What Have You Done for Me Lately? Electoral interventions Effects on Cooperation

• In Event: Foreign Election Interference

Abstract

Do successful foreign electoral interventions (FEIs)—those cases where the aided candidate or party wins the election and forms government—lead to the targeted state pursuing more cooperative relations with the intervening state? If the intervention fails, does the new government—the one originally opposed by the intervener—retaliate against the intervener for violating its sovereign affairs? Recent survey and experimental research suggest that FEIs have polarising effects on the electorate and tend to induce public demands for retaliation along partisan lines. This suggests that successful FEIs could lead to improved relations but that failed FEIs should lead to significantly worsened relations. In this paper, I test these theoretical expectations using the 10 Million International Dyadic Events dataset (1990-2004) and a newly expanded dataset of Partisan Electoral Interventions by the Great Powers (PEIG).

Author

• Marshall Palmer, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University