Human Rights Violations, Political Conditionality and Public Attitudes to Foreign Aid: Evidence from Survey Experiments

Abstract

There has been much criticism of donor governments who give aid to states that violate human rights. This has fuelled concerns about how such coverage affects public support for foreign aid. In response, donors increasingly use aid suspensions to signal to domestic audiences that a regime has been sanctioned and aid is not misspent. This article examines how reports of rights violations affect attitudes to aid and what, if any, impact donor responses have on public perceptions. We conduct survey experiments using nationally representative samples of the British public. Our findings demonstrate that reports of rights abuses reduce public support for aid. However, contrary to conventional wisdom, any response from donors, whether it be to justify continuing aid or to cut aid, prevents a decline in support. In policy terms, the findings demonstrate the importance of government responsiveness in maintaining public support for a frequently contested aspect of foreign policy.

A worlds-eye view of the United Kingdom through parliamentary e-petitions

“…This highlights an area for potential enhancement for this study, that while topic models can identify the topic of the e-petition, they are unable to discern the sentiment for the topic, that is if the e-petition is in support or opposition to the topic in question. This is important for divisive topics, such as this foreign aid target, with sizable sections of society both in support and in opposition to the target (Dasandi et al, 2021). However, what is import here is that the topic is of concern, one way or another, to the diaspora UK population.…”

Foreign aid donors, domestic actors, and human rights violations: the politics and diplomacy of opposing Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act

“…One could argue that the use of expressive conditionality was part of donors' win-set. However, recent evidence suggests this does not have to be the case, and that as long as donors show their citizens that they are engaging with human rights issues, these citizens will support donor actions (Dasandi et al 2021). Hence, the win-sets available could potentially have avoided the AHA being passed at all, limiting the harms experienced by LGBT Ugandans.…”

“…Recent studies suggest that citizens in donor countries strongly favour aid being conditional on respect for human rights (e.g. Heinrich and Kobayashi 2020;Allendoerfer 2017;Bodenstein and Faust 2017;Dasandi et al 2021). This, together with growing public and media scepticism towards aid (Addison et al 2017;Corbett 2017), means donors face pressure to withdraw aid when rights violations occur to demonstrate ODA is not misspent (Fisher 2015;de Felice 2015;Dasandi et al 2021).…”

“…This has been discussed in the context of aid donors. Fisher (2015) argues that following growing public criticism of aid since the mid-2000s, the UK Government has increasingly used 'expressive' political conditionality to signal to citizens that aid is well-spent (see also de Felice 2015;Dasandi et al 2021). Hence, there are instances when donors' threats to cut aid (a) are directed more at countering pressure from domestic audiences (b) than changing the recipient government's actions.…”

“…16 According to donor staff this perception was broadly accurate -in line with Figure 1, domestic politics in donor countries exerted considerable influence on the response to the Bill. 17 In many donor countries at this time, there was growing media criticism and public skepticism of foreign aid, which meant that donor governments needed to show that ODA was used effectively, and was not given to repressive regimes (see Dasandi et al 2021). This heightened scrutiny of aid spending influenced donors' response to the AHB.…”