Promoting ‘good behaviour’ through aid: do ‘new’ donors differ from the ‘old’ ones?

Abstract

The relationship between development aid and recipients' 'good behaviour' (human rights, democracy, and good governance) has been frequently examined, in a belief that giving more aid to countries with better performance in these areas can motivate their improvement. Most researchers agree that traditional, Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors reward recipients' 'good behaviour' at least to some extent; however, the 'new', non-DAC donors have so far been portrayed as largely unconcerned with these issues.In this paper, I examine the evidence underlying such claims, by investigating whether human rights, democracy, and good governance play any role in 'new' donors' aid allocation. I find that similar to DAC donors, many non-DAC donors pay heed to recipients' democracy, human-rights or good-governance records at some point in their aid decision-making process. These results suggest that the fears raised regarding the nature of 'new' aid might be unfounded and rather point to the emergence of stronger global norms vis-à-vis the importance of human rights, good governance, and democracy to development.

Is development aid securitized? Evidence from a cross‐country examination of aid commitments

“…We examine aid commitments rather than disbursements, for two reasons. First, OECD data on aid disbursements to different sectors are unreliable and available only after 2002 (Petrikova, ). Second, aid commitments are subject to fewer arbitrary executive decisions and are less influenced by recipients’ administrative capacity than aid disbursements.…”

“…Following existing literature on aid allocation (Neumayer, ; Nielsen, ; Petrikova, ), our model controls for recipient needs and donor interests other than security. Keeping in mind our overall focus on aid committed to government and civil society (conflict, peace and security, and democratization aid fall under this remit) rather than total aid flows more commonly analysed by researchers, the most obvious recipient need is to address poor governance, since countries with poor governance can in theory benefit more from donor investments in their government and civil society sectors (Winters & Martinez, ).…”

“…5 We examine aid commitments rather than disbursements, for two reasons. First, OECD data on aid disbursements to different sectors are unreliable and available only after 2002 (Petrikova, 2016).…”

“…Following existing literature on aid allocation (Neumayer, 2003a;Nielsen, 2013;Petrikova, 2016), our model controls for recipient needs and donor interests other than security. Keeping in mind our 6 The post-conflict variable is included because donors understand the post-conflict phase as a crucial time for peace-building activities and strengthening recipients' governance.…”

“…These countries represent a range of OECD donors with varying security and development capabilities and concerns. The US and UK were chosen to represent large donors who, as key members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), have significant international security commitments (Petrikova, ). Denmark is also a NATO member, but with a much smaller commitment, both in terms of international security and the size of its aid programme.…”