Abstract

In recent years, donor countries have increasingly used different aid allocation channels to boost aid effectiveness. One delivery channel that has grown tremendously is ‘multi-bi aid’—contributions to multilateral organizations earmarked for specific development purposes. This article examines whether donors use multi-bi aid to further their selfish goals—specifically, to garner political support for their ambition to become a temporary member of the UN Security Council. In this context, multi-bi aid is particularly beneficial to countries with limited experience as foreign aid donors; whose governance quality is weak; and which are more internationalized. Using a sample of OECD/DAC donor countries in 1995–2016, time-series cross-section analysis corroborates these arguments. The analysis draws on a new dataset of media reports proxying for donor interest in winning a temporary seat in the UN Security Council and extended data on multi-bi aid flows. The findings demonstrate that multi-bi aid may be a tool for geopolitical influence, with yet unexplored consequences for aid effectiveness.

Highlights

  • A growing body of work demonstrates that donor motivations matter for aid effectiveness (Dreher & Kilby, 2010; Dreher, Klasen, Vreeland, & Werker, 2013; Headey, 2008)

  • Descriptive analysis of media reports on United Nations Security Council (UNSC) campaigns over the past 20 years—available from Factiva—yields 15 news reports that explicitly mention pledges of aid in the context of UNSC candidatures—either generally to specific causes, or to specific countries. 10 pledges were from Western European and Others Group (WEOG) states, 4 from AsianPacific states, and one from the Eastern European group (EEG)

  • Can aid buy support for UNSC candidatures?. Donors can further their chances of winning a temporary seat by increasing foreign aid, especially to poorer countries, which depend on foreign aid for economic development and which may be willing to support a donor vying for a seat in return for aid—an important example of an “aid-for-policy deal” (Bueno de Mesquita and Smith 2009)

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Summary

Introduction

A growing body of work demonstrates that donor motivations matter for aid effectiveness (Dreher & Kilby, 2010; Dreher, Klasen, Vreeland, & Werker, 2013; Headey, 2008). Within the broad literature on the UNSC (e.g., Malone, 2000; Mikulaschek, 2018; Prantl, 2005; Voeten, 2001; Vreeland & Dreher, 2014a), some research focuses on who gets elected to the institution (Dreher, Gould, Rablen, & Vreeland, 2014; Schmitz & Schwarze, 2012; Vreeland & Dreher, 2014b), whereas other research explicitly links aid allocation and multilateral lending decisions to temporary UNSC membership of recipient countries (Dreher, Lang, Rosendorff, & Vreeland, 2018; Dreher, Sturm, & Vreeland, 2009; Kuziemko & Werker, 2006; Lim & Vreeland, 2013; Vreeland & Dreher, 2014a) In contrast to these studies, I focus on the strategies that donors use to enhance their chances of getting themselves elected to the institution. Whether this holds for multi-bi aid is an open question though, given that donor motivations cannot be inferred for this type of aid

Argument
Can aid buy support for UNSC candidatures?
Choice of aid channels
Data and methods
Dependent variables
Predictors
Control variables
11 These donors include
Results
Instrumental-variable design
Conclusion
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