the most staggering losses accept defeat and as a result stand a chance of returning to office in some later contest (as the Conservative Party in Canada did under Brian Mulroney and has again under Stephen Harper). A requirement for learning to lose is that there should be a reasonable prospect of the electoral contest being closely fought. This is not a given in all electoral democracies. In South Africa, for reasons that are deeply entrenched in the history of the country, and especially the so-

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cialization provided by the apartheid regime, every election since apartheids end in 1994 has been essentially a census of ethnic identity rather than an inquiry into preference concerning the policies or rules of the country. Under such conditions, it is almost impossible for the dominant African National Congress to learn to lose. Still, there are many closely fought elections in both old and new democraciesmore than one might expect from their historical traditions, or the initial distribution of resources and skills between many an incumbent government and its electoral opponents. Indeed, competitive election campaigns may often exercise an independent role in narrowing the gap between challengers and defending incumbents. The academic literature on comparative electoral politics has studied the closeness of electoral races as an independent variable that helps to explain high levels of turnout rather than as a distinct phenomenon that in and of itself demands analysis and explanation. The recent literature on learning to lose has treated the gap in satisfaction between winners and losers as an object of study, and has related this to such variables as the newness of the democratic system, or the scale of the ideological and policy differences separating the contenders. But the literature has not yet explored whether races decided by narrow margins produce different effects on a countrys democracy than races decided by much wider margins.4 Not all competitive elections for national office are closely fought, but it is worth considering why a surprising number are. Even when one particular candidate or party starts out with an apparently impregnable lead, it is not uncommon for the opposition to rally around the most viable alternative, or for the front runner to peak too soon. In other words, the dynamic of the election campaign can often generate a greater degree of uncertainty about the outcome and more widespread popular interest in the race than might have been predicted on the basis of the routine political interactions that occupy contenders for power during the much longer periods between electoral campaigns. Various explanations can be suggested to make it clearer why greater uncertainty and wider popular interest might be generated: As a campaign advances, the rival parties may increasingly identify and converge upon the preferences of the median voter; there may be momentum or bandwagon effects that boost the morale and attractiveness of a late challenger; the frontrunner may be so preoccupied with the problems of governing after an anticipated victory that insufficient effort is focused on securing that essential result; and there may be reservoirs of apathetic or disenchanted voters who have no interest in ratifying the complacency of the status-quo candidate, but who can be drawn into the electoral process if they believe that their participation will bring about change or will humble powerful incumbents. Another possibility is that improvements in public-opinion analysis enable democratic parties

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to hone their campaigns with more precision than in the past, and as a result modern electoral campaigns force convergence on appeals to the very center of the electorate (though whether this is equally true in all democracies remains to be seen5). Different combinations of these factors probably operate in each case, but taken together they may increase the probability of a closely fought outcome even when the initial distribution of preferences seems to point to a foregone conclusion.

Partisanship and Polarization

In the course of a closely fought election campaign, the level of political partisanship in the society can be expected to reach a peak, with the potential for increased partisanship among activists and intensified politicization and polarization among voters at large. Most closely fought campaigns excite both hopes and fears concerning the consequences of victory or defeat. Various practices and mechanisms can be established both to arouse interest in the outcome and to channel these energies into structured (typically nonviolent) directions. Mass rallies, televised debates, door-to-door campaigning, and workplace- or churchbased advice and direction all tend to intensify public interest in the contest and to direct attention to the specific actions required of the concerned voter. In a democratic election campaign, political conflict may reach a crescendo, but it is also carefully orchestrated. There is a clearly specified time and place for approved activism, and many other potentially dangerous manifestations of political militancy are simultaneously discouraged. The parties have the task of arousing partisanship, and the electoral institutions have the task of containing and moderating it. A successful election is one in which these two conflicting logics are appropriately managed and balanced. If the parties or their partisan allies are left free to announce the results as the count proceeds, there is an evident danger that each side may inflate the hopes and expectations of its friends while failing to persuade its foes to accept an adverse outcome. Great care is therefore needed to generate a single authoritative procedure for reporting (and, if need be, corroborating) the flow of results. The outgoing administration may be called upon to play a difficult role here, particularly if the victorious candidates are from the opposition. The media also carry a heavy responsibility, since they will probably have attracted extra viewers, readers, and advertising revenue by dramatizing the issues at stake in the contest. In general, a wide array of social and political actors will be required to put aside the differences that the campaign brought to the fore, and to unite around a consensual message concerning the legitimacy and probity of the results. This reversal of stance can be hard to achieve even in the most stable and irreproachable older democracies. It demands an

