U.S. Foreign Aid and UN Voting: An Analysis of Important Issues

Abstract

Many previous studies assessed effectiveness of U.S. foreign aid by focusing on voting coincidence rates of all UN votes and found no relationship between U.S. aid distribution and UN voting coincidence rates. Most UN resolutions, however, are simply not important enough for U.S. to expend its scarce resources in influencing outcomes. The U.S. government would not be likely to exercise pressure on all UN resolutions but would do so on issues considered vital to America's national interests. If there is any effect from receiving U.S. foreign aid on political outcomes in UN, it is therefore most likely to emerge in voting coincidence rates on important issues. Using data collected for sixty-five developing countries between 1984 and 1993, a pooled cross-sectional and time-series research design is adopted to examine this hypothesis. Contrary to argument that foreign aid is an ineffective policy instrument in pursuit of America's global influence, current findings suggest that U.S. government has successfully utilized foreign aid programs to induce foreign policy compliance in UN on issues that are vital to America's national interests. The end of Cold War has dramatically changed structure of international system, and rules that have guided U.S. foreign policy for past forty years are now obsolete. The urgency of balancing federal budget fuels political anxieties at home, and the public is motivated by a pervasive sense that domestic problems warrant bulk of America's energies (Haass, 1995:43). Thus U.S. foreign aid, considered an important foreign policy instrument during Cold War era, has found itself under intensive scrutiny in recent years (Doherty, 1995). Opponents of U.S. foreign assistance have questioned effectiveness of these programs in promoting U.S. national interests and have pointed out that recipients of U.S. aid have often been short on gratitude. A report from Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, has suggested that 74 percent of recipient countries voted against U.S. a majority of time in United Nations in 1994.1 On these grounds, U.S. foreign aid is viewed as largely ineffective in winning friends in international arena. The Clinton administration strongly opposes deep cuts in budget for international affairs. In so doing, it has argued that foreign assistance remains an important instrument of American foreign policy through which U.S. can exert Author's note: This study is supported by a research grant from Illinois State University. The author would like to