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Billions of dollars are annually transferred to poor nations to help them adapt to the effects of climate change. This Element examines how the discourses on adaptation finance of many developing country negotiators, environmental groups, development charities, academics and international bureaucrats have renewed a specific vision of aid, that of an aid intended to respond to international injustices and to fuel a regular transfer of resources between rich and poor countries. By reviewing manifestations of this normative vision of aid in key contemporary debates on adaptation finance, the author shows how these discourses have contributed to the significant financial mobilisation of developed countries towards adaptation in the Global South. But there remains a stark contrast between the many expectations associated with these discourses and today's adaptation finance landscape.
The final three substantive chapters of this book focus on the ways in which the Americo-Liberian elite leveraged Liberia’s sovereignty during the twentieth century to generate rents which helped sustain their rule over the indigenous majority. Chapter 8 examines the flow of foreign aid to Liberia beginning during World War II. During the 1940s, Liberia became one of the leading recipients of American aid, beginning with Lend-Lease in 1942. In scale, its aid was comparable in per capita terms to Asian countries like Korea or Marshall Plan recipients like the United Kingdom. As in other countries, what began as military aid through Lend-Lease to support the development of an airfield and a port to be used by US forces became a larger aid program and an important part of American economic diplomacy after the war. Histories of American policies during this period are generally told from the perspective of the US government. The history of Liberia offers the opportunity to view the rise of foreign aid from the perspective of the recipient country. The chapter shows that while Liberian officials often bristled at American interference, they continued to solicit aid as part of efforts to expand service provision while at the same time restricting political competition.
There is optimism that the growing number of women in political office will reorient the focus of international politics toward more social and humanitarian issues. One basis for this optimism is the argument that women legislators hold distinct foreign policy preferences and act on them to affect changes in policy. However, we know little about gender differences in the behavior of individual legislators on these issues. This study investigates the behavior of individual legislators of the United States, one of the most important actors in international politics, in the context of development aid. Analyzing a diverse set of legislative behaviors in the U.S. Congress, we find no evidence that women legislators behave any differently than men with regard to these issues. Beyond its contribution to our understanding of the making and future of American foreign policy, this study contributes to broader debates about women’s representation and foreign policy.
The share of basic services that NGOs deliver has grown dramatically in developing countries due to increased receipt of aid and philanthropy in these countries. Many scholars and practitioners worry that NGOs reduce reliance on government services and, in turn, lower demand for government provision and undermine political engagement. Others argue that NGOs prop-up poorly performing governments that receive undeserved credit for the production, allocation, or welfare effects of NGO services. Using original surveys and a randomized health intervention, implemented in parallel to a similar universal government program, this article investigates the long-term effect of NGO provision on political attitudes and behavior. Access to NGO services increased preferences for NGO, relative to government, provision. However, political engagement and perceptions of government legitimacy were unaffected. Instead, the intervention generated political credit for the incumbent president. This study finds that citizens see NGOs as a resource that powerful government actors control, and they reward actors who they see as responsible for allocation of those resources.
Chapter 5 moves the focus from comparing American religious exceptionalism’s disciples and dissidents on their views of who and what the nation should be defined as, to how the nation should engage the world. The chapter begins with a discussion of the role of American religious exceptionalism in American grand strategy and how this myth influenced the nation’s foreign policy over time. The authors provide an in-depth discussion of the historical development of not precisely a hawkish but more accurately a collectively narcissistic foreign policy strategy that has led to the widespread criticism of America “dragging it coattails” throughout the world in the pursuit of global domination. Moving from the discussion of elites to the masses, the chapter bases itself in the foreign policy attitudes literature and examines the relationship between adherence to American religious exceptionalism and the three principal dimensions of foreign policy attitudes: military action, trade, and foreign aid. Importantly, this chapter dispels the myth that disciples favor isolationism; if anything, disciples welcome engagement as long as there are resources to be gained for God’s Chosen People.
This chapter provides historical context for China’s evolution into a development banker during the 21st century. The People’s Republic of China has been involved with development finance—as both a recipient and donor of foreign aid and other development flows—since its founding in 1949. This chapter describes earlier efforts by researchers to track Chinese-financed development projects around the world. It then outlines basic shifts in China’s approach to development finance over time, and separates China’s approach to development finance into four stages. During the “Early Years” (1949–1959), revolutionary foreign policy under Mao (1960–1977), and the “Reform Era Recalibration” (1978–1998), important building blocks were set in place that help understand the nature of contemporary Chinese development finance. During the fourth and current phase, beginning with the “Going Out” strategy, China’s government has made the transition from an aid donor to a global development banker. The chapter shows how the benefactor-to-banker shift was a product of China’s long history as a development financier. It also provides an historical framework to help readers disentangle novel features of contemporary Chinese development finance from preexisting motivations, institutions, policies, and practices.