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exceptional degree of discipline, unity, and public spiritedness in new democracies, where the passions raised by a closely fought campaign may be harder to control. Various sources of reinforcement can assist in the forging of this consensus, including the legal system, the academic community, international observers, and signals sent by major foreign governments. Partisan rhetoric is often regarded as evidence of the vitality of a competitive democracy. But there is a crucial difference between criticisms and denunciations that stop short of delegitimizing the democratic credentials of the opponent, and those attacks that overstep the line. Take the case of Spain at the beginning of 2007a time of extreme bitterness and tension following the breakdown of peace negotiations between the government of Premier Jos Luis Zapatero and the Basque separatist and terrorist group ETA after that group detonated a bomb at the Madrid airport. The vice-president of the Madrid Regional Assembly, Ignacio Gonzlez of the opposition Popular Party, described Zapateros ruling Socialists as miserable and manipulative. So far, so routine. But then Gonzlez went further. The Socialists incumbency, he continued, was a product of cheating and felony (la felonia y el enga~no). An editorialist in the newspaper El Pas commented:
When the principal opposition party . . . considers that the current government lacks legitimacy of origin because its election victory was spurious, the blackguarding [encanallamiento] of political life is almost inevitable. In the Popular Party [opposition], both among its militants and a very considerable part of its electorate as well as in its leadership, the conviction has become very deeply entrenched that Jos Luis Zapateros government lacks legitimacy of origin, that it did not win the election by fair means [en buena lid] and that he is in consequence, a legal but not a legitimate premier. He therefore is not entitled to command the respect of the opposition. On the contrary, all means of combat against him are permissible [contra el valgo todo].6

Spain has been extolled around the world, and especially in Latin America, as one of the smoothest and most exemplary cases of democratic consolidation in the so-called third wave of democratization that commenced in 1974. And yet more than thirty years later, the political climate is as polarized and embittered as at any time since the death of longtime dictator Francisco Franco in 1975 (Zapatero to the firing squad! was the decidedly undemocratic slogan heard on the streets in early 2007). The closely fought election of 14 March 2004 (held three days after the 3/11 Madrid train bombings, an atrocity perpetrated by Islamist terrorists) ended in an unexpected electoral reversal for the conservative Popular Party, and thus led to the current hostilities.7 One must take into account that circumstances in Spain are now extreme because of the intersection of two kinds of terrorism (Basque and Islam-

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ist), and that in any case the ultimate resolution of the current political crisis is likely to be achieved through the ballot box at a future election. Nevertheless, the bitter aftertaste left by Spains most recent electoral contest hints at the lasting damage to democratic legitimacy that can follow from a closely fought election if the verdict of the polls is resisted by the losing side. Spain provides a striking example of the kind of damage that a closely fought race can inflict, but the country is by no means unique in this regard.

A Polarization Syndrome
Italy too is one of the many countries that have faced problems following a tight election. In the April 2006 parliamentary election, the coalition government led by Silvio Berlusconi lost by a wafer-thin margin to Romano Prodis nine-party center-left coalition. Berlusconi disputed the validity of the results, but Italys supreme court confirmed Prodis very narrow victory, and Berlusconis challenge lost momentum as his followers mostly became reconciled to the reality of his defeat. Yet there was certainly no automatic closing of ranks once the votes had been counted; instead, considerable effort (and a significant element of good luck) was required to stabilize the postelectoral balance of power and to legitimize a democratic transfer of office.8 The Hungarian parliamentary election of April 2006 was also bitterly divisive and closely fought, although in this case the incumbent socialist-led coalition secured reelection and even won a slightly increased majority. Initially, the losers accepted the verdict of the polls. It was not until six months later, when the leader of the winning coalition publicly acknowledged that his campaign message had been a pack of lies, that the underlying polarization broke through with scenes of violent protest and the withdrawal of opposition consent to the authority of the government. In June 2006, a parliamentary election in the Czech Republic produced a dead-heat result (a hundred seats for each of the two competing coalitions in the 200-seat Chamber of Deputies). After seven long months in which no government could be formed, late January 2007 saw the center-right coalition government finally scrape together enough support to win a parliamentary vote of confidence by a bare majority after two opposition Social Democrats decided to abstain. This polarization syndrome can be found in a variety of European parliamentary democracies, both new and old, but it is by no means confined either to that continent or to parliamentary regimes. Taiwans semipresidential democracy provides another vivid example. In the divisive presidential election of March 2004, the margin separating the victorious incumbent from the runner-up was a mere 0.22 percent. As in Spain, a controversial act of violence on the eve of the vote helped to

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poison the atmosphere and feed mutual recriminations between the contending parties. In a shooting incident on the eve of the poll, the eventually successful presidential and vice-presidential candidates were injured but not fatally wounded, and it may be that the resulting sympathy vote affected the outcome. The losers suspected that the incident had been staged, although the courts subsequently ruled that there was no direct evidence for this.9 Taiwans election was followed by twenty days of mass demonstrations and a week of intense debate about how to resolve the disagreement over the results validity. A court-managed recount finally confirmed the initial outcome, though it reduced the margin of victory to only 0.12 percent. The attitudes and actions of the U.S. government and the international media helped to create an environment in which a peaceful solution would be possible, but the most important players were the contending parties themselveswhose leaders made mutual concessions even while still encouraging polarizationand Taiwans neutral institutions, especially the courts, as well as the military and other elements of the state bureaucracy that resisted partisanship. Tun-jen Cheng and Da-chi Liao have provisionally argued that Taiwans democratic institutions emerged strengthened from this testing experience, 10 but the final verdict will depend upon how subsequent elections unfold. It is plausible to reason that the next contest is likely to deliver a more clearcut and generally accepted result, and that in this way the overarching electoral framework will become more solidly entrenched. As in Spain, however, the immediate aftermath of Taiwans controversial election has apparently been to intensify political polarization and to reduce the disposition of the losers to cooperate with, or even show minimum respect toward, the winners. It is clear that in this case the routine ambitions which fuel party conflict have intensified under the influence of deeper divisions over Taiwans future political status, given the territorial claims of mainland China. The November 2004 gubernatorial election in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico provides a further illustration of these themes. The outcome of the governors race on this small island of fewer than four million people was so close and so procedurally contested that it took two solid months to declare a winner. During that protracted postelectoral period, interparty suspicions and divisions became more intractable. The eventual result was determined by the courts, with the added complication that two parallel legal processes were involvedone within the Puerto Rican judiciary, the other in U.S. federal courts. In the end, the federal court accepted the Supreme Court of Puerto Ricos ruling. But since the interparty conflict was between those who advocate U.S. statehood for Puerto Rico (namely, the New Progressive Party, which lost the governorship but retained control of both houses of Congress) and those who support maintaining the status quo of Puerto Rico as a U.S. common-

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wealth (namely, the Popular Democratic Party, which secured the governorship only thanks to a complex transfer of votes from the minority proindependence party), the unresolved issue of the islands constitutional status became entangled with the questions of which party would control the governorship and Congress. As in Taiwan, the contending parties in Puerto Rico complied with the court ruling, but also as in Taiwan, the postelectoral climate became more bitter. In the absence of a minimum level of mutual respect and cooperation between the executive and legislative branches, Puerto Ricos political parties have allowed the fiscal crisis to intensify, and have more generally failed to provide responsible government. Everything awaits the outcome of the next electoral contest, and though this might be regarded as proof of the stability of the islands democratic system, it also demonstrates the enduring harmful effects of the closely fought and divisive 2004 election. As in Taiwan, the status issue recurs at every election and obstructs postelectoral convivencia (coexistence).

