Bypassing the Incumbent: Leadership Tenure and Foreign Aid Channels

• In Event: The Domestic and International Political Economy of Aid

Abstract

Historically, leaders have been able to use foreign aid to help cement their hold on power. While the size of this effect varies by regime type (Licht 2010), leaders who receive foreign aid can use that assistance to provide either greater public goods to benefit the median voter in democratic societies or to provide private goods to members of their inner circles in less democratic states. Traditional bilateral aid provides leaders a great deal of flexibility to reward and punish as they see fit. Donors, however, have been shifting away from bilateral aid and towards bypass aid, administered by NGOs and civil society groups rather than the regime directly. Receiving aid through alternative channels minimizes fungibility and therefore has potential implications for incumbent leaders who hope to manipulate aid receipts to their benefit. In this paper, we explore how bypass aid affects leader tenure, arguing that diminished fungibility should be a more acute problem for autocratic leaders, particularly those in unconsolidated regimes where the loyalty norm is less established and private goods are more important. Using data on bypass aid from 2004-2017 we find a curvilinear effect, such that an increase in the receipt of foreign aid through bypass channels produces the greatest risk of turnover in transitional regimes.

Authors

• Susan H. Allen, University of Mississippi

• Lauren Elizabeth Ferry, University of Mississippi

• Obaida Shammama, University of Mississippi