Foreign Electoral Interference: Past, Present, and Future

Foreign interference is not unusual in the history of democratic elections. George Washington's warning in 1796 preceded French interference in that year's US presidential elections.¹ Beginning in the early 20th century, the US interfered repeatedly in other states' elections, particularly in Central America. By the second half of the 20th century, election interference had become a tool of the Cold War, utilized primarily by the Soviet Union and the US. After the Cold War, rising authoritarian powers like China and Russia used election interference to assert their political and economic influence on the world stage and undermine liberal democratic values. Over the next few decades, these same players will continue to attempt to interfere in future elections by exploiting democratic characteristics, such as media freedom and political pluralism, that they often oppose.

Foreign electoral interference is defined as intentional covert or overt attempts by state or non-state actors to influence electoral processes or public perceptions in order to advantage or disadvantage election contestants in another sovereign country. Sovereign states are typically considered the main actors in partisan foreign electoral intervention, but foreign non-state actors, including corporate interests,² intergovernmental institutions,³ civil society organizations such as Wikileaks,⁴ and terrorist-associated organizations,⁵ may also seek to influence elections. Importantly, election interference should not be confused with nonpartisan foreign assistance in support of principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights nor with efforts to strengthen democratic institutions by building the capacity of election management bodies, civil society, media, political parties, and the broader public.⁶

Historic Instances of Election Interference

There is a long history of political and electoral interference by US government and corporate interests in Central America, for example, in Honduras from 1911 and El Salvador in 1944 and 1960.⁷ British intelligence is credited with attempting to influence the US 1940 presidential elections, through manipulating media and funding civil society organizations.⁸ During and immediately after the Cold War, the US, and to a lesser extent the USSR and then Russia, engaged in electoral interference in numerous countries.⁹ Data for elections held between 1946 and 2000 shows that 11.3 percent of elections in this period were the target of foreign intervention.¹⁰ During this period, there were foreign election interventions in 60 countries, from the USSR mainly in Europe and from the US mainly in Asia. Some of the more prominent US attempts at election interference during the Cold War include its attempt to undermine Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953,¹¹ the CIA's removal of the elected Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz in 1954,¹² and the US-directed campaign that ensured that Forbes Burnham won the 1968 election in Guyana.¹³

In general, interference in elections during this period was relatively crude compared to current attempts by Russia and China, though still successful. Scholar Dov Levin notes a number of methods used during this period, which included overt threats and the provision of bags of money by the intervening foreign power.¹⁴ Many foreign interventions were economic in nature—such as the US combating food shortages by smuggling frozen meat into Chile in 1964, funding infrastructure projects in Guyana in 1968, and arranging billions of dollars for loans to Russia in 1996. Others were targeted at political elements of election campaigning: the US drugged a leading candidate before a media conference (Philippines, 1953) and provided campaign equipment (Romania, 1990), while the USSR offered to fund candidates' campaigns (US, 1960 and 1968) and made threatening statements (West Germany, 1983).

Present-Day Election Interference

Since the end of the Cold War, intervention by the United States has become significantly less common as there has been an ideological shift within the US foreign policy establishment about the "acceptability of such actions."¹⁵ Instead, election interference has increasingly become a tool for rising foreign powers, like China and Russia, that are seeking to influence the political environment by weakening the liberal democratic West and increasing their own economic and political power in the world order. For these countries, election interference serves as...