Foreign Aid’s Motivations: Theoretical Arguments and Empirical Evidence 1

Partner country selection between development narratives and self‐interests: A new method for analysing complex donor approaches

“…Step 2: Donor's actual aid flows informs about whether stated intentions, as articulated in development policy documents, are reflected in actual aid flows. Actual aid flows are evidenced by the OECD data on top ten recipients of the average gross disbursements of ODA in -2019. Accordingly, we make the following assessments for each donor orientation:…”

“…The aid allocation literature, in general, has focused on various donor interests to explain actual allocation patterns, and aid selectivity aspects to reflect on development results of various aid allocation decisions. The studies by Arndt, Jones and Tarp (2010), Burnside and Dollar (1997), Carter, Postel‐Vinay and Temple (2015), Gehring et al (2017), Hoeffler and Outram (2011), Pauselli (2019) and Pietrobelli and Scarpa (1992) represent just a few examples of a vast literature on the topic.…”

“…Partner country (PC) selection lies at the centre of development policy decision‐making of donors, and plays a significant role in shaping aid allocation patterns. The existing aid literature has focused on either how aid should be (normatively) organised, or which determinants are (ex post) responsible for aid flows by examining causal relationships through regression analyses (see, for example, Chaturvedi et al, 2021; Gehring, Michaelowa, Dreher & Spörri, 2017; Pauselli, 2019). The latter, which is dominated by quantitative approaches, has helped to get a certain level of understanding of aid allocation patterns and donor motivations.…”

“…Second, many authors have paid particular attention to aid resulting from donors' selfinterested motivations (see, for example, Bracho, Carey, Hynes, Klingebiel & Trzeciak-Duval, 2021;Klingebiel, 2014;Pauselli, 2019). According to this strand, aid has been understood as either a foreign policy tool and/or a mechanism to strengthen and secure commercial ties between donor and recipient.…”

New Donors, New Goals? Altruism, Self-Interest, and Domestic Political Support in Development Cooperation in Latin America

“…What are the motives behind the provision of foreign aid among countries from the Global South? From a foreign policy tool to advance political objectives (Morgenthau 1962) to a humane internationalist identity (Lumsdaine 1993), foreign aid has been understood as driven by either self-interest or altruism (Pauselli 2019). The literature on aid allocation shows that many factors influence donors' decision to provide or withhold aid, among them strategic interests, punishment for undemocratic behavior, normative factors, bureaucratic politics, and domestic politics.…”