The impact of national and international observers in democratic elections: A randomized control trial from the Mozambican elections of 2009

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Economics from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Mozambique’s national elections in 2009 were paired with national and international monitoring programs, characterized by a randomized allocation. By assessing the impact of the observers on election outcomes we see evidence of electoral fraud. Moreover, na-tional fixed observers were found to be highly capable of deterring fraud and a relation between observers and voters’ behaviour was found. National and international have dif-ferent effects on outcomes and we attribute this fact to the different impact on voters’ and voting table staff’s behaviour.