(1) Fairness. Fair administration of justice includes the right to receive reasonable notice of a claim, reasonable opportunity to prepare a defense, and the right to a fair and impartial factfinding process, hearing, and decision. (2) Efficiency. The efficient administration of justice includes the requirement for an expeditious process, with reasonable deadlines for filing and disposition of different types of electoral disputes and complaints. (3) Effectiveness. The effective administration of justice includes the right to a written, reasoned decision that is not capricious, unreasonable, or arbitrary, the right to appeal/judicial review, and the right to an effective remedy. (4) Transparency. The transparent administration of justice requires access to case information – ideally in real time as an electoral dispute is being investigated and adjudicated – open hearings, and decisions that are publicly available – subject to limited restrictions. This paper will employ the above standards and principles for credible electoral dispute resolution whilst also recognizing different approaches may be possible. 5 Nevertheless, even such alternative avenues essentially follow the same internationally accepted standards and principles. 3.2. Compliance of Serbian electoral dispute resolution arrangements with international principles: key findings Efficient, fair, and transparent resolution of electoral disputes is of crucial importance for securing legitimacy of the electoral process. With this in mind, CeSID has employed a mix of research methods to assess to what extent Serbia’s electoral dispute resolution processes comply with the four aforementioned principles, namely fairness, efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency. This assessment relied on the secondary sources (legislation, reports, and analyses by technical experts and Serbian and foreign election monitoring missions), as well as the findings of a qualitative survey of 19 different stakeholders: eight officers of political parties, three legal experts, three judicial and prosecutorial officials, and five academics/specialists in the Serbian electoral process and electoral justice. It is worth noting that compliance with international principles cannot be quantified; rather, any score can be only descriptive, in view of not only the complexity of each of the principles, but also specifics of the local context, legal tradition, and the framework of statutes not directly related to the electoral system and electoral dispute resolution. In assessing compliance of the Serbian system with the four principles, the research team chose to follow the seven global standards already comprised within the four broader descriptive categories of fairness, efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency. One such approach may be found in IDEA, Electoral Justice: An Overview of the International IDEA Handbook (2010), International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, Stockholm. 5 9