Public Support for U.S. Intervention in Foreign Elections

• In Event: Foreign Election Interference

Abstract

Foreign electoral intervention is a powerful and prominent tool of
foreign policy. Past research has found that American voters
disapprove of foreign meddling in U.S. elections, but we know very
little about the conditions under which the American public would
support U.S. electoral intervention in other countries. What does the
U.S. public see as unacceptable tampering in foreign electoral
processes, and what does it see as a benign tool of U.S. foreign
policy? Given the difficulty of investigating this question using
historical data, we adopt an experimental approach. We report the
results of a series of large-scale survey experiments designed to
investigate six sets of factors that could influence domestic
reactions to U.S. leaders who intervene in foreign elections: the form
of the intervention; the identity of the target country; the
involvement of third parties in the target’s election; international
norms about foreign election meddling; the level of democracy in the
target country; and U.S. partisan dynamics. Our findings are important
not only from a normative standpoint, but also for understanding the
conditions under which U.S. leaders might have incentives to involve
the U.S. in elections abroad.

Authors

• Michael R. Tomz, Stanford University

• Jessica L. P. Weeks, University of Wisconsin-Madison