IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jocore/v67y2023i5p828-857.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Meddling American Voter? How Norms, Interests, and Great Power Rivalries Affect U.S. Public Support for Partisan Electoral Interventions Abroad

Author

Listed:
  • Dov H. Levin
  • Paul Musgrave

Abstract

Foreign electoral interventions have attracted greater attention since the Russian intervention in the 2016 U.S. elections. Even though the United States has a long history of intervening in other countries’ elections, evidence about what drives public support for U.S. foreign electoral intervention is scarce. This paper uses a new set of surveys and experiments to test hypotheses about what drives the American public’s views of U.S. electoral interventions abroad. We find that there is no taboo against such U.S. interference in the American public. However, public support for U.S. election interference is not automatic. Respondents do not support interventions solely to advance U.S. interests or to protect democracy, although they prove more supportive of interventions on behalf of democratic parties that also favor U.S. interests or to protect longstanding democracies. Finally, support for an intervention rises when it is framed as responding to the actions of a great-power rival such as Russia.

Suggested Citation

  • Dov H. Levin & Paul Musgrave, 2023. "The Meddling American Voter? How Norms, Interests, and Great Power Rivalries Affect U.S. Public Support for Partisan Electoral Interventions Abroad," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 67(5), pages 828-857, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:67:y:2023:i:5:p:828-857
    DOI: 10.1177/00220027221120374
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00220027221120374
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/00220027221120374?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:67:y:2023:i:5:p:828-857. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://pss.la.psu.edu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.