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The legitimacy of foreign intervention in elections: the Ukrainian response

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2012

STEPHEN SHULMAN  and
STEPHEN BLOOM
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Abstract

The empirical and theoretical study of the effect of foreign intervention in the electoral processes of states is exceedingly weak. Using insights from the nationalism literature, this article provides a theoretical argument on domestic reactions to foreign interference in a state's internal politics. It then tests the predictions generated by the argument using mass survey data in Ukraine. The article analyses the Ukrainian people's reaction to Western and Russian intervention in the 2004 presidential elections – the Orange Revolution. We find that efforts by Western governments, international organisations, and non-governmental organisations to shape Ukraine's electoral landscape appear to be unwelcome to average Ukrainians while electoral interference by a non-democratic state, Russia, is seen as less alienating. Our theoretical framework accounts for these potentially surprising results.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , April 2012 , pp. 445 - 471
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2011

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References

1 This article uses the terms ‘foreign intervention’ and ‘foreign interference’ interchangeably. No normative content is implied in either term.

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33 Quoted in Sushko and Prystayko, ‘Western Influence’, p. 132.

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35 Ibid., pp. 72–5.

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