‘I’d be proud to spend the sacred foreign aid budget on our poor pensioners’: Representations of macro aid resourcing in the Irish, UK and US print-media during the economic crisis, 2008–2011

Abstract

The news-media has been identified as an influence on donor nations' overseas aid allocations, acting as a site where decisions are justified to 'domestic constituencies' and through which resistance is mobilised (Van Belle, 2003). Mediated pressures on aid allocations amplified between 2008 and 2011 in three donor countries experiencing domestic economic difficulties: Ireland, the UK and the US. This study suggests that each country's print-media positioned the macro resourcing of aid primarily as an inward concern, neglected recipient country needs, and made weak connections to international policy frameworks to benchmark, contextualise and rationalise aid allocations. The research suggests that the explanatory limitations of the countries' news-models in communicating the processes and rationales underpinning macro aid resourcing may be a factor in sustaining a knowledge and legitimacy deficit among domestic publics for international aid agreements.

The UK government and the 0.7% international aid target: Opinion among Conservative parliamentarians

“…This assumption is made on the basis of prior academic research which suggests that parliamentarians base their positions in light of the assumed preferences of their constituents -for example, Baughman (2004) found that parliamentarians with a higher Catholic vote base showed a stronger tendency towards holding socially conservative positions on abortion and sexuality. Therefore, given the above and the persistence of the media campaigning against the 0.7 percent commitment (Cawley, 2015), our constituency marginality hypotheses was as follows:…”

“…Between 2010 and 2015 public scepticism about international aid spending being immune from the austerity drive gathered momentum, in part stimulated by a highly sceptical right wing print media (Cawley, 2015). Despite this, Cameron, as the modernising leader of a party that had hitherto not been known for being pro-international aid (Chaney, 2013), persisted in not only ring fencing spending in international aid, but increasing it during a time of widespread public expenditure cuts.…”