Deploying Democracy: Security Forces’ Involvement in Elections

ABSTRACT The role of security forces, be they domestic or international, military or police, remains understudied in the research on electoral integrity and electoral violence. Nonetheless, we expect that they should be a crucial component of keeping all electoral actors and materials secure. This article introduces a new dataset on the presence of security forces in elections worldwide between 2012–2018 using data from election observation reports. It considers the questions: Where and when are security forces deployed during electoral events? Are they domestic or international? What sorts of roles did they fulfill? And in what stages of the electoral cycle were they active? The responses to these questions provide a broad overview of how security forces interact with the electoral process around the globe.