Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study evaluates the importance of trade and foreign direct investment ties as determinants of aid allocations from 22 OECD donor countries to 187 aid recipients over the period 1980-2002.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper addresses how South African non-governmental organisations approach the management of their development activities and the influences upon their approaches. Efforts to professionalise NGOs through the use of public management tools have been accompanied by debates over whether such tools are effective, conducive to learning, and compatible with more democratic and empowering relationships with beneficiaries (Edwards & Hulme,1996; Gaspar, 1997 & 2000; Wallace, 1997 &1998). Based on interviews, field visits and programme documents from 40 organisations working in South Africa, the paper explores the extent to which NGO programmes and management practices arise out of donor conditions, succeed in their stated aims, and generate unintended consequences. Three conditions are explored: logical frameworks, participatory processes, and financial probity. While the research suggests that donor requirements in these areas generally impose heavy costs on South African NGOs and poorly achieve their stated aims, the research documents cases in which local managers were able to work effectively and learn within the constraints, found ways around more intrusive requirements, or challenged donors to permit more equitable donor-recipient relationships and better development practice. Unintended consequences of both tighter funding requirements and of class, race, and gender relationships within and between organisations include differentiation within the South African NGO sector, with smaller community-based organisations increasingly excluded as larger professional organisations establish more enduring links with sources of international aid.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: U.S. foreign military and economic aid programs have been a corner stone of U.S. foreign policy. Policymakers donate aid to friendly governments embroiled in civil wars with the intention of preserving an ally by increasing the combat effectiveness of the military. Such aid programs, in the midst of a civil war, however, may have some detrimental effects. Several empirical studies have found that civil wars with third party interventions last longer. Regime backed interventions also do not shorten civil wars. To date no study has examined the direct impact of foreign aid on the dynamics of a civil war to determine if it positively or negatively affects the war fighting ability of the regime. The absence of such an investigation is largely a product of the level of aggregation used in these empirical studies: they examine a large number of civil wars at the conflict level, neglecting the dynamics of the actors, which prevents a detailed assessment of the impact of foreign aid. This paper employs the conflict specific data collection approach, which provides detailed indicators of both regime and challenger casualty rates for each week of the conflict. The lower level of aggregation will allow a more detailed analysis of the effects of economic and military aid on the war fighting ability of each actor. Utilizing data from the Latin American Political Protest Project, the impact of economic and military aid on the war fighting ability of the regimes in the Colombian (1988-1998), Peruvian (1980-1995), and Salvadoran (1979-1991) civil wars are tested with a dynamic model of civil war interaction. This analysis indicates that U.S. foreign military aid did not improve the war fighting ability of the Colombian, Peruvian and Salvadorian regimes. Additionally, economic aid did not significantly affect the war fighting ability of any of the regimes.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: While the Aid/Growth literature is voluminous, the results of studies tracing the effects of aid on economic growth are disparate and, in some cases, contradictory. The question that must be posed, then, is whether growth is too distant a variable to use as a measure of aid effectiveness. This paper seeks to overcome this potential problem by examining the individual avenues through which aid is assumed to cause growth and test whether aid has the assumed effects within each sector. Many studies on aid have pointed to the problem of fungibility in examining aid effectiveness; we argue that regardless of whether aid increases expenditure in recipient’s budgets, sector aid may have a positive impact on a sector’s performance. While recipients may divert donor’s funds to different sectors, donors still have oversight over the intended projects and have incentives to ensure the projects will be successful. Because of this additional donor oversight, we argue that while aid projects may not impact sector expenditures, they will improve sector performance. To test this hypothesis, we examine whether education, health, and infrastructure aid have a significant positive impact on the performance indicators in each respective sector. We accomplish this using a dataset including aid data disaggregated by sector from the Project Level Aid (PLAID) database, an NSF-funded collaboration between Brigham Young University and the College of William and Mary.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: We examine dyadic data on all bilateral aid-donor pairs from 1990-2001 in order to evaluate when aid is withdrawn as punishment for non-democratic actions.