The South African Electoral Commission hosted the Association of World Election Bodies’ 5^th General Assembly and International Conference Cape Town, South Africa.

A key concern of the workshop was the democratic recession. I presented research developed with Holly Ann Garnett on whether there was an electoral integrity recession (look out for our forthcoming special issue of Electoral Studies on this). We suggest that there is little evidence of a global electoral integrity recession (yet). Although there has been a decline in some states which garner wide media coverage, this is offset by an increase elsewhere.

There are strategies that EMBs can use to prevent any recession in the future. Watch the whole conference below (including my presentation at 1:52:52)