THE results of presidential elections in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2013 provided few surprises. Giorgi Margvelashvili, the candidate of Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream party, won his first term as president on October 27th; Serzh Sarkisian won a second term in Armenia on February 18th; and Ilham Aliyev swept to his third consecutive term in Azerbaijan on October 9th. Yet the elections themselves revealed much about the state of democracy in each country.

The good news is that external monitors described “efficiently administered, transparent” elections in Georgia that “took place in an” amicable and constructive environment”. “Georgia’s democracy is maturing”, concluded the head of one observer mission.

Yet recent constitutional reforms mean that the position of president is now less important than that of prime minister. Because Mr Ivanishvili is stepping down from power in the coming weeks, he announced on November 2nd that the next prime minister (subject to parliamentary confirmation) would be the 31-year-old Irakli Garibashvili, the interior minister, who is one of his long-time employees.

Mr Ivanishvili says he will take a back-seat once retired from office and focus on developing civil society. He denies that he will pull the government’s strings from behind the scenes. Many doubt this. The uncharismatic new president and future prime minister owe their entire political careers to Mr Ivanishvili. Georgia’s new political kingmaker is also the country’s most generous philanthropist and largest individual investor: that leaves too much power in the hands of one man. Observers also fear that the possible arrest of the outgoing president, Mikheil Saakashvili, would discourage future leaders from stepping down when their terms expire, and damage the country’s European aspirations.

With one candidate shot shortly before election day, and another going on hunger strike in protest of the results, Armenia’s election provided plenty of drama. Several influential opposition groups chose not to participate, citing the likelihood of fraud by the ruling party, the Republic Party of Armenia. External monitors noted a suspicious “correlation between very high turnout and the number of votes for the incumbent”. Opposition activists alleged ballot-box stuffing, voter bribes and other shortcomings.

With the ruling party’s victories in the parliamentary election in 2012 and the Yerevan mayoral election in May this year, its dominance has inspired more apathy than rage. Opposition protests at the results of the presidential election petered out and there was no repetition of the violence and loss of life that occurred when the authorities dispersed protesters after the presidential election in 2008. Public discontent continues, as demonstrations last week and over the summer showed. But confronted with mass unemployment, corruption, and an unresolved conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh at home, many Armenians prefer to vote with their feet and emigrate.

Azerbaijan’s presidential election on October 9th provided even more reasons for concern. In the pre-election period there was evidence of a systematic crackdown on government critics. Monitors from the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), part of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), identified “serious problems” at all stages of election day, particularly vote-counting (where elections can be most easily falsified). America’s State Department sounded a similar warning note. Local journalists and observers posted videos of election abuse on YouTube. Yet astonishingly, 49 other election monitoring outfits gave the vote a clean bill of health.

The question is who can be trusted. As a new report from the European Stability Initiative (ESI) points out, ODIHR’s transparent methodology, mandate and resources give it credibility. 319 ODIHR monitors observed more than one-fifth of the country’s polling stations, and oversaw counting in over three-quarters of the election commissions. Yet the other monitoring bodies disregarded its findings.

Those outfits need closer scrutiny. A large delegation from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) also monitored the vote. Yet CIS monitors have a history of endorsing controversial elections in its member states, which include Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, a number of European bodies, including the European Parliament, sent much smaller delegations that lacked a systematic methodology. Some challenged ODIHR’s competence on the absurd grounds that only professional politicians can know how elections work. Senior ODIHR staff claim their critics are whitewashing electoral fraud.

Azerbaijan has a history of trying to seduce reputable foreign bodies to give international legitimacy to its repressive behaviour at home. Some notable exceptions aside, too few of them have been pushing the regime in Baku to change its ways.