World Society and the Global Foreign Aid Network

Abstract

This article analyzes the relationship between foreign aid and globalization to explain developing country ties to world society and argues that foreign aid can be viewed as a recursive mechanism through which donor states refine and spread international norms and organizational ties. Using network data on foreign aid relationships between countries this article analyzes the effects of aid on human rights treaty ratification and international organization memberships in a sample of 135 less developed countries from the period of 1975-2008. Results of random effects panel regression models show that increased aid network centrality brokers increased country ties to world society, supporting a novel interpretation of foreign aid as a transnational process of political globalization.