“Because it meets the demands of a growing interest rooted within the Spanish research community and Spanish speaking societies about the political processes of the Arab and Islamic world.
Furthermore, because it is the first of its kind in Spanish covering this group of countries and freely accessible through the Internet. This Watch is made up of a shared tool which constantly adapts itself to the changes taking place. The Watch allows us to follow these changes, count them up and what is more important, to interpret them under a standardised set of elements. An added value of this Watch is the involvement of a team of senior and junior researchers who are currently doing field work in the Arab-Islamic countries and who regularly mobilize to cover the elections in situ . Besides, these specialists will sometimes carry out their work with the support of native institutions and researchers from the countries of study.
Conception and objectives
The Election Watch undertakes the analysis of electoral processes in the states comprised by the Maghreb and the Middle East (from Morocco and Mauritania in the West to Iran and Pakistan in the East), and follows the changes in their political systems (party systems and electoral legislation), as well as their effects on the main electoral contests (presidential and legislative polls). We assume the perspective of comparative political science and as such, we intend to break up with cultural and religious determinisms, showing that comparative techniques that have been applied to other geographic areas, can perfectly be applied to our study area, without ruling out possible inter-region comparisons.
The Election Watch enables us to obtain an estimation (both qualitative and quantitative) of the democratic effect any election has over its particular political system. Likewise, it goes beyond typical electoral information by exceeding simple enumeration of quantitative elements (participation rates, results, etc.) and most important, by carrying out in-depth assessments of electoral processes based on non quantitative data collected in situ.”
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