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This paper seeks to bring new insights into the foreign aid allocation behaviour and patterns of two donors from the group of post-communist EU member countries, namely Poland and the Czech Republic. We use quantitative regression analysis to address Polish and Czech foreign aid objectives with a specific emphasis on geopolitical considerations and promotion of democracy. The results reveal a considerable level of similarity between Polish and Czech foreign aid allocation. Both donor countries use foreign aid to safeguard their own geopolitical self-interests—the Czech Republic and especially Poland prioritise post-Soviet countries in their aid allocations. They also prefer recipients in a relative geographic proximity. On the other hand, economic objectives are not significant drivers of Polish and Czech foreign aid. Given the recipients' needs, the middle-income effects are evident in both countries' aid allocations. Although support of democracy is an official objective of both donors, the level of democracy and freedom played a statistically significant role only in the allocation of overall Czech aid. A separated analysis on Polish and Czech democracy aid reveals even stronger biases of democracy aid towards former post-Soviet countries. Our research has also acknowledged the need for a more precise definition of democratic assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyse the Official Development Assistance (ODA) of the Czech Republic and assess whether the country has progressed towards being one of those well-established donors that are members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) or whether it has chosen a different direction with reference to its transition experience. The first part of the paper analyses the institutional establishment of Czech ODA and compares it with the OECD DAC management systems of development assistance. The second part of the paper analyses the financial contributions of the Czech development assistance programme and evaluates whether the country complies with internationally agreed commitments. The third part of the paper uses the Commitment to Development Index (CDI) to measure the effectiveness of Czech development assistance. More specifically, the paper focuses on only one component of the CDI – foreign aid. The paper briefly explains the methodology of the component and applies it to the Czech Republic. The results are interpreted and compared with other countries, members of the OECD DAC, for whom the index was computed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]