ABSTRACT
Free and contested elections are critical to all definitions that distinguish democratic systems from other forms of government. Picture the placards and remember the demands voiced in the mass rallies that rocked China and Eastern Europe in the last half of 1989. And recall that the first actions taken by the new authorities in Eastern Europe established elections among competing political parties as the mechanism to select governments. In the popular imagination, as well as in the work of political scientists, free elections define democracy.