Specialized Institutions and Contentious Elections

Courts may exercise sufficient authority to arbitrate closely fought elections in Taiwan, Puerto Rico, and the United States (as was the case after the U.S. presidential election in 2000), but elsewhere the judiciary is notoriously lacking in respected authority. This is the case in most Latin American republics. Politicized judicial appointments, a track record of inconsistent constitutional interpretations, restricted public prestigeall these are commonplace characteristics of Latin American court systems, and they fit into a broader context of winner takes all vices and weak respect for neutral institutions that often haunt the regions presidentialist regimes. No doubt these generalizations are too sweeping, and we should make careful distinctions between different republics and different time periods. Yet this overall picture is sufficiently vivid and recurrent to cast a shadow over the arbitrating capacity of the regular courts in most of the Western Hemispheres republics; specialized electoral tribunals have become the normal institutional channel for settling disputed elections.11 (Legislatures used to exercise this attribute, but this option is now even less credible than resort to the regular courts.) Among the most authoritative of these specialized entities are the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) of Costa Rica and the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary (TEPJF) of Mexico, both of which have had to contend with very closely fought and contentious presidential elections in the recent past. It is therefore instructive to compare these two experiences. Despite its presidential system, Costa Ricas democracy has been remarkably stable and authoritativein part because the constitutional separation and balance of powers has been more effective than in most

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Latin American republics, as there is strong respect for judicial authority and the rule of law. Although the two major parties compete vigorously for electoral support, they are not separated by deep policy divisions, and they have both developed a strong interest in maintaining the established systems of electoral alternation in office. But the presidential election of February 2006 proved a sharp break with this wellestablished pattern. The Social Christian Unity Party, long one of Costa Ricas two major parties, performed disastrously, with its candidate garnering only 3.6 percent of valid votes. The rise of a new challenger, the Citizens Action Party, combined with an unusual level of absenteeism, gave rise to an unexpectedly and unprecedentedly close election. Despite exit polls predicting a clear result, when the TSE issued its first electronic results, first-place finisher Oscar Arias of the National Liberation Party led second-place contender Ottn Sols of the Citizens Action Party by only 0.2 percent. There followed an extended period of uncertainty while a laborious manual count was undertaken. In the end, however, Costa Ricas institutional strength prevailed, and the losers accepted their narrow defeat. In the case of Mexicos July 2006 presidential election, it remains to be seen whether the countrys institutions will prevail as Costa Ricas seem to have done. Mexicos Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), the body that organizes the countrys federal elections, has been a great success since 1996, but was nevertheless severely tested in 2006. The IFEs effectiveness depends only in part on its own internal structure and legal powers. It needs to be buttressed and reinforced by the media, academia, external supporters, and ultimately and above all by the Mexican electorate at large. To build and sustain that kind of support, the IFE needs an active strategy of legitimization, socialization, and conflict resolutionas an example, the IFE must work closely with the TEPJF, which acts as the final arbiter of electoral disputes. The IFE also needs a degree of luck; its work was made easier by the comfortable margin in the 2000 election, for instance, in contrast to the much tighter margin in the 2006 race.12 Christopher J. Anderson and his associates have undertaken crossnational comparative work to identify the background conditions that favor loser resistance to accepting an electoral defeat. Mexicos 2006 election fit most of the major conditions that Anderson identified: a new, nonestablished democracy; a winner take all contest; the defeat of a party that has no prior experience of national victory; and many disappointed voters with low educational attainments.13 What Anderson and his colleagues did not investigate was whether the narrowness of the margin of victory also contributes to loser disaffection. Their evidence included some consideration of Mexicos 2000 elections (the legislative outcome, but not the presidential result), and they ranked Mexico as a weak democracy.

