The Ties That Bind: Bureaucracies and International Foreign Aid Agreements

• In Event: The Politics of Foreign Aid

Abstract

Why do some states adhere to international commitments while others disregard them? Previous scholars have proposed various institutional and personal explanations for state leaders reneging on international obligations. In contrast, I argue that the decisions of individual bureaucrats can often be just as influential as state leaders in maintaining international commitments. I examine global agreements to decrease the percentage of aid that is “tied” to the purchase of donor-state products and services—a practice that is popular among aid contractors but known to decrease the effectiveness of foreign aid. I find that a state’s failure to adhere to a commitment to untie aid can rarely be attributed to the government as a whole. Instead a majority of reneging comes from non-development-oriented domestic bureaucracies such as departments of interior, labor, and agriculture. I argue that this is a result of forum shopping by interest groups who benefit from foreign aid contracts. When traditional development bureaucracies begin employing best practices, thus untying aid, special interest groups simply request more funding and contracts from non-development-oriented bureaucracies, who often aren’t as concerned with best practices. This is especially pronounced in states with many distinct agencies carrying out foreign aid. I test this theory in two ways: first, using cross-national evidence from a newly coded bureaucracy-level aid dataset, I find variation in bureaucracies’ foreign aid tying practices following international agreements. Second, using US data on lobbying, reporting, and voting, I find further evidence for the theoretical mechanisms. Rather than focusing on state leaders, international organization scholars would be well placed to consider the role of sub-state actors, such as bureaucracies, in responding to international commitments.

Author

• Shannon Carcelli, University of Maryland, College Park