Do Countries Follow the Golden Rule in Foreign Aid and Public Diplomacy?

• In Event: Public Opinion and International Cooperation

Abstract

The act of spending domestic resources for citizens in other countries or the experience of receiving foreign resources significantly affects inter-state relations by shaping public perceptions toward each other. In this resource exchange, donor citizens may have different goals from recipient citizens and, as a result, the type of resources optimal for donor publics may not be optimal for recipient publics. We call the difference in preferences for the optimal resource between donor citizens and recipient citizens the donor-recipient gap. We propose a simple theory that explains factors determining the level of the donor-recipient gap: the symmetry of evaluation frame and the exclusivity of assistance. We test our theoretical expectations using the original survey experiment data from 16 countries. The findings of our experiment support our claim that the presence of the exclusivity and the separate evaluation frame push public preferences on preferred forms of foreign assistance into the opposite directions between donor citizens and recipient citizens.

Authors

• Jong Hee Park, Seoul National University

• Inbok Rhee, KDI School of Public Policy and Management

• Sung Eun Kim, Korea University

• Joonseok Yang, Sungkyunkwan University