Susan D. Hyde
Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Yale University
Expertise & Civic Involvements
Hyde studies how politics in developing countries are influenced by external actors like the United States, the European Union, international NGOs, and other states. She has significant expertise in international election observation, a phenomenon that began in the 1960s and now occurs at most elections around the world. She also studies international trends in elections and democracy promotion, including methods of election fraud, methods of preventing election fraud, and the complicated relationships inherent to international efforts to promote democracy abroad. Hyde has served as an international election observer in Afghanistan, Albania, Indonesia, Liberia, Nicaragua, Pakistan, and Venezuela. She has also worked as a researcher, volunteer, or consultant for the Carter Center, the National Democratic Institute, Democracy International, the International Republican Institute, and several USAID and U.S. government subcontractors.
Key Publications
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"Which Elections Can be Lost?" (with ). Political Analysis 20, no. 2 (2012): 1-20. Explains the diffusion of elections to democratic and autocratic countries, provides detailed data on elections across regime types, and provides a minimalist indicator that can be used across countries and across regime types to measure whether election competition is possible. Shows that less than 10 countries in the world today do not hold national elections.
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The Pseudo-Democrat’s Dilemma: Why Election Observation Became an International Norm (Cornell University Press, 2011). One of the only books attempting to explain the puzzle of why election observation became an international norm and why governments invite foreign observers and cheat in front of them.
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"Experimenting in Democracy Promotion: International Observers and the 2004 Presidential Elections in Indonesia" Perspectives on Politics 8 (2010): 511-527. Explains the value of randomly assigning international election observers in election observation, and discusses some of the challenges in using field experiments to study democracy promotion.
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"How International Election Observers Detect and Deter Fraud" in Election Fraud: Detecting and Deterring Electoral Manipulation, edited by Michael Alvarez and Thad Hall (Brookings Institution Press, 2008), 201-215. Explains election fraud and methods of detecting and deterring it to a diverse audience. My chapter documents how election observers attempt to detect election fraud, and how they attempt to prevent it.
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"The Observer Effect in International Politics: Evidence from a Natural Experiment" World Politics 60, no. 1 (2007): 37-63. Shows that international election observers can (and did) significantly reduce election fraud.
Media Contributions
- Susan D. Hyde's research on election monitoring cited in "How to Steal an Election," The Economist, March 3, 2012.
- "The Limits of Election Monitoring: What Independent Observation Can (and Can’t) Do" (with ), Foreign Affairs, June 28, 2011.
Talks and Briefings
- "Experimental Designs for Democratization Research in Fragility Contexts," German Development Institute, Bonn, Germany, December 7, 2011.
- "Global Trends in International Election Observation," Statistics Netherlands and Maastricht University, The Netherlands, April 8, 2011.
- "The Pseudo-Democrat’s Dilemma," Mortara Center, Georgetown University, April 7, 2011.
- "International Election Observation," International Foundation for Electoral Systems, Washington, D.C., January 14, 2011.
- "Global Trends in National Elections, Multi-Party Competition, and International Election Observation," The Carter Center, 5th Annual Meeting of the Signatories to the Declaration of Principles and Code of Conduct for International Election Observations, Atlanta, GA, October 12, 2010.
- "International Election Monitoring," The MacMillan Report, Yale University, December 11, 2009.