China is now the lender of first resort for much of the developing world, but Beijing has fueled speculation among policymakers, scholars, and journalists by shrouding its grant-giving and lending activities in secrecy. Introducing a systematic and transparent method of tracking Chinese development projects around the world, this book explains Beijing's motives and analyzes the intended and unintended effects of its overseas investments. Whereas China almost exclusively provided aid during the twentieth century, its twenty-first century transition from 'benefactor' to 'banker' has had far-reaching impacts in low-income and middle-income countries that are not widely understood. Its use of debt rather than aid to bankroll big-ticket infrastructure projects creates new opportunities for developing countries to achieve rapid socio-economic gains, but it has also introduced major risks, such as corruption, political capture, and conflict. This book will be of interest to policymakers, students and scholars of international political economy, Chinese politics and foreign policy, economic development, and international relations.
This chapter introduces the argument and organization of the book. I explain the questions motivating the book, focusing on two that are puzzling in different respects. The first asks why democracy aid in the Middle East is seen as ineffective despite billions of dollars allocated for its promotion. The second question is linked to the first: Why would an authoritarian state even allow an outside actor to promote democracy? Examining the construction and practice of democracy aid illuminates why such regimes allow such aid as well as why particular ideas and conceptions about democracy persist even when shown to be ineffective. I introduce and explain the utility of a political economy framework that considers how ideas, institutions, and interests mediate and shape the form and function of democracy aid. I describe the methodology used in the book, which adopts an inductive, interpretative strategy to examine the construction and practice of democracy aid in the Middle East through case studies of US democracy aid in Egypt and Morocco.
In this chapter, I elaborate on the conceptual and methodological framework that I use to examine the construction and practice of US democracy programming in the Middle East. I highlight limitations and weaknesses with recent approaches to studying democracy aid and show that existing research on such aid elides the contested meaning of democracy itself as well as the assumptions underlying democracy aid projects. I argue that a political economy approach to studying democracy aid takes such meaning seriously while also giving us a nuanced understanding of the motivations and intentions of donor and recipient states. I develop a political economy framework that considers how ideas, institutions, and interests can mediate and shape the form and function of democracy aid. This framework allows us to capture the complex interactions between actors engaged in such efforts in what I call the micropolitics of democracy aid.
Chapter 1 presents the motivation of the study, including empirical and theoretical puzzles about how foreign aid delivery varies markedly across donors and time. The chapter then reviews the relevant foreign aid literature. It outlines the approach to studying foreign aid delivery and briefly summarizes the theoretical argument as well as the empirical strategy used to test the theory. It describes the plan of the book.
The literature on aid allocation shows that many factors influence donors’ decision to provide aid. However, our knowledge about foreign aid allocation is based on traditional foreign aid, from developed to developing countries, and many assumptions of these theories do not hold when applied to southern donors. This article argues that south-south development cooperation (SSDC) can be explained by the strength of development cooperation’s domestic allies and foes. Specifically, it identifies civil society organizations as allies of SSDC and nationalist groups as opponents of SSDC. By using for the first time data on SSDC activities in Latin America, this article shows the predictive strength of a liberal domestic politics approach in comparison to the predictive power of alternative explanations. The results speak to scholars of both traditional foreign aid and south-south development cooperation in highlighting the limits of traditional theories of foreign aid motivations.
We employ matching methods to explore the relationships between foreign aid flows and corruption in recipient countries. Data are drawn from recipients of foreign aid for the 1996–2013 period. We find no compelling evidence of an effect running from corruption to aid flows. Furthermore, point estimates imply that corruption reforms lead countries to receive less aid. Alternatively, we generally find that, over a 10-year horizon, a sustained increase in aid leads to more corruption in a recipient. It is the sustained nature of an aid increase that seems to be important for this effect. (We generally do not report significant results for large changes in aid that are not sustained over time.)
Is foreign aid an effective instrument of soft power? Does it generate affinity for donor countries and the values they espouse? This article answers these questions in the context of Chinese aid to Africa and the competing aid regime of the United States. The study combines data on thirty-eight African countries from Afrobarometer, AidData, and the Aid Information Management Systems of African finance and planning ministries. The authors use spatial difference-in-differences to isolate the causal effects of Chinese and US aid. The study finds that Chinese aid to Africa does not increase (and may in fact reduce) beneficiaries’ support for China. By contrast, US aid appears to increase support for the United States and to strengthen recipients’ commitment to liberal democratic values, such as the belief in the importance of elections. Chinese aid does not appear to weaken this commitment, and may strengthen it. The study also finds that Chinese aid increases support for the UK, France and other former colonial powers. These findings advance our understanding of the conditions under which competing aid regimes generate soft power and facilitate the transmission of political principles and ideals.
