Donor political preferences and the allocation of aid: Patterns in recipient type

Abstract

National executives in Western democracies are not unilateral deciders: they lead parties with long-term policy priorities and manage challenging multiparty coalitions. Leaders of donor states use foreign aid to pursue their goals, including enacting policy output consistent with party ideology. Because preferences for international engagement condition the effect of left–right ideology and coalition government incorporates actors with distinct preferences, we predict that left-pro-internationalist prime ministers and development ministers prefer aiding the neediest recipients while right-internationalists emphasize trade opportunities. Our statistical analysis of OECD donor–potential recipient dyads demonstrates the utility of unpacking democratic domestic politics’ effect on leader incentives and decisions.

Introduction to special issue: New research on leaders and peace science

“…Second, and related to the previous point, all of the articles in the special issue consider how actors residing at other levels of analysis shape leaders’ decisions and systematic empirical relationships. This is perhaps most clearly the case with the articles by Chiozza and Khalifa (2024) and Greene and Licht (2024), as both argue that actors residing at the domestic and international level shape patterns of behavior and policy outcomes. For Chiozza and Khalifa, coups in the US hierarchy are a function of the relationships among leaders’ policy preferences, domestic political institutions and other states’ foreign policy goals.…”

“…The third article investigates leaders’ influence on foreign aid disbursements. In “Donor political preferences and the allocation of aid: Patterns in recipient type,” Greene and Licht (2024) argue that understanding the foreign policies of democracies requires we consider that their leaders simultaneously serve as the national executive, the head of their political party, and in some cases, the leader of a governing coalition that consists of members who hold policy preferences that differ from their own. Democratic leaders therefore face a set of competing demands and incentives that influence their decisions and their countries’ foreign policies in complex and non-obvious ways.…”

“…First, in contrast to much of the literature, the theoretical arguments developed in multiple articles do not assume that leaders’ decisions are motivated exclusively by either their desire to remain in power or their personal attributes. Greene and Licht (2024) and Carter (2024) explicitly consider how leaders’ political survival and policy preferences interact to shape their decisions and, consequently, patterns of foreign aid and military spending. Jones et al (2024) argue that leaders’ underlying hawkishness influences their willingness to challenge another state in a militarized dispute, but that nuclear latency conditions hawks’ and doves’ decisions to start a conflict.…”