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But the repudiation of the 2006 results by the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) was much more emphatic than could have been deduced from the 2000 contest, mainly because the vote was so close. The end result, with victory going to Felipe Caldern of the National Action Party, was also a last-minute reversal of what most observers and polls had anticipated until very late in the campaign. The election was also a reminder of earlier experiences of electoral defeat by what were generally considered to be fraudulent means (especially the presidential election of 1988). Moreover, there were other features of the Mexican political system, not included in Andersons losers consent analysis, that undoubtedly aggravated the indignity of a narrow defeat. The PRD mobilized hundreds of thousands of supporters and held mass protests for days, shutting down an entire section of Mexico City. The TEPJF, after ordering a recount of about half the polling stations whose results the PRD was contesting, declared Caldern the victor in September. The one big prize in the Mexican electoral calendar is the presidency, which carries a six-year term. That makes it harder to tolerate defeat than if the term were shorter or the consolation prizes more attractive. The no-reelection rule for both the presidency and the legislature makes politicians more dependent on their party machines than on the views of voters, reinforcing the influence of party activists and insiders and so increasing the likelihood of polarization. In addition, there is no secure role as leader of the opposition for a defeated presidential candidate, and thus there was no formal place at all for the leader of the PRD, Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador. Taking all these characteristics into consideration, it is easy to understand why Mexicos new democracy found itself in an almost perfect storm in 2006. There was an unusual convergence of strongly adverse factors; this was not simply about an obtuse choice made by an individual political leader. However that may be, the comparative evidence suggests that the systemic consequences of an unaccepted defeat can do lasting and cumulative damage. In the Mexican case, a great deal is riding on the ability of the winners to reintegrate into democratic politics those who feel wronged by defeat, and to initiate sufficient institutional reforms to restore confidence in the inclusiveness of the electoral process. So far there are some encouraging signs that Mexico is making progress in this direction, but the ranks of the disaffected remain numerous and potentially vengeful.14

The Long Learning Curve

Institutionalization can take decades or even generations. At the end of a long cycle of learning and adjustment, everyone can treat as natural the idea that all players will and must conform to the precise format of an iterative game with rules to cover every contingency. This appear-

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ance of consensus and spontaneous acquiescence can be naturalized. But in truth, it is an extremely complex and counterintuitive social construct. It needs to be understood as such, and nurtured by those who value democratic continuity as a value, not just a technique. That is why developing a political culture of learning to lose is both so difficult and so worthwhile. In the United States, as in other longstanding democracies, the political culture has had to incorporate this key lesson of learning how to handle defeat. The U.S. presidential election of 1800 was a crucial step in the consolidation of the countrys constitutional electoral democracy. For the first time since the creation of the United States, a rival partyVice-President Thomas Jeffersons Republicans (the ancestors of todays Democrats)had displaced the Federalists at the head of the U.S. government. As Jefferson himself noted at the time, the changes of administration, which in every government in every age have most generally been epochs of confusion, villainy and bloodshed, in this happy country take place without any species of distraction or disorder. 15 Moreover, following this alternation in office, the victorious party led a process of democratization in the abolition of property qualifications, the formation of closer ties between representatives and constituents, the development of party organization, and the growth of popular campaigning.16 Yet the election of 1800 was tense and tough, and though it may have paved the way for much more routinized electoral procedures thereafter, at the time a democratic outcome was by no means assured. Two-and-a-half months after that presidential election, the question of who would become the third president of the United States was still up in the air. Between 10 and 14 February 1801, the lame-duck U.S. House of Representatives (in which the Federalists retained the majority despite having lost it in the fall 1800 voting) cast more than thirty ballots without breaking the deadlock between Jefferson and Aaron Burr, each of whom had 73 electoral votes. Threatsincluding threats to use forceflew back and forth.17 On February 17, on the thirty-sixth ballot, Jefferson finally secured the presidency when the state of Delawares sole congressman (a Federalist who had been voting for Burr) decided after consulting with associates of Jefferson to abstain and thus made Jeffersons victory certain. The threats and tensions had dissipated by the time of Jeffersons 4 March 1801 inaugural address, in which he famously affirmed that we are all republicans, we are all federalists.18 Jefferson always insisted that he had made no behind-thescenes bargain in order to break the deadlock, but in practice he did much to reassure the losers and to reconcile the Federalist Party to its defeat. By the time of Jeffersons successful reelection campaign in 1804, his opponents were in disarray and his second mandate removed any doubts that may have lingered from his close shave in 1800.

