Foreign Aid Allocation from a Network Perspective: The Effect of Global Ties

Abstract

This article examines competing explanations for foreign aid allocation on the global level and argues for a new approach to understanding aid from an institutionalist perspective. Using network data on all official bilateral aid relationships between countries in the period from 1975 through 2006 and data on recipient country ties to world society, the article offers an alternative explanation for the allocation of global foreign aid. Fixed effects negative binomial regression models on a panel sample of 117 developing countries reveal that global ties to world society in the form of non-governmental memberships and treaty ratifications are strong determinants of the network centrality of recipient countries in the global foreign aid network. Countries with a higher level of adherence and connection to world society norms and organizations are shown to be the beneficiaries of an increased number of aid relationships with wealthy donor countries. The findings also suggest that prior explanations of aid allocation grounded in altruist or realist motivations are insufficient to account for the patterns of aid allocation seen globally in recent years.

Exploring the complexity of partnerships in development policy and practice: Upstairs and downstairs

“…As Hatton and Schroeder (2007) have noted, this creates barriers to genuine partnership based on equality, mutual benefits and sustainability. While the stated motivations for aid focus on economic development and social well‐being for the recipients, they also include the donors’ business, geopolitical and diplomatic interests—all of which compete for prominence during design and implementation. More recently, a number of academics have pointed out that development aid is often misevaluated by focusing on the first set of goals and ignoring other more hidden rationales for bilateral aid (Keijzer & Lundsgaarde, 2018; Swiss, 2017). …”

Foreign aid and the rule of law: Institutional diffusion versus legal reach

“…Foreign aid's role in funding the diffusion and institutionalization of world society norms has only recently become a focus of research (Fejerskov, 2015;Peterson, 2014;Swiss, 2016bSwiss, , 2016cSwiss, , 2017Velasco, 2020). This research has shown that the more ties to bilateral aid donors that states have, the more likely a country is to adhere to world society human rights norms and join international organizations (Swiss, 2016b).…”

“…For instance, Velasco (2020) shows that countries receiving aid from more donor countries, and those receiving more aid overall are predicted to offer more protections to LGBT rights. Likewise, bilateral aid donors are more likely to provide aid to countries which are already more embedded in international networks (Swiss, 2017) or with whom they share more common memberships in international organizations (Swiss & Longhofer, 2016). Other research has examined the dynamics of how aid donors are subject to and enact World Society norms and models (Brown & Swiss, 2013;Cold-Ravnkilde, Engberg-Pedersen, & Fejerskov, 2018;Engberg-Pedersen, 2016Swiss, 2011Swiss, , 2012Swiss, , 2018.…”

Social network analysis in humanitarian logistics research

“…Even when an accurate network is constructed, data for operationalization of non-network variables may prove hard to get. In Table I, most studies use network measures such as centrality or density as independent variables, and one or more non-network factors such as cost efficiency (Urrea et al , 2016), beneficiary outcome (Moore et al , 2003), foreign aid allocation (Swiss, 2017) or relief communication (Álvarez and Serrato, 2013) as dependent variables. Such data are prone to missing values and often restrict statistical analyses to non-parametric methods, which do not allow for establishing causal relationships (Moore et al , 2003).…”