Special Interests in Foreign Policy Bureaucracies: Evidence from Foreign Aid

Carcelli, Shannon

doi:10.1086/723821

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Some domestic institutions increase vote-buying more than others; for example, comparative politics literature has found that intra-party competition can increase politicians’ reliance on pork for collecting votes. As particularistic incentives increase within a country, so should that country’s fragmentation (Carcelli 2023a).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bureaucracy at the Border: The Fragmentation of United States Foreign Aid

Carcelli

2023

Journal of Conflict Resolution

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Foreign policy scholars often assume that leaders pursue a national interest. However, states often spread their foreign policy authority thinly across bureaucracies and programs with overlapping or conflicting interests. This is especially pronounced in foreign aid, which serves a clear foreign policy purpose but is often mired in bureaucracy. Why is foreign aid often so fragmented? Focusing on the United States, I explain foreign aid fragmentation as a byproduct of domestic politics. When moderate legislators are ideologically diffuse, leadership must persuade them to support a foreign aid agenda by offering pet projects. This increases aid’s fragmentation. In contrast, when moderates are relatively homogeneous, leaders can gather support through more traditional compromise, decreasing the need for fragmented pet projects. I test this theory using a mixed-methods approach, employing a novel agency-level dataset of US foreign aid appropriations and a case study of a 1992 act delivering aid to the former Soviet Union.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…16.To my knowledge, all foreign aid fragmentation literature uses this measure (Carcelli 2023a; Annen and Kosempel 2009; Knack and Rahman 2007). Nevertheless, in the Appendix, I find robust results using an alternative measure that calculates the total economic aid that is not appropriated through the largest agency, USAID.…”

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confidence: 99%

Bureaucracy at the Border: The Fragmentation of United States Foreign Aid

Carcelli

2023

Journal of Conflict Resolution

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“…A bureaucracy‐level theory fits with recent work on foreign aid delivery tactics. Dietrich (2016) argues that the decision to bypass the recipient government is driven by preferences baked into bureaucratic organizations; Swedlund (2017a) notes the importance of bureaucratic capability in withholding aid; and Carcelli (2023) finds that bureaucratic missions are correlated with openness to special interests.…”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…See pages 10-14 of the Supporting Information for alternative measures that are also compatible with the theoretical model, along with an alternative specification based on bureaucracy-level data on page 2 of the Supporting Information.12 This is an argument forwarded byCarcelli (2023). See page 6 of the Supporting Information for a two-stage analysis that models the determinants of bureaucratic structure following that work.…”

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confidence: 94%

Bureaucratic Structure and Compliance with International Agreements

Carcelli

2023

American J Political Sci

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Why do some states comply with international agreements while others flout them? In this article, I introduce a previously unconsidered explanation: bureaucratic structure. I develop a rational choice model examining the impact of bureaucratic structure on compliance, suggesting that the existence of several distinct bureaucracies can mute compliance with an international agreement by insulating some bureaucrats from pressure to comply. I examine this theory through newly coded data on a 2001 OECD agreement designed to decrease the percentage of aid that is “tied” to donor‐state products and services—a practice that is popular among special interests but which decreases foreign aid's effectiveness. I find that non–development‐oriented bureaucracies, such as departments of interior, labor, and energy, were significantly less likely to comply with the agreement than traditional development bureaucracies. This aggregates to the state level as well, where states with many aid agencies were less compliant than states with a streamlined bureaucracy.

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Development NGOs, Domestic Politics, and Foreign Aid Allocations

Cho

2024

St Comp Int Dev

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Special Interests in Foreign Policy Bureaucracies: Evidence from Foreign Aid

Cited by 6 publications

References 56 publications

Bureaucracy at the Border: The Fragmentation of United States Foreign Aid

Bureaucracy at the Border: The Fragmentation of United States Foreign Aid

Bureaucratic Structure and Compliance with International Agreements

Development NGOs, Domestic Politics, and Foreign Aid Allocations

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