Aid Effectiveness and War Termination

• In Event: The Public Opinion Factor in US-Ukraine Relations

Abstract

Do perceptions of aid effectiveness influence support for war termination? Many factors have been shown to influence support for war and for war termination. Largely unexplored are perceptions about foreign aid. This is unfortunate because there are good reasons to believe that respondents will condition their war support on expectations about the flow of aid from their foreign partners. This is likely to be especially true in the many wars in which foreign aid plays a critical role. We conduct a panel survey in Ukraine which asked respondents about the perceived effectiveness of foreign aid and combine these results with a survey experiment exploring support for various war termination scenarios. We expect those who believe foreign aid will continue to flow from foreign partners will be less likely to support war termination. We also examine how other factors such as exposure to violence, experiences with corruption, and migration shape support for war termination. We take advantage of the panel design to improve causal identification and draw lessons for US policy toward Ukraine.

Authors

• Timothy M. Frye, Columbia U

• Jordan Gans-Morse, Northwestern U