US aid and substitution of human rights violations

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between US aid and human rights violations in autocracies. It argues that autocratic leaders do not want to lose aid owing to their poor human rights records, and yet at the same time, cannot completely stop their rights violations because they often come into power through force. In this situation, the leader acts strategically by substituting the visible rights violations for invisible ones. However, substitution depends on the strategic relationship between the US and the recipient. If the recipient is strategically unimportant, then we can expect substitution; otherwise, it will not be necessary.

The Logic of Transitional Justice and State Repression: The Effects of Human Rights Prosecutions in Post-Conflict States

“…5.Rejali (2007), for example, examines these themes in the practice of torture. Kiyani (forthcoming) examines questions of visibility and substitution of rights violations in relation to receiving foreign aid from the U.S.…”

School of influence: Human rights challenges in US foreign military training

“…In addition, the multivariate probit analysis presented in Appendix Table A4, shows some evidence of substitutability between physical integrity rights violations by military and paramilitary forces. This analysis thus shows some support for the possibility that, at least in the case of Latin America, reductions in military repression may be associated with increases in paramilitary repression, thus implying a potential substitution effect (Kiyani, 2021). Much like occurred in the case of Colombia, recipient countries under pressure to improve the human rights record of their militaries may be shifting repression over to other security agents.…”

“…In the case of military training, it not only benefits the host country to have more effective troops (enhanced as human capital) (Scharpf, 2020), but it can also save the recipient the cost of actually paying for the training (in the case of some programs, such as IMET). At the same time, when the US provides military training to a foreign military there are several, often competing, interests at play, and security interests may trump concerns for human rights when it comes to policy execution (Kiyani, 2021).…”

“…US foreign policy has traditionally given human rights promotion a secondary role to security concerns such as preventing aggression and countering the expansion of influence by US rivals (Kiyani, 2021). At the same time, in recent decades we have gained an increased understanding that repression by the state and its security apparatus leads to instability, which in turn can result in negative externalities such as terrorism and civil war (Young, 2013).…”

“… 2. Although it should be noted that in some cases the violations were simply shifted to military units that did not receive training or to paramilitary units (Tate, 2011). Following work by Kiyani (2021), I explore this substitution dynamic in Table A7 of the Appendix and find some evidence for paramilitary forces’ human rights violations being a substitute for those of the military.…”