The Politics of Private Foreign Aid: Humanitarian Principles, Economic Development Objectives, and Organizational Interests in NGO Private Aid Allocation

2012 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 571-607 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Büthe ◽  
Solomon Major ◽  
André de Mello e Souza
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
Aid Effectiveness ◽  
Regional Effect ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Aid Allocation ◽  
Development Ngos

AbstractA large and increasing share of international humanitarian and development aid is raised from nongovernmental sources, allocated by transnational NGOs. We know little about this private foreign aid, not even how it is distributed across recipient countries, much less what explains the allocation. This article presents an original data set, based on detailed financial records from most of the major U.S.-based humanitarian and development NGOs, which allows us for the first time to map and analyze the allocation of U.S. private aid. We find no support for the common claim that aid NGOs systematically prioritize their organizational self-interest when they allocate private aid, and we find only limited support for the hypothesis that expected aid effectiveness drives aid allocation. By contrast, we find strong support for the argument that the deeply rooted humanitarian discourse within and among aid NGOs drives their aid allocation, consistent with a view of aid NGOs as principled actors and constructivist theories of international relations. Recipients' humanitarian need is substantively and statistically the most significant determinant of U.S. private aid allocation (beyond a regional effect in favor of Latin American countries). Materialist concerns do not crowd out ethical norms among these NGOs.

Motivations for Bilateral Aid Allocation in Korea: Humanitarian, Commercial, or Diplomatic?

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 180-197
Author(s):  
Bokyeong Park ◽  
Hongshik Lee
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Aid Effectiveness ◽  
Allocation Rule ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Aid Allocation ◽  
Bilateral Aid ◽  
External Pressures ◽  
Overseas Investment ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Resource Security

This study investigates Korea's motivations for foreign aid allocation, analyzing panel data from over 180 countries for the last 20 years. The results show that Korea's aid allocation reflects both recipient needs and Korea's own national interests but does not consistently consider aid effectiveness. Korean aid is also characterized by its use as an instrument of both summit diplomacy and resource security. In addition, its commercial motivations appear to have shifted over time, from export promotion to overseas investment support. Despite internal and external pressures, there is no obvious evidence that Korea's allocation rule converges with international guidelines that recommend greater consideration of recipient needs and aid effectiveness and less consideration of donor interests.

Political regimes and foreign aid effectiveness in Ghana

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent Konadu Tawiah ◽  
Evans John Barnes ◽  
Prince Acheampong ◽  
Ofori Yaw
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Aid Effectiveness ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Annual Data ◽  
Political Regimes ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Government

Purpose This paper has examined the effectiveness of foreign aid on Ghanaian economy under different political regimes. Design/methodology/approach Using vector error correction and co-integration models on the annual data set over a period of 35 years, the authors demonstrate that foreign aid has had varied impacts on economic growth depending on the political ideology of the government in power. Findings With capitalist political philosophy, foreign aid improves private sector growth through infrastructural development. On the other hand, a government with socialist philosophy applies most of its foreign aid in direct social interventions with the view of improving human capital. Thus, each political party is likely to seek foreign aid/grant that will support its political agenda. Overall, the results show that foreign aid has a positive impact on the growth of the Ghanaian economy when there is good macroeconomic environment. Practical implications This implies that the country experiences economic growth when there are sound economic policies to apply foreign aid. Originality/value The practical implication of the findings of this paper is that donor countries and agencies should consider the philosophy of the government in power while granting aid to recipient countries, especially in Africa. The results are robust to different proxies and models.

scholarly journals Making Sense of an Unstable Legislature: Committee Assignments in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies, 1946–2001

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 35-64
Author(s):  
Silvina Lilian Danesi ◽  
Ludovic Rheault
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Legislative Organization ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Committee Assignments ◽  
Chamber Of Deputies

Latin American legislatures have gone largely unstudied, with the functioning of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies prior to the 1980s being an entirely unexplored subject. This paper fills that gap by examining the organization of the Chamber, with particular focus on its standing committee system from 1946 to 2001. We assess the portability of two U.S.-based theoretical approaches to legislative organization by applying them to committee assignments. An original data set of Argentine deputies was constructed and a way of measuring political power in committees was devised for this study. Despite weak democratic governments, military interventions, and changes to the electoral system, we find that ruling parties have consistently influenced the committee system, shaping its structure and securing an over-proportion of their deputies in key committee positions. These results support the applicability of the U.S. originated Cartel Theory of legislative organization to understanding and studying legislatures outside that country.

Of terrorism and revenue: Why foreign aid exacerbates terrorism in personalist regimes

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 359-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Boutton
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Important Determinant ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
Aid Effectiveness ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Security Threat ◽  
Political Incentives ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
External Sources

States hosting terrorist groups often receive foreign aid from donors who have an interest in reducing the level of terrorism in these countries. However, existing work is inconclusive on the question of whether such aid is effective at bringing about favorable counterterrorism outcomes. Aid scholars argue that the political structure of the recipient regime is an important determinant of development aid effectiveness. I apply this logic to the topic of counterterrorism aid and argue that the effects of foreign aid on terrorism will be conditional on recipient political incentives. In particular, personalist dictatorships are unique in their reliance upon external sources of revenue with which to keep their regimes afloat. Thus, rents from foreign aid encourage these regimes to become counterterrorism “racketeers”, offering their services in exchange for a fee. But rather than fixing the problem, they perpetuate it, as their survival is conditional upon a perpetual security threat. Using a variety of data on regime type, terrorist attacks, and terrorist group duration, I find that in personalist regimes, US aid significantly increases levels of terrorist activity. This paper contributes to the literature linking foreign aid and terrorism by considering domestic politics as an important determinant of counterterrorism aid effectiveness.

scholarly journals Domestic Politics and Changes in Foreign Aid Allocation: The Role of Party Preferences

2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 284-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zachary D. Greene ◽  
Amanda A. Licht
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Aid Allocation ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Partisan Theory ◽  
Disaster Aid

Resources for foreign aid come under attack when parties that care little for international affairs come to power. Internationally focused parties of the left and right, however, prefer to use aid as a tool to pursue their foreign policy goals. Yet varying goals based on left–right ideology differentiate the way donors use foreign aid. We leverage sector aid to test hypotheses from our Partisan Theory of Aid Allocation and find support for the idea that domestic political preferences affect foreign aid behavior. Left-internationalist governments increase disaster aid, while parochial counterparts cut spending on budget assistance and aid that bolsters recipients’ trade viability. Conservative governments favor trade-boosting aid. We find consistent, nuanced, evidence for our perspective from a series of Error Correction Models (ECMs) and extensive robustness checks. By connecting theories of foreign aid to domestic politics, our approach links prominent, but often disconnected, fields of political research and raises important questions for policymakers interested in furthering the efficacy of development aid.

The Disbursement Pattern of Japanese Foreign Aid: A Reappraisal

2009 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
John P. Tuman ◽  
Jonathan R. Strand ◽  
Craig F. Emmert
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Aid Allocation ◽  
Global Study

Three perspectives on the determinants of Japan's official development assistance (ODA) program are often represented as distinct, valid explanations of the aid program. Yet few studies have attempted to simultaneously test the hypotheses generated from all three perspectives in a global study of Japanese aid flows. This study seeks to improve the understanding of the Japanese ODA program by addressing some of the gaps in the existing literature. Providing a comprehensive analysis, the article investigates the effects of different political and economic variables on Japanese aid disbursement in eighty-six countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East from 1979 to 2002. The findings of the study make several contributions to the literature. First, the results provide strong support for the claim that humanitarian concerns, as measured by poverty and human rights conditions in recipient countries, are important determinants of aid allocation. Second, although much of the previous literature has hypothesized that Japan's aid program seeks to promote Japan's economic interests, little empirical support for this view is found in the present study. Likewise, the disbursement pattern of ODA was associated with only a limited number of US security interests; US economic interests are shown to have no effect on ODA.

scholarly journals The Role of International Factors in Electoral Volatility in Latin America: An Examination of Structural Adjustment

