National elections are now international events­and international election monitoring (IEM) an institutionalized practice in world politics that has partially redefined state sovereignty. This work is about a foundational case in the process of IEM's normalization: the 1990 Nicaraguan elections. For the first time ever, the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and a myriad of non-governmental organizations monitored an electoral process in a sovereign country. I consider the Nicaraguan experience in light of the wider normative structure of the Western Hemisphere, which I argue, played an important role both in it and in IEM's eventual normalization