Voter Attitudes When Democracy Promotion Turns Partisan : Evidence from a Survey-Experiment in Lebanon

This article studies how voters react when foreign powers support a particular political party in a fragile democracy. The article identifies which voters believe the intervention plays a positive role in the electoral process and which voters have the opposite opinion. The article argues that educated and politically sophisticated voters will reject such interventions because of the negative role those play in the democratization process. Specific hypotheses are developed based on this argument and were tested in a randomized framing experiment embedded in a post-election survey of 2,500 voters in Lebanon 2009. The survey results confirm the argument above. Furthermore, this study derives implications for the risks and benefits of 'guiding' democratic outcomes from abroad