{"title":"Foreign Aid and Political Support: How Politicians' Aid Oversight Capacity and Voter Information Condition Credit-Giving","authors":"Kate Baldwin, Matthew S. Winters","doi":"10.1353/wp.2023.0004","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"abstract :Prominent scholarship on foreign aid argues that aid can interfere with citizens' ability to hold politicians accountable. One particular concern is that politicians receive undeserved credit for aid projects due to misattribution by voters with low information. But in some cases, politicians exert effort to ensure the success of projects and thus may deserve any credit they receive from voters. The authors show that the credit politicians receive depends both on voter information and on the capacity of politicians' offices to provide oversight. Drawing on original surveys of politicians and nongovernmental organizations (ngos) in Uganda, the authors describe circumstances in which politicians support the realization and administration of aid projects. The authors then use an experiment to show that information about foreign financing and ngo implementation of these projects reduces support for incumbent politicians only when their offices have low aid oversight capacity. The authors also provide evidence from other African countries that shows that credit-giving for aid depends on both information and state capacity. Their results suggest that voters think realistically about what politicians might have contributed to aid projects and update their assessments accordingly.","PeriodicalId":48266,"journal":{"name":"World Politics","volume":"75 1","pages":"1 - 42"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"4","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"World Politics","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wp.2023.0004","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 4
Abstract
abstract :Prominent scholarship on foreign aid argues that aid can interfere with citizens' ability to hold politicians accountable. One particular concern is that politicians receive undeserved credit for aid projects due to misattribution by voters with low information. But in some cases, politicians exert effort to ensure the success of projects and thus may deserve any credit they receive from voters. The authors show that the credit politicians receive depends both on voter information and on the capacity of politicians' offices to provide oversight. Drawing on original surveys of politicians and nongovernmental organizations (ngos) in Uganda, the authors describe circumstances in which politicians support the realization and administration of aid projects. The authors then use an experiment to show that information about foreign financing and ngo implementation of these projects reduces support for incumbent politicians only when their offices have low aid oversight capacity. The authors also provide evidence from other African countries that shows that credit-giving for aid depends on both information and state capacity. Their results suggest that voters think realistically about what politicians might have contributed to aid projects and update their assessments accordingly.
期刊介绍:
World Politics, founded in 1948, is an internationally renowned quarterly journal of political science published in both print and online versions. Open to contributions by scholars, World Politics invites submission of research articles that make theoretical and empirical contributions to the literature, review articles, and research notes bearing on problems in international relations and comparative politics. The journal does not publish articles on current affairs, policy pieces, or narratives of a journalistic nature. Articles submitted for consideration are unsolicited, except for review articles, which are usually commissioned. Published for the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Affairs