Foreign Aid and Distributive Politics

• In Event: African Politics & Public Administration Virtual Poster Session
  In Virtual Poster Session: African Politics Virtual Poster Session

Abstract

Few researchers have looked at the subnational allocation of foreign aid. The literature has highlighted the role of donor interests and regime type in the subnational allocation of foreign aid. In this paper, I examine both together using geocoded data on China and World Bank’s aid flows to 48 African countries from 2000-2012. In contrast to most of the extant empirical research, I find that the more democratic a regime is, the more likely it is that the coethnic regions of the incumbent leader get more current aid flows from both the World Bank and China. In this case, I argue that domestic politics play a bigger role than donors’ conditionality in the subnational distribution of aid. The widespread competitive clientelism in many African countries puts more political survival pressure on democratic leaders to target their coethnic regions, while autocratic leaders only need to secure the supports of a small circle of elites. This research has broader implications to understand how international actors and domestic institutions shape the political economy of development in the Global South.

Author

• Keyi Tang, Johns Hopkins SAIS