A primary objective of foreign aid in conflict zones is to help political actors win citizens’ ‘hearts and minds’. Previous studies have focused on assistance provided to state actors; however, this article examines aid's impact on rebel governance. It argues that aid only bolsters opinions of rebel governors where military control is uncontested. In contested areas, rebels lose credibility if they cannot offer protection, and they have difficulty delivering – and receiving credit for – services in insecure environments crowded with competitors. Using novel data from the Syrian civil war, this article shows that aid improves opinions of opposition councils in uncontested areas but not in communities experiencing intra-rebel conflict. It also explores the underlying mechanisms using in-depth interviews with residents of Aleppo City and Saraqeb. The findings reveal a more nuanced relationship among aid, military competition and governance than prior studies have suggested, which has implications for both scholars and policy makers.
Chapter 7 finds a significant relationship between group empathy and foreign policy opinion. Consistent with our previous findings, African Americans and Latinos expressed significantly higher group empathy in general and also specifically toward refugees, Arabs, and Muslims than did whites. Group empathy again helped explain racial/ethnic gaps in policy preferences as well as distinct reactions to experimental vignettes about humanitarian crises in other countries. On average, those high in group empathy attributed higher responsibility to the USA to protect other nations in need and were much more supportive of foreign aid. Group empathy was also associated with increased support for humanitarian assistance, asylum for Syrian civilians, as well as for military intervention to mitigate the humanitarian crisis depicted in our experimental vignettes. Furthermore, group empathy was the strongest predictor of opposition to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s proposed Muslim ban, even eclipsing that of partisanship and ideology.
What are the effects of foreign aid on the perceived legitimacy of recipient states? Different donors adhere to different rules, principles, and operating procedures. The authors theorize that variation in these aid regimes may generate variation in the effects of aid on state legitimacy. To test their theory, they compare aid from the United States to aid from China, its most prominent geopolitical rival. Their research design combines within-country analysis of original surveys, survey experiments, and behavioral games in Liberia with cross-country analysis of existing administrative and Afrobarometer data from six African countries. They exploit multiple proxies for state legitimacy, but focus in particular on tax compliance and morale. Contrary to expectations, the authors find little evidence to suggest that exposure to aid diminishes the legitimacy of African states. If anything, the opposite appears to be true. Their results are consistent across multiple settings, multiple levels of analysis, and multiple measurement and identification strategies, and are unlikely to be artifacts of sample selection, statistical power, or the strength or weakness of particular experimental treatments. The authors conclude that the effects of aid on state legitimacy at the microlevel are largely benign.
China’s rise is ushering in a new era of geostrategic contestation involving foreign aid. In many traditional OECD donors, aid policy is changing as a result. We report on a survey experiment studying the impacts of rising Chinese aid on public opinion in traditional donors. We randomly treated people with vignettes emphasising China’s rise as an aid donor in the Pacific, a region of substantial geostrategic competition. We used a large, nationally-representative sample of Australians (Australia is the largest donor to the Pacific). As expected, treating participants reduced hostility to aid and increased support for more aid focused on the Pacific. Counter to expectations, however, treatment reduced support for using aid to advance Australian interests. These findings were largely replicated in a separate experiment in New Zealand. Knowledge of Chinese competition changes support for aid, but it does not increase support for using aid as a tool of geostrategy.
One likely effect of the COVID-19 pandemic will be an increased focus on health diplomacy, a topic that has rarely been taken up by international relations scholars. After reviewing existing literature on health diplomacy, I argue for the utility of distinguishing states’ aims from their practices of health diplomacy in advancing our understanding of when states engage in health diplomacy with a bilateral, regional, or global scope. The recent history of twenty-first century infectious disease outbreaks suggests a possible move away from health diplomacy with global participation. COVID-19 provides numerous examples, from widespread criticism of the World Health Organization to increased bilateral health aid and the creation of a regional vaccine initiative. As pandemics become more frequent, however, more localized health diplomacy is likely to be less effective, given the necessity of global mitigation and containment.
Bangladesh’s elite had been decimated twice within a generation. In 1947 many upper-class, professional and entrepreneurial Hindus had left for India and they had been largely replaced by newcomers from West Pakistan. In 1971 these newcomers retreated to Pakistan amidst targeted killings of the delta’s professionals and intellectuals. As a result, independent Bangladesh started out with only a few people who had any experience in running state institutions or large enterprises. They needed all the help they could get. Suddenly they had to perform on the global stage. As a result, Bangladesh society rapidly developed new transnational links that would shape its future course. Especially influential were foreign aid and investment, mass migration and rapid advances in connectivity.
From the birth of Pakistan, the central government saw itself as devoted to development. It assumed an interventionist role, but the funds it released were unimpressive. In the early 1950s the Cold War had made government-to-government aid a useful geopolitical tool, and there was a strong belief among experts that aid would accelerate economic growth. The Pakistan elite became heavily aid-dependent. In East Pakistan the Comilla model of cooperatives became important, as did the creation of a hydroelectric dam project in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.