Regional Organizations and International Politics: Japanese Influence over the Asian Development Bank and the UN Security Council

Abstract

Do regional hegemons use their power in regional organizations to advance foreign policy objectives? The authors investigate whether Japan leverages its privileged position at the Asian Development Bank (adb) to facilitate project loans for the elected Asian members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), a platform from which it seeks to shape global affairs. Analyzing panel data of adb loan disbursements to twenty-four developing member-countries from 1968 to 2009, the authors find that temporary UNSC membership increases adb loans, particularly during the post–1985 period, when Japan asserted greater influence in multilateral organizations. They estimate an average increase of over 30 percent. Because of Japan's checkered history of imperialism, the adb provides a convenient mechanism by which the government can obfuscate favors for politically important countries. Acting through this regional organization enables Japan to reconcile a low-key approach to foreign affairs with the contradictory goal of global activism–leading without appearing unilateralist.

The Allocation of German Aid: Self‐interest and Government Ideology

“…German aid commitments are again larger if countries are temporary members of the UNSC (significant at the 1% level). This mirrors findings for other donors such as the United States (Kuziemko and Werker, ), the IMF (Dreher et al., ), the World Bank (Dreher et al., ), and the Asian Development Bank (Lim and Vreeland, ). We interpret the coefficient on the UNSC variable to be causal, given that UNSC membership is unrelated to any variable that might also determine aid commitments over time (Dreher et al., ).…”

Foreign aid funnel? A placebo-based assessment of aid flows to non-permanent United Nations Security Council members

“…11. The greater precision for the Japan results is coherent with the findings in Vreeland and Dreher (2014) and also in Lim and Vreeland (2013).…”

Taking Stock and Looking Forward: Recent Scholarship on Japan's Official Development Assistance

“…This is puzzling given the fact that it is the multilateral development agency over which Japan has the most influence. Lim and Vreeland (, p. 35) report a comment by a Bank board member thus: “The ADB is de facto ‘funded by the Japanese, controlled by the Japanese, and run by the Japanese.” Whether this oversight is due to the attention Kato, Page, and Shimomura pay to the rather more difficult relations between Japan and the World Bank with which they have direct experience, is unclear; but the oversight is noticeable and unfortunate in a volume that aspires to encyclopedic scope. The same can be said for Asplund and Söderberg who emphasize the shift in development assistance to Asia.…”