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 215824402110178
Author(s):  
Michelle Kuenzi ◽  
Hafthor Erlingsson ◽  
John P. Tuman
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Party System ◽  
Economic Voting ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Electoral Volatility

Does structural adjustment increase party system instability in Latin America? We employ the Latin American Presidential and Legislative Elections (LAPALE) database ( http://www.lapaledata.com ) and our own original data set for structural adjustment to assess the effects of structural adjustment and other economic, social, and political variables on legislative volatility in 18 Latin American countries during the period of 1982 to 2016. The results of our study indicate that structural adjustment results in higher levels of within-system electoral volatility and support a broad version of economic voting theory. Extra-system electoral volatility is driven primarily by institutional and demographic factors. Our findings also highlight the importance of disaggregating electoral volatility as within-system volatility and extra-system volatility appear to be largely driven by different factors, or in different ways by the same factors.

scholarly journals The Role of Development Aid in Agriculture in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa: A Panel Vector Autoregression Analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Grace Gondwe ◽  
Josue Mbonigaba
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
Aid Effectiveness ◽  
Common Market ◽  
The Common ◽  
Eastern And Southern Africa ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Panel Vector Autoregression

This paper assessed the impact of foreign aid on agricultural productivity and growth in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), using panel vector autoregressive methods. The results show a significant unidirectional causality from agricultural growth to foreign aid and thus confirming the theoretical dispositions of the developmental role of foreign aid. However, instead of complementing domestic resources in this regard, the results showed that foreign aid in the sector substitutes government financing, which effectively reduces its effectiveness. A mismatch in government resources and aid allocations to a sub-sector erodes the synergy that should typically exist between donor aid and government expenditure in a sector. A policy shift towards Result-Based (Aid on Delivery) approaches in aid disbursements will be critical to eliminating fungible resources. Misalignment of aid allocations that are inconsistent with the relative importance of subsectors in the sectoral development goals further undermines the potency of aid. A better understanding of the contribution of the various sub-sectors to the overall growth of the agriculture sector will be crucial for equitable resource allocation and enhanced aid effectiveness. Moreover, the higher impact of domestic resources compared to foreign aid calls for policies to increase domestic resource mobilization and a broader focus on reducing aid dependency.

The Legitimacy of Political Institutions

2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (11) ◽  
pp. 1447-1473 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Doyle
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Public Trust ◽  
Data Set ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Latin American Countries

Populism is an enduring feature of Latin American electoral democracies. Within the past decade, scholars have witnessed the political ascendancy of populist politicians from both the left and right of the ideological spectrum. This naturally raises the question as to why populism has proven resilient in some Latin American democracies, whereas in others political forces have remained relatively moderate and institutionalized. This article argues that this phenomenon can be explained by varying levels of public trust in the traditional political institutions of liberal democracy across the region. Specifically, where public trust in political institutions is low, voters will be attracted to candidates who portray themselves as radical “outsiders,” crusading against the established political order. This hypothesis is tested on a new data set of 48 presidential elections, across 18 Latin American countries, between the years 1996 and 2008. The statistical results provide strong support for this argument.

Speechmaking and the Selectorate: Persuasion in Nonpreferential Electoral Systems

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (5) ◽  
pp. 667-699 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge M. Fernandes ◽  
Miguel Won ◽  
Bruno Martins
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Methods Research ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Named Entity Recognition ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Entity Recognition ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Methodological Innovation ◽  
Elite Interviews

This article examines the extent to which legislators use legislative debates to engage in localism activities to cater to the interests of their selectorate in nonpreferential electoral systems. We define localism activities as the delivery of tangible and intangible benefits to a geographically confined constituency that is instrumental to legislators’ re-selection. Our primary argument is that legislators whose selectorate operates at the local level make more speeches with parochial references. Results show strong support for this assertion. Furthermore, we find that high district magnitude leads to higher levels of localism. We use a mixed-methods research design, combining an original data set of 60,000 debates in Portugal with qualitative evidence from elite interviews. We make a methodological innovation in the field of representation and legislative studies by using a Named Entity Recognition tool to analyze the debates.

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