Inside Jobs: How Great Powers Meddle in Other Countries’ Elections

Summary

From Argentina’s recent vote under the shadow of a threatened $20 billion U.S. aid package to Russia’s covert operations in the 2016 U.S. election, foreign meddling at the ballot box is more common and more dangerous than many citizens realize. In this episode of International Horizons, RBI interim director, Eli Karetny speaks with Dov Levin, Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Hong Kong and author of Meddling in the Ballot Box (Oxford University Press). Drawing on a unique global dataset, Levin explains how often great powers intervene in elections, why most operations are “inside jobs” coordinated with local elites, and why overt interventions frequently work better than covert ones. The conversation explores dirty tricks, founding elections, democratic backsliding, and how new voting technologies could reopen the door to old-fashioned ballot manipulation.

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International Horizons

International Horizons is a podcast of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies that brings scholarly expertise to bear on our understanding of international issues. John Torpey, the host of the podcast and director of the Ralph Bunche Institute, holds conversations with prominent scholars and figures in state-of-the-art international issues in our weekly episodes.

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