Summary
States should take steps to institutionalize good governance through accountable, efficient, and effective public administration.
Election Parts
Issues
Criteria
Quotes
- States parties shall strive to institutionalize good political governance through: 1. Accountable, efficient and effective public administration.
- State Parties shall adopt procedures for selection and recruitment into the public service and administration that shall be based on principles of competition, merit, equity and transparency.
- Public services shall be delivered in the most effective, efficient and economical manner, consistent with the highest possible standards.
- Principle of transparency 1. Public authorities shall act in accordance with the principle of transparency. 2. They shall ensure that private persons are informed, by appropriate means, of their actions and decisions which may include the publication of official documents. 3. They shall respect the rights of access to official documents according to the rules relating to personal data protection.
- Public authorities shall act and perform their duties within a reasonable time.
- Administrative decisions shall be published in order to allow those concerned by these decisions to have an exact and comprehensive knowledge of them. Publication may be through personal notification or it may be general in nature.
- Private persons shall be entitled to seek, directly or by way of exception, a judicial review of an administrative decision which directly affects their rights and interests.
- The commitment of OSCE participating States to ensuring the availability of an effective remedy is of special relevance to EDR [electoral dispute resolution] as it entitles everyone to “have an effective means of redress against administrative decisions so as to guarantee respect for fundamental rights and ensure legal integrity”.
- The core idea behind accountability is that State actors need to be able to be held responsible for their decisions and actions. Accountability is central to democratic governance and is implicit in the right to political participation, which rests, among other things, on the idea that the government is answerable to the people.
- Accountability has two dimensions: answerability and enforcement. State bodies and representatives have an obligation to inform citizens about their actions and explain the rationale for their decisions (answerability). At the same time, citizens should have opportunities to hold these bodies and officials accountable for their actions (enforcement).
- Activities undertaken by public security providers during an election should be construed as a public service and be guided by the interests of public order and the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms. The public-service culture in the delivery of security services should be promoted as an approach conducive to enhancing pubic confidence and to facilitating interaction and information exchange between electoral stakeholders and the security services.