Rethinking Foreign Aid and Legitimacy: Views from Aid Recipients in Kenya

Dolan, Lindsay

doi:10.1007/s12116-020-09302-9

Cited by 24 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…In Bangladesh, a similar treatment has no effect on the level of confidence in the national government and increased confidence in local government (Dietrich, Mahmud, and Winters 2018). Dolan (2017) tests one explanation for this divergence between theory and results, which is that people in low-income countries may expect their government to receive foreign assistance and so they will not see the receipt of such assistance as a sign of incompetence or neglect. She finds support for this explanation in Kenya.…”

Section: Aid and Incumbent Supportmentioning

confidence: 94%

Receiving Foreign Aid Can Reduce Support for Incumbent Presidents

Briggs

2018

Political Research Quarterly

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Foreign aid is thought to be useful, and therefore desirable, to recipient governments because it allows them to increase their support through the provision of goods or services. However, the effect of the provision of aid on vote choice has rarely been directly tested. I examine the effect of receiving foreign aid on incumbent electoral support in three African countries using a spatial difference in differences design. Surprisingly, receiving aid lowers support for incumbent presidents. I test two mechanisms that could produce this result and find support for a mechanism where aid reduces one’s opinion of the incumbent, perhaps because aid does not live up to expectations. I discuss the implications of this result for research on the political effects of foreign aid and electoral accountability.

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Section: Aid and Incumbent Supportmentioning

confidence: 94%

Receiving Foreign Aid Can Reduce Support for Incumbent Presidents

Briggs

2018

Political Research Quarterly

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“…In another survey experiment in Uganda, Baldwin and Winters (2020) similarly find that most respondents did not know the provenance of a ‘grassroots human security project’ funded by Japan and implemented by local non-governmental organizations. By contrast, Dolan (2020) finds that interview respondents in Kenya generally have a sophisticated and remarkably accurate understanding of the role that aid plays in financing public goods. In Appendix E, we use original survey data from an unrelated study in Liberia (Blair and Roessler 2021) to show that respondents who live near Chinese-funded projects are more likely to report knowing about and using Chinese-provided services than those who live further away, and are more likely to report working for a Chinese-funded contractor.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 98%

Foreign Aid and Soft Power: Great Power Competition in Africa in the Early Twenty-first Century

Blair

Marty

Roessler

2021

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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Is foreign aid an effective instrument of soft power? Does it generate affinity for donor countries and the values they espouse? This article answers these questions in the context of Chinese aid to Africa and the competing aid regime of the United States. The study combines data on thirty-eight African countries from Afrobarometer, AidData, and the Aid Information Management Systems of African finance and planning ministries. The authors use spatial difference-in-differences to isolate the causal effects of Chinese and US aid. The study finds that Chinese aid to Africa does not increase (and may in fact reduce) beneficiaries’ support for China. By contrast, US aid appears to increase support for the United States and to strengthen recipients’ commitment to liberal democratic values, such as the belief in the importance of elections. Chinese aid does not appear to weaken this commitment, and may strengthen it. The study also finds that Chinese aid increases support for the UK, France and other former colonial powers. These findings advance our understanding of the conditions under which competing aid regimes generate soft power and facilitate the transmission of political principles and ideals.

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“…Additionally, aid projects can provide rentseeking opportunities to government officials and can increase citizens' experiences with and perceptions of corruption. Several factors have the ability to mitigate the theorized negative effect of aid projects on trust including uncertainty over the source of development projects, citizens' expectations about the relationship between their government and donors, donor control over resources, and aid conditionality (Dietrich et al, 2018;Dolan, 2020;Milner et al, 2016). Figure 1 presents a conceptual model of the hypothesized relationship between aid projects and political trust.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foreign aid projects and trust in political institutions

Watkins

2021

Governance

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Do foreign aid projects undermine citizens' trust in local and national political institutions? Drawing on institutional theories of political trust, I hypothesize that foreign aid projects reduce trust in political institutions by lowering citizens' perceptions of government performance and raising perceptions of corruption. To analyze the impact of aid projects on trust, this article utilizes geolocated survey data on citizens' trust in political institutions from Afrobarometer Rounds 2–5 (2003–2012) and data on the location of foreign aid projects from AidData's Aid Information Management Systems datasets for Nigeria, Senegal, and Uganda. Using a spatial difference‐in‐difference strategy, the empirical results find that active aid projects are on average associated with decreased trust in the president, parliament, and local government council. An exploratory sectoral analysis suggests that the negative average treatment effect is driven by projects in the transportation, agriculture, education, and civil society sectors.

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Rethinking Foreign Aid and Legitimacy: Views from Aid Recipients in Kenya

Cited by 24 publications

References 37 publications

Receiving Foreign Aid Can Reduce Support for Incumbent Presidents

Receiving Foreign Aid Can Reduce Support for Incumbent Presidents

Foreign Aid and Soft Power: Great Power Competition in Africa in the Early Twenty-first Century

Foreign aid projects and trust in political institutions

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