Congressional Committees and Strategic Interests in U.S. Foreign Aid Allocation

• In Event: International Political Economy of Aid

Abstract

Scholars remain divided over whether aid effectively promotes development, in part because donors allocate aid according to their strategic interests. However, little work exists to explain why and how strategic interests arise in allocation. This paper demonstrates how both legislative and executive branch interests shape American foreign aid allocation, but at a level of decision-making below the President and Congress at large. Focusing on relevant Congressional committees, the State Department, and USAID, this paper combines existing and original data to track funding levels through the different stages of the allocation process, from the President’s proposal and appropriating subcommittee recommendations to amounts enacted and allocated to recipients. This paper includes original data (2500+ observations) on country-level aid allocations (2001-2016) collected from State Department and Congressional archives. I gather this country-level data at two points in the U.S. allocation process—at an initial stage when the agency makes its requests to the appropriating subcommittee and at the ultimate allocation stage when final funding levels are recorded. This allows a novel comparison between two points in the U.S. allocation process—before and after Congressional subcommittee involvement—and reveals that different indicators predict these two allocation phases. This paper demonstrates that the factors driving aid allocation change as the aid allocation process unfolds and, particularly, with the involvement of Congressional committees.

Author

• Ashley Wright, University of Oxford