Foreign Election Interference and International Law

Abstract

This chapter explores the possibilities, and limitations, of international law in regulating states’ attempts to influence each other’s elections. The principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence, self-determination, and nonintervention reflect core understandings about the attributes and entitlements of states in the international system. The chapter begins by tracing attempts to further codify the nonintervention principle in the 1960s and 1970s. It then examines the tension produced by states’ conflicting desires to preserve the greatest possible freedom of action for themselves and to constrain the behavior of others. To date, this dynamic has impeded the ability to formulate explicit treaty-based solutions to the problem of foreign election interference. Identifying customary international law in this area requires inferring specific conduct-regulating rules from general principles, which can yield contested results. States are unlikely to agree to more granular, binding international rules as long as regimes currently in power benefit from constructive ambiguity. Although agreement on more concrete rules and enforcement mechanisms might remain elusive, like-minded states should continue to emphasize the importance of supporting peoples’ abilities to determine their own political destinies. This requires, at a minimum, promoting an antideception norm as a matter of both domestic and international law.