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Two-hundred years later, in November 2000, another very closely fought U.S. presidential election gave rise to thirty-six days of uncertainty about the final outcome. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling finally put an end to more than a month of court challenges (state and federal) and ballot recounts. Loser Al Gore accepted George W. Bush as the winner, and Bush went on to exercise full presidential authority, eventually winning a generally accepted second term in 2004.19 The examples of the United States, Costa Rica, Mexico, and others show that democratic rules and procedures may never become definitively institutionalized as the only game in town. That is, there is no point at which one can be sure that the political discretion inherent in high office will no longer be deployed with the aim of perpetuating powerholders and ruling parties across successive slanted elections. The defense of democracy and the promotion of democratic values require constant vigilance; the persistent renewal of political participation on the part of the citizenry is a continuing, open-ended process. This is not to say that political actors cannot learn to loseonly that they may need to be repeatedly retaught this lesson so that it sinks in and is not honored only at the rhetorical level.

Lessons Learned
Four general lessons can be extracted from this brief overview. The first is that it can take a remarkably long time, even in longstanding democracies, before all significant contenders for power come to accept that the verdict of a fair electoral competition is the only game in town when it comes to determining the circulation of officeholders. Whether this lesson is learned slowly and painfully or assimilated rapidly may vary with the historical experiences of different countries, and may also be powerfully affected by the international climate of opinion and expectations. The second lesson is that, over successive electoral cycles, rival groups can benefit from the bitter experience of accepting defeat in one contest if they come to see their interests as also including the opportunity to live to fight another dayto strengthen their entitlement to the fruits of a future victory by conceding those fruits this time to their victorious competitor. But this is not a consolation that will have equal appeal to all contenders, and it may require considerable domestic socialization and international reinforcement before it can be fully embraced by all. The third lesson is that under favorable conditions, a hotly contested election that inflames partisan passions may actually precipitate intensified efforts at institutionalization which prove strong enough to reinforce the inclinations of all parties to begin working within the agreedupon rules. This is a realistic possibility, but by no means a necessary response to approaching an abyss of partisan conflict. Good institu-

