2 - How Foreign Actors Influence Election Credibility

Summary

Chapter 2 develops the theoretical framework that Bush and Prather test later in the book. It posits that people form their beliefs about election. First, people desire to hold accurate beliefs about an election’s credibility. Second, they desire to hold beliefs about election credibility that are consistent with their partisan attachments. Given the accuracy motive, for foreign actors’ interventions to provide new information to the public about the electoral playing field, citizens must believe that foreign actors are capable and willing to influence it. And both accuracy and directional motivations point to vote choice as an essential moderating factor in terms of the effects of foreign actors on local trust. The predictions Bush and Prather develop contrast sharply with an alternative perspective on foreign interventions around elections that expects citizens to respond with hostility to any outside intervention due to their tendency towards nationalist backlash.