This is the M&E Thursday Talk from September 10th, 2020, when Ashley Quarcoo, Visiting Scholar at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Mike Jobbins, VP of Global Affairs & Partnerships at Search for Common Ground, led a discussion on “Contentious Elections, Political Violence, & Challenges to Democracy: Lessons from Around the World”.
Countries from every region of the world have grappled with contested elections, sometimes marred by violence. The peacebuilding and democracy fields have engaged to prevent and respond to these moments for decades, building tools and resources for these contexts. As the U.S. looks towards a fractious and potentially dangerous political moment, what might we learn from those experiences? In this webinar, Ashley and Mike examined global examples of when and how elections go awry and discussed approaches that have helped to mitigate, manage, and respond to those risks, as well as the lessons that might be applied to the U.S. context.