Disaggregated determinants of aid: Development aid projects in the Philippines

Abstract

Motivation: Across the world, rapid-onset disasters caused by natural hazards such as storms and floods return with seemingly greater force every year. Many disaster hot spots are particularly vulnerable because of already fragile humanitarian and political situations, some having been affected by armed conflict for decades. These phenomena augment the need for longterm aid, but do they influence the distribution of aid projects? Purpose: This article revisits the long-standing debate over whether donor interests or recipient needs best predict the distribution of development aid. It disaggregates the analysis down to province level in the Philippines, and includes local hazards when assessing an area's need for aid. Approach and methods: Making use of geocoded data on aid projects, rapid-onset disasters caused by natural hazards and armed conflict in Philippine provinces between 1996 and 2012, this article provides an exhaustive assessment of the within-country determinants of World Bank development aid projects. Findings: The article finds that need to some extent influences the distribution of aid projects across Philippine provinces but that, in general, domestic political alliances bias projects in favour of the politically dominant group. Previous exposure to conflict is associated with increased likelihood of new projects, but only in dominant group-majority provinces. While previous disaster exposure is a weak predictor of aid in all provinces, low Human Development Index (HDI) levels significantly predict aid inflow in excluded group-majority provinces. Policy implications: In sum, the article challenges the idea that (international) donors' priorities override the interests of the recipient/local governmesnt in the distribution of aid projects. It also shows that even if the donor's explicit policy is disaster mitigation and relief, there is still some way to go before these considerations are effectively incorporated into development aid efforts.

Humanitarian need drives multilateral disaster aid

“…It also underpins the insight that US commercial or political interests do not tend to shape US humanitarian aid (19). However, given that the bulk of humanitarian aid (19)(20)(21)(22)(23) and multilateral development aid research (12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17) has argued that strategic political alliances or donor states crucially shape aid flows, this study provides a more nuanced view of multilateral aid disbursement.…”

“…The political economy literature on foreign aid is bifurcated in two large strands of research, one focusing on aid effectiveness ( 10 , 11 ) and one on aid disbursements; our study fits squarely in the latter tradition. In this tradition, a sizable body of work on multilateral development aid provides ample evidence of donor influence on aid allocations in the Asian Development Bank ( 12 , 13 ), International Monetary Fund (IMF) ( 14 , 15 ), and World Bank ( 16 , 17 ). However, these studies typically do not examine disaster aid.…”

International Politics and the Subnational Allocation of World Bank Development Projects

“…Yet 17 of the 27 countries in their study come from Africa, so this conclusion may not hold beyond 10 Asian and Latin American countries. 4 One analysis of World Bank allocation in the Philippines finds that, “the government’s political alliances considerably influence the distribution of development aid” (Rosvold, 2020: 798). These studies report conflicting findings, though none explicitly account for or model the potential influence of a recipient government’s strategic position vis-a-vis donors.…”

“… 1. Recent literature has highlighted how factors internal to donor countries such as public opinion and institutional norms affect aid allocation decisions and strategies (Chong and Gradstein, 2008; Dietrich, 2016). Even the literature on emergency aid finds that strategic factors play an important explanatory role (Bommer et al, 2019; Eichenauer et al, 2020; Fink and Redaelli, 2011; Rosvold, 2020). …”