The writer is an Oxford university professor and Hoover Institution senior fellow
Democracies everywhere must prepare for the contingency of a contested result in the most important US election in living memory.
Learning from the disarray around the disputed 2000 election, they should have an informally co-ordinated stance. Listening to international election monitors, they should calmly wait as long as it takes for the extraordinarily complex, decentralised US system to produce a clear outcome. Measured clarity from fellow democracies may contribute, at the margin, to a more civilised US process, and, more substantially, calm the international environment around this febrile contest.