The United States has made repeated public commitments to provide humanitarian aid based on need alone. However, some scholars suggest that US self-interest is a stronger predictor of US humanitarian assistance than need. We examine the tension between self-interest and need by studying the allocations made by the US Agency for International Development's Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance for more than 100 developing countries between 1989 and 2009. Moving beyond previous studies, we measure need based on both natural (floods, earthquakes, hurricanes) and man-made (conflict related) disasters. Contrary to much previous scholarship, we find need factors shape the decision to provide aid more than US self-interest does. We also find important differences in how much humanitarian assistance is distributed in the pre-and post-9/11 eras, with foreign policy affinity to the United States and battle deaths playing useful roles in how much aid a country receives in the post-9/11 period. The findings generally point to the ongoing importance of need as a driver of humanitarian aid decisions.The US government has consistently maintained that humanitarian assistance, which is described as lifesaving relief in response to emergency situations, should not be dictated by self-interested foreign policy imperatives. The 2002 National Security Strategy statement is an example of this overt commitment, stating that humanitarian assistance "based on needs alone" will continue (US Government 2002). The 2010 National Security Strategy statement similarly maintains the United States' commitment to responding to humanitarian needs (US Government 2010). The logic underlying these public commitments is that the US government responds to humanitarian needs because such responses reflect the values and moral disposition of the American people. However, several studies (for example,

This paper examines the state-building project in Kazakhstan since independence in 1991. It argues that both civic and ethno-nationalistic tendencies in state-building can be identified but that it is not any particular trajectory of nationalism in Kazakhstan that is of significance so much as the tensions between two very different trajectories. We argue that, at least to date, the government has succeeded in managing these tensions quite effectively both at the policy level and in its relations with different ethnic groups and neighbouring states. Whether Kazakhstan can continue to manage these tensions in the post-Nazarbayev era is one of the most significant questions facing the country.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract