Foreign Aid and Government Legitimacy

Dietrich, Simone; Winters, Matthew S.

doi:10.1017/xps.2014.31

Cited by 68 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…In addition, recent research on foreign aid shows that the comparison between government and foreign aid providers is important. There is some evidence that publics support non-state actors such as donor agencies more than government in public goods provision and that this does not undermine government legitimacy (Sacks 2012;Dietrich and Winters 2015). While in other regions, religious groups may vie with states to provide public goods, in Sub-Saharan Africa the main alternative providers are NGOs and foreign aid donors (Bratton 1989).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizen preferences and public goods: comparing preferences for foreign aid and government programs in Uganda

2016

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Different theories about the impact of aid make distinct predictions about citizens' attitudes toward foreign aid in recipient countries. We investigate their preferences toward aid and government projects in order to examine these different theories. Are citizens indifferent between development projects funded by their own government versus those funded by foreign aid donors, as aid capture theory suggests? To address this, in an experiment on a large, representative sample of Ugandan citizens, we randomly assigned the names of funding groups for actual forthcoming development projects and invited citizens to express support attitudinally and behaviorally. We find that citizens are significantly more willing to show behavioral support in favor of foreign aid projects compared to government programs, especially if they already perceive the government as corrupt or clientelist or if they are not supporters of the ruling party. They also trust donors more, think they are more effective, and do not consistently oppose aid conditionality. This experimental evidence is consistent with a theory that we call donor control which sees donors asbeing able to target and condition aid so that it is not fungible with government revenues and thus to be able to better direct it to meet citizens' needs.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizen preferences and public goods: comparing preferences for foreign aid and government programs in Uganda

2016

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“…It is not obvious, however, that citizens absorb this information (Baldwin and Winters, 2016;Cruz and Schneider, 2017;Dietrich et al, Forthcoming;Guiteras and Mobarak, 2014); nor is it clear how this information influences how citizens perceive and choose to interact with development projects. A recent set of studies is helping to build up our knowledge base (Baldwin and Winters, 2016;Dietrich et al, Forthcoming;Dietrich and Winters, 2015;Dolan, 2016;Findley et al, 2017;Findley et al, Forthcoming;Milner et al, 2016). Milner et al (2016) and Findley et al (2017) use data from a nationally-representative survey in Uganda to show that Ugandan citizens prefer foreign-funded development projects over projects that the authors assume citizens identify as government-funded.…”

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confidence: 99%

Perceptions of foreign aid project quality in Bangladesh

Winters

Dietrich

Mahmud

2017

Research & Politics

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How does information about the presence of foreign financing in a development project change people's perceptions of that project? Using an informational experiment in Bangladesh, we find that information about US financing of a specific development intervention sends a positive signal about project quality; this effect is concentrated among individuals who are the least likely to have been exposed to the information ex ante. The information does not change the already high demand for foreign aid but does help citizens target their demands toward the existing donor. That foreign funding can be a signal of project quality helps explain an existing finding in the literature that individuals prefer foreign aid projects to government projects.

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“…This is especially the case if one's research objective is to understand the perceptions of individual recipient citizens or elites. Findley et al (2017) provide one such effort in this special issue, which reflects a growing trend in international development finance research that uses experiments for causal identification (see Buntaine and Prather 2015;Dietrich and Winters 2015;Milner et al 2016;and Harris et al forthcoming).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

International organizations and development finance: Introduction to the special issue

2017

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Every year, states and international organizations (IOs) provide somewhere between $120 and $170 billion in official development finance (ODF) to recipient countries. IOs are typically responsible for about one-third of global ODF, with sovereign governments providing the remainder.1 The fact that IO development finance comes from many countries acting jointly distinguishes it from bilateral development finance. IOs typically aggregate the preferences and resources of multiple member states in the pursuit of a collective policy among their own ranks and toward other countries.This means that development finance from international organizations represents a distinct institutional form of aid-giving and lending that stands apart from bilateral financing. The multilateral nature of IO development finance -requiring member governments to negotiate and agree upon shared policies -may alter the underlying politics and motivations driving multilateral aid as compared to bilateral aid. But is assistance from international organizations actually different in its causes and consequences? Does divergence in institutional form lead to differences in content and function? Are the underlying motivations of IOs truly distinct from their bilateral counterparts? Does IO development finance have different effects on recipients?2 And how are new governance arrangements For existing empirical studies that compare the effectiveness of bilateral and multilateral development finance, see Ram (2003, 2004), Headey (2008, Reddy (2007, 2010), Alvi and Aberra (2012), and Kizhakethalackal et al. (2013). Gulrajani (2016) provides a useful review of the literature on the distinctive features of multilateral development finance and how it has changed over the past decade.

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Foreign Aid and Government Legitimacy

Cited by 68 publications

References 14 publications

Citizen preferences and public goods: comparing preferences for foreign aid and government programs in Uganda

Citizen preferences and public goods: comparing preferences for foreign aid and government programs in Uganda

Perceptions of foreign aid project quality in Bangladesh

International organizations and development finance: Introduction to the special issue

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