Foreign Aid and State Legitimacy

Abstract

What are the effects of foreign aid on the perceived legitimacy of recipient states? Different donors adhere to different rules, principles, and operating procedures. The authors theorize that variation in these aid regimes may generate variation in the effects of aid on state legitimacy. To test their theory, they compare aid from the United States to aid from China, its most prominent geopolitical rival. Their research design combines within-country analysis of original surveys, survey experiments, and behavioral games in Liberia with cross-country analysis of existing administrative and Afrobarometer data from six African countries. They exploit multiple proxies for state legitimacy, but focus in particular on tax compliance and morale. Contrary to expectations, the authors find little evidence to suggest that exposure to aid diminishes the legitimacy of African states. If anything, the opposite appears to be true. Their results are consistent across multiple settings, multiple levels of analysis, and multiple measurement and identification strategies, and are unlikely to be artifacts of sample selection, statistical power, or the strength or weakness of particular experimental treatments. The authors conclude that the effects of aid on state legitimacy at the microlevel are largely benign.

Aid and Governance: Impact of Chinese Aid on the Evaluation of Government Performance in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…On the other hand, it must be noted that a contrasting set of studies argue that aid has a rather positive effect on citizen attitudes. These studies, however, mainly focus on aid's effect on legitimizing attitudes, typically tax compliance and morale (Blair and Roessler, 2021; Dietrich and Winters, 2015). In addition, some recent studies find positive (Bai et al, 2022) and nuanced (Wellner et al, 2022) effects on support and confidence in governments.…”

“…In addition, governments being able to negotiate, solicit for and successfully manage aid may signal their competence and capacity to citizens and, therefore, engender positive responses from citizens. Accordingly, some studies document the positive impact of aid on citizenry legitimizing attitudes, often measured as citizens’ willingness to comply with instructions such as tax payment (Blair and Roessler, 2021; Dietrich et al, 2018; Dietrich and Winters, 2015; Sacks, 2012), confidence in state institutions (Bai et al, 2022), and support in the form of votes for the incumbent government (Briggs, 2012). Such positive impacts are likely to manifest when aid is effective and lives up to expectations.…”

Spatial interdependence and spillovers of fiscal grants in Benin: Static and dynamic diffusions

“…14 11 Data from the AidData platform have been widely used in recent publications in economic and political science (see for e.g. Blair & Roessler, 2021;Eichenauer et al, 2021), especially with respect to low-income and middle income countries for which data access remains a challenge. 12 See Figure A.2 in the Appendix.…”

Surveys in Communities Divided by Ethnicity and Conflict: Challenges, Possible Solutions, and Lessons Learned from a Survey in Jos, Nigeria

“…Another fundamental methodological concern is how to effectively conduct a survey experiment at all in a divided society such as Jos, where the preferred procedure of random draws from a population list is impossible. Prior researchers have developed methods for dealing with this randomization challenge, the most common of which is a "random walk" procedure (see Adida et al 2017aAdida et al , 2017bBlair and Roessler 2018;Linke et al 2015, for recent examples). As Lupu and Michelitch (2018:199) note, however, "human beings are notoriously bad at randomizing, and recent research shows that enumerators' instructions on conducting a random walk systematically affect both selection probabilities and survey results" (Bauer 2014(Bauer , 2016.…”