Liberia’s 2023 Elections: Prospects for Continuity or Change
For the webinar, we brought together two experts, David Harris, Associate Professor of African Studies at the University of Bradford and Director of the John Elnora Ferguson Centre for African Studies (JEFCA), and Robtel Neajai Pailey, Assistant Professor in International Social and Public Policy at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Both Harris and Pailey researched the dynamics of post-war elections in Liberia and published two scholarly articles on the subject: “Liberia’s run up to 2017: continuity and change in a long history of electoral politics” (2017) and “‘We don’t know who be who’: post-party politics, forum shopping and Liberia’s 2017 elections” (2020).
The Electoral Laws of Liberia
The Constitution of Liberia (1986), the New Elections Law of 1986 (lastly amended in 2014) and a series of guidelines and regulations, such as the Campaign Finance Regulations of 2022 of the National Elections Commission (NEC), constitute the primary legal framework governing the conduct of elections to public offices in Liberia.
Liberia’s 2023 Election: An Overview of the Landscape
Liberia will hold its fourth post-war election on October 10, 2023. The 2023 elections are mandated by the Constitution, which provides that the President, Vice President, and Members of the Legislature be elected every six years.