Can foreign aid donors credibly threaten to suspend aid? Evidence from a cross-national survey of donor officials

Swedlund, Haley J.

doi:10.1080/09692290.2017.1302490

Cited by 39 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…2.Gulrajani 2017, 375. Recent works to bring serious empirical study of organization to bear on foreign aid include Buntaine 2016; Buntaine, Parks, and Buch 2017; Bush 2015; Swedlund 2017. On the “bureaucratic turn” in IO more generally I have in mind, for example, Johns 2007; Johnson and Urpelainen 2014.…”

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confidence: 99%

When Reporting Undermines Performance: The Costs of Politically Constrained Organizational Autonomy in Foreign Aid Implementation

Honig¹

2018

Int Org

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Bureaucracies with field operations that cannot be easily supervised and monitored by managers are caught between two sources of dysfunction that may harm performance. The first source of dysfunction is straightforward: field workers can use operating slack and asymmetric information to their own advantage, thwarting an organization's objectives. The second source of dysfunction is often overlooked: attempts to limit workers’ autonomy may have deleterious effects, curbing agents’ ability to respond efficaciously to the environment. I find that the parliaments and executive boards to whom International Development Organizations (IDOs) are accountable differentially constrain IDO organizational autonomy, which in turn affects management's control of field agents. Tight management control of field agents has negative effects, particularly in more unpredictable environments. Attempts by politicians to constrain organizations in an effort to improve performance can sometimes be self-undermining, having net effects opposite those intended.

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confidence: 99%

When Reporting Undermines Performance: The Costs of Politically Constrained Organizational Autonomy in Foreign Aid Implementation

Honig¹

2018

Int Org

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“…Therefore, in order to elicit truthful responses about the conditions under which donors are willing to suspend foreign aid, Swedlund devised a list experiment, which she embedded into her survey. Combined with additional survey data, the list experiment allowed to test key hypotheses on the willingness of donor agencies to enforce political conditionality (Swedlund, 2017a). Testing these hypotheses would not have been possible without directly querying elites, and the experimental approach helped limit concerns about social desirability bias.…”

Section: Facilitating Theory Testing On An Essential Samplementioning

confidence: 99%

How to make elite experiments work in International Relations

Dietrich

Hardt

Swedlund

2021

European Journal of International Relations

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For decades, many International Relations (IR) scholars did not engage in elite experiments, because they viewed it as too risky, too costly, or too difficult to implement. However, as part of a behavioral turn in IR, a growing number of scholars have begun to adopt the method in their own research. This shift raises important questions. Under what conditions do elite experiments add value to IR scholarship? How can scholars overcome the logistical and ethical challenges of sampling such an elusive group? This article makes an original conceptual contribution to methodological debates on the role of behavioral approaches by analyzing experiments on foreign policy elites. We analyze the method’s strengths and weaknesses, evaluate ethical considerations, and present what is—to the best of our knowledge—the most comprehensive set of implementation guidelines. Our article draws on recently published IR research and argues that the payoffs from elite experiments are well worth the effort.

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“…However, this literature focuses almost exclusively on supply-side motivations, recipient countries' needs and/or strategic importance to potential donors. A few exceptions consider the demands and/or interactions with recipient state governments -who are largely presented as unitary actors (Swedlund, 2017a(Swedlund, , 2017b.…”

Section: Constituency Agency and Subnational Aid Allocation: Theoretimentioning

confidence: 99%

Which Wheel Gets the Grease? Constituent Agency and Sub-national World Bank Aid Allocation

Song

Brazys

Vadlamannati

2020

The Journal of Development Studies

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Questions of aid allocation have long focused on discerning the motivation of development donors. Less attention has been paid to the interests and agency of recipient state governments and even less to the interests and agency of constituencies within those states. An implicit assumption is often that the 'poor' either passively receive the patronage of their benefactors or they don't. In this paper, we instead suggest that depending on the motivation of a donor, their sensitivity to needy subnational constituencies in aid allocation also depends on the political empowerment of those groups. In particular, we take advantage of the unique socio-cultural structure in India to examine if the political agency of scheduled castes and tribes (SC/STs) can explain patterns of district-level allocation of World Bank education aid. Using district-level data on a multiyear World Bank education program, district-level proportions of SC/ST population and of members of parliament we identify poor, but empowered, constituencies. We find that SC/ST districts receive more aid, even when controlling for baseline poverty and educational performance, but that these results are strongest when these districts are politically empowered. Our findings suggest that while donors may indeed respond to recipient needs, those recipients who also speak loudly for themselves fare better, highlighting the importance of constituent agency.

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Can foreign aid donors credibly threaten to suspend aid? Evidence from a cross-national survey of donor officials

Cited by 39 publications

References 84 publications

When Reporting Undermines Performance: The Costs of Politically Constrained Organizational Autonomy in Foreign Aid Implementation

When Reporting Undermines Performance: The Costs of Politically Constrained Organizational Autonomy in Foreign Aid Implementation

How to make elite experiments work in International Relations

Which Wheel Gets the Grease? Constituent Agency and Sub-national World Bank Aid Allocation

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