Buying Influence: A survey experiment on the logic of aid allocation in conflict-affected countries
Susanna Campbell
American University
Gabriele Spilker
University of Salzburg
Abstract:
International aid donors increasingly focus their resources on fragile and conflict-affected countries, often stuck in a cycle of violence and underdevelopment. They aim to incentivize peaceful cooperation among potential warring parties and discourage violence, helping recipient countries to break out of the conflict trap. In spite of the large amount of aid allocated to these countries and their potential geopolitical importance, there is scant research on the logics donors follow when allocating aid to fragile and conflict-affected countries, particularly at the sub-national level. The broader aid literature has posited a stark difference between donors who are motivated by humanitarian need versus their strategic interest. This scholarship, however, overlooks how and why donors engage with states and societies at the sub-national level and whether this behavior is different in conflict-affected countries. This paper strives to better understand the influence of donor aid allocation practices on the political behavior and policies of recipient governments. Relying on an original survey-embedded experiment administered to over 12,000 individuals and obtaining 1,100 responses from individuals working for donor and implementing organizations, this paper argues that donor influence is conditioned by the particular conflict and peace dynamics and by type of aid that is delivered. Using the responses from the large pool of respondents from different types of organizations (e.g., IOs, INGOs, bilateral aid donors, multilateral aid donors) working in diverse conflict-affected contexts, this paper shows that donors have key windows of opportunity to influence war-to-peace transitions in particular ways. As the first global survey experiment of country-level staff, this survey sheds crucial light on an important but understudied population.
Discussants:
Stephen Chaudoin (University of Illinois Urbana - Champaign)
Matthew Winters (University of Illinois Urbana - Champaign)
Simone Dietrich (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
Suparna Chaudhry (Christopher Newport University)
OPSC Coordinator:
Emily Hencken Ritter (University of California Merced)
Graduate Assistant:
Peter D. Carey II (University of California Merced)
