Does Meddling Pay? The Effects of Partisan Electoral Interventions on Trade

• In Event: Meddling in Elections

Abstract

What are the effects of partisan electoral interventions on the targets trade with the intervener and with the rest of the world? Attempts by the great powers to affect the election results in other countries have been quite common with electoral interventions occurring in one of every nine elections between 1946 and 2000 as well as in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Likewise interventions of this kind (as well as other kinds of “regime change” operations) have been sometimes claimed to be motivated in part or fully by economic reasons. However little research has been done on the actual economic benefits of partisan electoral interventions for the intervener- a possible effect which can also shed more light on the effects of other violent types of regime change operations as well. This paper examines this question using a gravity model and a new dataset of partisan electoral interventions between 1948 and 2000 on the targets bilateral trade with the intervener and its overall levels of world trade. American interventions are found to lead to a significant increase in less democratic targets world trade but no effects on the targets bilateral trade with the U.S.. Likewise Russian electoral interventions provide few tangible economic benefits to the Russian government.

Author

• Dov H. Levin, University of Hong Kong