An interdisciplinary study of the political impact of American foreign assistance on the evolution of American- Palestinian relations. The research also serves as an evaluation of the U.S.'s use of foreign assistance as a foreign policy tool to advance American foreign policy objectives, and the impact of this use on domestic Palestinian politics.

Money, democracy and the decline of the peace party

1. The many uses of foreign aid 2. One policy, multiple goals: framing and foreign aid 3. Debates about aid: contents and patterns 4. Aid frames: origins and evolution 5. The administration of aid policy 6. The generosity contest: determinants of aid volume 7. The popularity contest: selecting the recipients of aid 8. Conclusion: frames and policy Appendix A. Legislative debates coded Appendix B. Debate coding examples Appendix C. Aid allocation: data and sources.

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Ideas, Interests and Foreign Aid

Events in 2005 such as the G8 Summit in Gleneagles and the Make Poverty History campaign have been successful in focusing the public's attention on the problem of world poverty. Despite these high-profile events and consistently high levels of public support for development assistance programmes, people's understanding of poverty and development issues remains shallow and levels of official development aid for many OECD countries fall well below the 0.7 per cent GDP goal. In this article we examine what factors drive individual-level attitudes of concern for poverty, how the media portray poverty in developing countries and how media portrayal affects individuals' concern for poverty. Drawing on extant literature on motivations for aid, we argue that individual concern for poverty can stem from self-interest or moral drivers. However, the implications of the different drivers do not appear to be well understood, yet they have important consequences for DFID and the OECD; strategies based on preference-accommodation rather than preference-shaping strategies may undermine rather than strengthen public concern for poverty. The data for the article come from DFID's 2005 Omnibus survey of public attitudes towards development and a content analysis of eight UK newspapers from January to December 2005. Using a binary logistic regression model we estimate individual concern for poverty in developing countries as a function of moral judgements, self-interest, awareness of poverty and assessments of achieving Millennium Development Goals, controlling for a host of demographic variables. Results from the content analysis show that economic and political frames dominate media coverage of poverty in developing countries. We find differential effects for moral and self-interested attitudes on concern for poverty; moral attitudes are positively related to concern, whereas self-interested attitudes are negatively related to concern.

‘The Righteous Considereth the Cause of the Poor’? Public Attitudes towards Poverty in Developing Countries

Does perceived corruption in recipient countries reduce support for foreign aid in donor countries? This under-explored yet salient question is examined using the 2009 Eurobarometer survey for the 27 EU countries. We suggest that perceived corruption can cause aid fatigue but that this relationship is highly contextualized. The results show that perceptions about corruption in developing countries reduce overall support for aid among respondents in donor countries. However, this effect is mitigated by country and contextual-level effects and different understandings of what we call the �aid-corruption paradox,� namely that the need for foreign aid is often the greatest in corrupt environments. Three different dynamics of the aid-corruption paradox influence support for aid: moral, pragmatic, and strategic understandings. In EU-15 countries, the effect of perceived corruption in recipient states on aid fatigue can be substantially altered if aid is motivated by moral reasons for helping poor countries or if the purpose of aid is understood to improve governance. In new member states (NMS-12), the effect is reduced if respondents believe that the result of aid can serve national interests. The results provide new insights into the public opinion/development policy nexus, which suggest a number of salient policy recommendations and future areas for research.

Does Corruption Cause Aid Fatigue? Public Opinion and the Aid-Corruption Paradox

“A Mile Wide and an Inch Deep”? Understanding Public Support for Aid: The Case of the United Kingdom

There is a paradox as First World governments provide decreasing levels of foreign aid despite apparently high levels of domestic public support for foreign aid. This article examines this issue as a case study in government response to public opinion: do governments in democracies pay any real attention to what the public think? The study's methodology is to compare trends in domestic public support for official foreign aid programmes over time in five selected aid donor countries with trends in foreign aid expenditure as a proportion of Gross National Income. There are mixed results: in some cases aid performance increased or decreased in accordance with public opinion; in other cases performance went against public opinion. The reasons can partly be explained by faulty public opinion polling techniques but there also appears to be a substantial problem for public policy making in democracies. Governments are paying little attention to public opinion, at least in so-called elite policy areas such as for...

Mark Otter

Papers

Domestic public support for foreign aid: Does it matter?