During the past 30 years, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has been constantly expanding its footprint in the area of democratic rights. However, the Court’s approach to election cases has been arguably more cautious compared to its jurisprudence on freedom of speech, association and assembly. Despite a growing body of scholarship on the ECtHR and democratic processes, this caution is yet to be adequately contextualized. This article aims to fill the gap by developing a normative model of how external considerations affect the ECtHR election jurisprudence. American judge-scholar Richard Posner has proposed pragmatic adjudication as a blueprint for incorporating external considerations into political disputes before the courts. I rely on this blueprint to gauge the level of deference to respondent governments in election cases at the ECtHR between 1987 and 2020. I find that, while the Court gives states wide leeway over political competition, it is less deferential when cases concern access to political process. At the same time, the ECtHR increasingly relies on procedural oversight to detect unfair electoral practices without changing the general distribution of competences.

中文翻译：

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欧洲人权法院选举案件的务实裁决

在过去的 30 年中，欧洲人权法院 (ECtHR) 一直在不断扩大其在民主权利领域的足迹。然而，与关于言论、结社和集会自由的判例相比，法院对选举案件的处理方式可以说更加谨慎。尽管关于 ECtHR 和民主进程的学术研究越来越多，但这种谨慎尚未得到充分的背景化。本文旨在通过建立一个关于外部因素如何影响 ECtHR 选举判例的规范模型来填补这一空白。美国法官学者理查德·波斯纳（Richard Posner）提出以务实的裁决为蓝图，将外部考虑因素纳入法院的政治纠纷中。我依靠这份蓝图来衡量 1987 年至 2020 年间在 ECtHR 的选举案件中对被告政府的尊重程度。我发现，虽然法院在政治竞争方面给予各州广泛的回旋余地，但当案件涉及获得政治权利时，它就不那么恭顺了过程。与此同时，欧洲人权法院越来越依赖程序监督来发现不公平的选举做法，而不改变一般的权限分配。