Hostname: page-component-6dbcb7884d-g628x Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-13T16:43:52.035Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Conditioning the Effects of Aid: Cold War Politics, Donor Credibility, and Democracy in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2004

Thad Dunning
Thad Dunning
Affiliation:
Thad Dunning is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He can be reached at tdunning@socrates.berkeley.edu.
Get access

Abstract

The effect of foreign aid on regime type in recipient countries remains widely debated. In this research note, I argue that a recent focus on “moral hazard” has distracted attention from another mechanism linking foreign aid to domestic political institutions. During the Cold War, donors' geopolitical objectives diminished the credibility of threats to condition aid on the adoption of democratic reforms. The demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, on the other hand, enhanced the effectiveness of Western aid conditionality. I reanalyze an important recent study and demonstrate that the small positive effect of foreign aid on democracy in sub-Saharan African countries between 1975 and 1997 is limited to the post–Cold War period. This new empirical evidence underscores the importance of geopolitical context in conditioning the causal impact of development assistance, and the evidence confirms that the end of the Cold War marked a watershed in the politics of foreign aid in Africa.I would like to thank Henry Brady, Jennifer Bussell, Ruth Berins Collier, David Collier, Robert Powell, Jason Seawright, Beth Simmons, Laura Stoker, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments. I am also grateful to Arthur Goldsmith for sharing his data. Any errors are my own.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , April 2004 , pp. 409 - 423
Copyright
© 2004 The IO Foundation and Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abrahamsen, Rita. 2000. Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourse and Good Governance in Africa. London: Zed Books.
Ake, Claude. 1996. Rethinking African Democracy. In The Global Resurgence of Democracy, 2d ed., edited by Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, 63–75. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Albright, David E. 1991. Soviet Economic Development and the Third World. Soviet Studies 43 (1):27–59.Google Scholar
Allen, Chris. 1992. “Goodbye to All That”: The Short and Sad Story of Socialism in Benin. Journal of Communist Studies 8 (2):63–81.Google Scholar
Beck, Nathaniel, and Jonathan N. Katz. 1995. “What to Do (and Not to Do) with Time-Series Cross-Sectional Data.” American Political Science Review 89 (3):634–47.Google Scholar
Bratton, Michael, and Nicolas van de Walle. 1997. Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bräutigam, Deborah. 2000. Aid Dependence and Governance. Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell International.
Breslauer, George W. 1992. Explaining Soviet Policy Changes: Politics, Ideology, and Learning. In Soviet Policy in Africa: From the Old to the New Thinking, edited by George W. Breslauer, 196–216. Berkeley: Center for Slavic and East European Studies, University of California, and the Berkeley-Stanford Program in Soviet Studies.
Devarajan, Shantayanan, David R. Dollar, and Torgny Holmgren, eds. 2001. Aid and Reform in Africa: Lessons from Ten Case Studies. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.
Diamond, Larry. 1999. Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Easterly, William. 2001. The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Easterly, William. 2002. The Cartel of Good Intentions. Foreign Policy 131 (July/August):40–44.Google Scholar
Goldsmith, Arthur A. 2001. Foreign Aid and Statehood in Africa. International Organization 55 (1):123–48.Google Scholar
Herbst, Jeffrey. 1990. Third World Communism in Crisis: The Fall of Afro-Marxism. Journal of Democracy 1 (3):92–101.Google Scholar
Hook, Steven W. 1998. “Building Democracy” through Foreign Aid: The Limitations of United States Political Conditionalities, 1992–1996. Democratization 5 (3):156–80.Google Scholar
Killick, Tony, Ramani Gunatilaka, and Ana Marr. 1998. Aid and the Political Economy of Policy Change. London: Routledge.
Lancaster, Carol. 1999. Aid to Africa: So Much to Do, So Little Done. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Maren, Michael. 1997. Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity. New York: Free Press.
Moore, Mick. 1998. Death Without Taxes: Democracy, State Capacity, and Aid Dependence in the Fourth World. In The Democratic Developmental State: Politics and Institutional Design, edited by Mark Robinson and Gordon White, 84–121. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nwajiaku, Kathryn. 1994. The National Conferences in Benin and Togo Revisited. Journal of Modern African Studies 32 (3):429–47.Google Scholar
Ross, Michael. 2001. Does Oil Hinder Democracy? World Politics 53 (3):325–61.Google Scholar
World Bank. 1999. Entering the 21st Century: World Development Report 1999/2000. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.