Not All Substitutes Are Equal

• In Event: Public Opinion towards Aid, Poverty, and Development

Abstract

Not All Substitutes are Equal: Public Opinion about Pathways to Reduced Aid Fragmentation

Foreign aid donors tend to want to be represented in many sectors in many countries. This aid fragmentation leads to inefficient aid allocation because of unnecessary duplication of projects and aid flows. Yet reductions in aid fragmentation have proved elusive, ostensibly because the strategic interest in representation persists among decision makers. Do donor publics really think that this fragmented outcome is desirable, or are people willing to accept that some aid flows might be acceptable substitutes, such that one donor should take a background role if another donor was willing to take a leadership role in a particular context? We argue that public reactions to the idea of shifting aid flows will vary with the source of the substitute funding. Studying a sample of Japanese citizens, we examine whether people are more willing to accept a reduction in aid to a country or region that has received aid in the past when they are primed to think that the United States (i.e., a friendly country) will step in to substitute for the reduced Japanese aid versus when they are primed to think that China (i.e., a competitor country) will step in. We study various changes in perception that might mediate the relationship between this information about the source of substitute funding and attitudes about a reduction in Japanese aid.

Authors

• Masaru Kohno, Waseda University

• Matthew S. Winters, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• Gabriella R. Montinola, University of California, Davis