Dov H. Levin Meddling in the Ballot Box: The Causes and Effects of Partisan Electoral Interventions

Date01 June 2021
DOI10.1177/00207020211019307
Published date01 June 2021
Subject MatterBook Reviews
ORCID iD
Justin Massie https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3255-0026
Dov H. Levin
Meddling in the Ballot Box: The Causes and Effects of Partisan Electoral Interventions
New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. 320pp. $29.95 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-19751-989-9
Reviewed by: Heidi J. S. Tworek (heidi.tworek@ubc.ca), University of British Columbia
Dov H. Levin has written a tremendously timely book about a surprisingly under-
studied topic: partisan electoral interventions. Levin explores how and why the two
Cold War superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia, intervened on
behalf of candidates and parties around the world between 1946 and 2000.
Various forms of foreign electoral interventions have existed since at least Papal
elections in the early modern period. Fear of foreign interference pushed the Founding
Fathers of the US to create the Electoral College, as Alexander Hamilton outlined in
Federalist No. 68.Yet, foreign interference did not end with mass democratization in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Levin provides a welcome scholarly coun-
terpoint to the breathless commentary since 2016 on this topic, showing that the new-
found prominence of such meddling in the aftermath of the 2016 US election has been
largely due to the sudden detection by many of a common phenomenon of international
politics rather than the emergence of something new or unprecedented(244).
Contrary to prior scholarships focus on military interventions, weapons supplies,
and foreign-imposed regime changes (FIRCs), Levin highlights the frequency and
adaptability of electoral interference. He f‌inds that 11.3 per cent of all national-level
executive elections between 1946 and 2000 involved some form of electoral inter-
ference (i.e., 117 of 937 elections). The US conducted 69 per cent of those inter-
ventions, meaning 81, while it undertook 53 FIRCs during the Cold War. Partisan
electoral interference was and remained a commonplace tool.
Levin def‌ines a partisan electoral intervention as a situation in which one or more
sovereign countries intentionally undertake specif‌ic actions to inf‌luence an upcoming
election in another sovereign country in an overt or covert manner that they believe will
favour or hurt one of the sides contesting that election and will incur, or may incur,
signif‌icant costs to the intervener(s) or the intervened country(50). Such interventions
can take myriad forms, including campaign f‌inancing, providing campaign experts as
assistance, disseminating disinformation, public promises, or admonishments. Cam-
paign f‌inancing was most common, forming two-thirds of all electoral interventions.
Levin seeks to understand the causes and the effects of partisan electoral inter-
ference. He uses a multimethod approach by constructing an original data set, using
election surveys for two cases, in 1953 West Germany and 1992 Israel, and delving into
342 International Journal 76(2)

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