Democracy Aid and Electoral Accountability

Heinrich, Tobias; Loftis, Matt W.

doi:10.1177/0022002717723962

Cited by 21 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 109 publications

(152 reference statements)

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“… 72 Heinrich and Loftis (forthcoming); Finkel, Pérez-Liñán, and Seligson 2007; Scott and Steele 2011.…”

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How Do People Evaluate Foreign Aid To ‘Nasty’ Regimes?

Heinrich¹,

Kobayashi²

2018

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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Recent theories of foreign aid assume that moral motives drive voters’ preferences about foreign aid. However, little is known about how moral concerns interact with the widely accepted instrumental goals that aid serves. Moreover, what effects does this interplay have on preferences over policy actions? This article assesses these questions using a survey experiment in which respondents evaluate foreign aid policies toward nasty recipient regimes (those that violate human rights, rig elections, crack down on media, etc.). The results indicate that the public does have a strong aversion to providing aid to nasty recipient regimes, but that it also appreciates the instrumental benefits that aid helps acquire. Contrary to a mainstay assertion in the literature, the study finds that moral aversion can largely be reversed if the donor government engages more with the nasty country. These findings call into question the micro-foundations of recent theories of foreign aid, and produce several implications for the aid literature.

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“… 72 Heinrich and Loftis (forthcoming); Finkel, Pérez-Liñán, and Seligson 2007; Scott and Steele 2011.…”

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confidence: 99%

“… 76 See Heinrich and Loftis (forthcoming); Finkel, Pérez-Liñán, and Seligson 2007; Scott and Steele 2011. One exception is the work by Wright (2009), who shows that some kinds of dictators are actually induced by foreign aid to democratize.…”

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How Do People Evaluate Foreign Aid To ‘Nasty’ Regimes?

Heinrich¹,

Kobayashi²

2018

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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“…Knack 2004), a growing body of literature finds that targeted democracy aid appears to have positive effects on democratization (e.g. Dietrich and Wright, 2015; Finkel et al, 2007; Heinrich and Loftis, 2019; Kalyvitis and Vlachaki, 2010; Scott and Steele, 2011). Some evidence also indicates that choice of recipient and democracy aid type plays a role in the success of democracy aid (e.g.…”

Section: Targeting Regimes: Democracy Aid Allocations and Authoritarimentioning

confidence: 99%

Democratizing dictators? Non-democratic regime conditions and the allocation of US democracy assistance, 1975–2010

Scott

Carter

2019

International Political Science Review

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As the USA initiated strategies of democracy promotion to support the spread of democracy, a key element involved democracy assistance. However, some states receive substantial commitments of US democracy aid while other states receive little or none, and the mix of democracy assistance varies in allocation between civil society and institutional channels. This study examines democracy aid allocation, focusing on the role of regime conditions on the targeting and composition of the aid. We disaggregate regime type to differentiate among non-democratic governments and argue that such differences affect both the amount of democracy aid and whether aid packages target government institutions or civil society channels. We theorize how these regime conditions shape allocations, controlling for donor interests and recipient features, and test our argument against US democracy aid allocations by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) from 1975 to 2010. We conclude with discussion of the implications of these findings.

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“…These data are gathered at the macro, country level, and the observational methods the studies employ make causal inferences challenging. Prior studies also generally limit the types of outcomes studied to very high-level variables (that are difficult to change) such as regime type, although there are notable and novel exceptions (Heinrich and Loftis 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Heinrich and Loftis (2019) remain a rare exception by focusing on anti-incumbency economic voting. 4 SeeMartin (2014).…”

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Foreign aid, oil revenues, and political accountability: Evidence from six experiments in Ghana and Uganda

et al. 2020

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Foreign aid may act much like oil money in reducing voters’ willingness to demand accountability from their government, enabling corruption, clientelism, and repression. This is an important causal mechanism connecting public budgets to quality of governance. Yet other scholarship counters that aid is more beneficial than oil, either indirectly because of donor oversight or directly because aid is more likely to produce citizen pressures on governments. Empirical work on the topic employs observational data at the national, macro level, and has left the question unresolved. At the micro level, in some countries citizens have experience with aid revenues and oil funds, thus possessing information about the political implications of these different revenue sources. This article provides the first experimental tests of the direct mechanism linking aid and oil revenues to demands from citizens for greater political accountability. We report the effects of randomly assigned treatments identifying aid funds compared to oil money on behavior of citizens in six survey and lab experiments in Ghana and Uganda. We find no differences in accountability pressures when subjects are randomly assigned to aid or oil conditions in any experiment, including a survey-based field experiment in Uganda that employed very strong information treatments on the extent of aid and oil funds. Though little evidence suggests that either windfall necessarily reduces accountability demands from baseline in a meaningful way, citizens’ actions for aid money were statistically indistinguishable from oil revenues across all experiments. Aid may well have governance effects through the indirect route of donor oversight, but the results presented here suggest no evidence that aid, compared to oil, directly induces greater accountability demands among citizens.

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Democracy Aid and Electoral Accountability

Cited by 21 publications

References 109 publications

How Do People Evaluate Foreign Aid To ‘Nasty’ Regimes?

How Do People Evaluate Foreign Aid To ‘Nasty’ Regimes?

Democratizing dictators? Non-democratic regime conditions and the allocation of US democracy assistance, 1975–2010

Foreign aid, oil revenues, and political accountability: Evidence from six experiments in Ghana and Uganda

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