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tional design and appropriate foresight can boost the chances of this outcome, but they are far from sufficient to guarantee it. Consequently, the fourth lesson is that institutional stability and continuity should never be taken for granted. They require constant vigilance and renewal and have to be relearned by successive generationsnot only by political leaders, but also by opinion-formers, state officials, the media, academics, and international observers. If institutional rules are ever compromisedfor example, by excluding from elections Islamists, ex-communists, or nationalists, despite their conformity with electoral requirementsthe integrity of the entire electoral process will be brought into question. To keep the show on the road requires multiple and overlapping sources of reinforcementlegal and societal, domestic and external, local and national. But no sources of enforcement can substitute for a collective sense of tolerance, openness, and fair play. NOTES
1. Elections can be classified by their outcomes or as dynamic processes. A numerically very close election outcome is theoretically possible even when the campaign is not closely fought, and some closely fought elections may display the polarizing characteristics described here, even though the numerical results are not that close. This article focuses on electoral processes in which the contending parties convince their followers that: a) much is at stake, and b) there is wellfounded and usually mounting uncertainty over the outcome. The uncertainty could be due to fear of fraud or manipulation, rather than to a statistical dead heat. 2. Adam Przeworski, Some Problems in the Study of the Transition to Democracy, in Guillermo ODonnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspectives (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 58. 3. William H. Riker provided an early steer to this topic: [T]he losers provide the values of the future. The dynamics of politics is in the hands of the losers. It is they who decide when and how and whether to fight on. . . . Losers have nothing and gain nothing unless they continue to try to bring about new political situations. This provides the motivation for change. See Political Theory and the Art of Heresthetics, in Ada W. Finifter, ed., Political Science: The State of the Discipline (Washington, D.C.: American Political Science Association, 1983), 62. 4. Christopher J. Anderson and Silvia M. Mendes, Learning to Lose: Election Outcomes, Democratic Experience and Political Protest Potential, British Journal of Political Science 36 (January 2006): 91111. 5. See John G. Geer, Critical Realignments and the Public Opinion Poll, Journal of Politics 53 (May 1991): 43453. 6. A speech by Ignacio Gonzlez to the Madrid Assembly and the editorial, both in El Pas (Madrid), 13 January 2007, 20. Authors translation, phrases in parentheses from the original. 7. See Ignacio Lago and Jos Ramn Montero, The 2004 Election in Spain: Terrorism, Accountability and Voting, Taiwan Journal of Democracy 2 (July 2006): 1336.

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Journal of Democracy

8. Italys supreme court confirmed that Prodis coalition won the lower house by a margin of some 24,000 votes, and in the Senate he secured 158 seats versus 156 for Berlusconis alliance and one independent. This was the closest margin in the history of the Italian republic. But as Berlusconi wrote to Spains defeated premier Jos Mara Aznar, The coalition that I led wound up in the majority overall in the number of votes, but in the minority in terms of parliamentary representation. . . . As opposition leader I represent 50.2 percent of the country. . . . I hope to return to government soon after more than 1.1 million annulled ballots have been checked. See BBC News, Berlusconi Reveals Hope of Return, 25 May 2006, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5017582.stm. 9. See Yun-han Chu, Taiwans Year of Stress, Journal of Democracy 16 (April 2005): 4357. 10. For a detailed account, see Tun-jen Cheng and Da-chi Liao, Testing the Immune System of a Newly Born Democracy: The 2004 Election in Taiwan, Taiwan Journal of Democracy 2 (July 2006): 81102. They conclude (on p. 86) that the shooting probably had the effect of further mobilizing supporters, but whether it changed the direction of the vote is more difficult to ascertain. 11. The Latin American practice is summarized in Jess Orozco Henrquez, The Mexican System of Electoral Conflict Resolution in Comparative Perspective, Taiwan Journal of Democracy 2 (July 2006): esp. 5254. 12. Andreas Schedlers careful and balanced discussion of the role of the IFE and the TEPJF acknowledges some flaws and mistakes. But however hard these institutions might have tried, the losing PRD candidate was sure to condemn them if the result was not what he required. See Andreas Schedler, The Mexican Standoff: The Mobilization of Distrust, Journal of Democracy 18 (January 2007): 88 102. 13. Christopher J. Anderson, Andre Blais, and Shaun Bowler, et al., Losers Consent: Elections and Democratization Legitimacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 18486. But according to their model, Mexican federalism arguably might have softened the disaffection of the PRD, which did retain control of Mexico City. 14. For some interesting suggestions on how Mexicos political system might now be reformed to cope with the stresses that have been uncovered, see Jorge G. Casta~ n eda and Marco A. Morales, The Mexican Standoff: Looking to the Future, Journal of Democracy 18 (January 2007): 10312. 15. Quoted in Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Vintage, 1998), 210. 16. See David Hackett Fischer and James M. McPherson, editors note introducing John Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), xi. 17. Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson, 188. 18. The use of lower-case initial letters in the names of the two parties was Jeffersons deliberate choice. Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson, 205. 19. For a concise assessment of the procedural complexities of December 2000, see George C. Edwards III, The 2000 U.S. Presidential Election, Taiwan Journal of Democracy 2 (July 2006): 3750.