Search

This paper casts light on Syria's relentless war, which has caused the collapse of national electricity grids and led to recurrent power outages. The main findings indicate that the 2012 war and enduring conflicts that put Syrians in front of a “fait accompli” and forced them to adapt to new, uncongenial, and arduous circumstances unexpectedly encourage renewable energy production and surprisingly expand access to electricity. An increase of 1% in conflicts causes renewable energy production to increase by 9.71% and 5.93% in war‐ravaged Syria in the short and long run, respectively. As a matter of fact, off‐grid renewable solutions proved to be effective in reducing the suffering of Syrians, whose lives were ruined by conflicts and the 2012 war. The results also illustrate that foreign aid can play an undeniably crucial role in making renewable‐generated electricity more accessible and affordable for Syrians. As an inevitable consequence of the US and EU sanctions imposed on the regime of Bashar al‐Assad, Syria is unable to access the foreign aid and international funding it needs to restore its destroyed energy sector, rebuild its damaged electricity infrastructure, and embark on its renewable energy plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fragility continues to present major challenges to achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs). International aid, particularly the Official Development Assistance (ODA), is a critical source of finance to deliver humanitarian assistance, development projects, and peace operations in fragile contexts. This study analyses if and how donors are motivated by fragility in their aid allocation across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus. Employing the random-effect Tobit method, the role of fragility as a donors' motive is analysed alongside three conventional categories of motives: self-interest, recipients' needs, and merit. The empirical analysis demonstrates an association between aid allocation across the nexus and fragility, but also a great degree of heterogeneity depending on the donor and the pillar of the nexus. It also detects a significant difference between how the state of fragility correlates with aid allocation and how the degree of fragility does so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Formal education in Nauru can only be fully understood in the light of the external influences, mostly Australian in origin, acting upon it as a small island state in the Central Pacific. Australia's influence began in the early 1900s as a leading stakeholder in Nauru's lucrative phosphate reserves. In the last few decades Nauru's dramatic economic decline has meant it has come into the orbit of Australia's official development assistance (ODA) to the Pacific region. However, Australia has ties to Nauru that go beyond mere economic and development assistance, for example, the country is a crucial site in Australia's own immigration policy and the offshore processing of asylum seekers bound for Australia. Geopolitically, Nauru is also important to Australia as one of a decreasing number of Taiwan‐loyal Pacific nations in the face of China's increasing assertiveness in the region. The nature of the relationship with Nauru has meant that for many decades Australia has provided an almost exclusive conduit of educational ideas, values, beliefs and practices flowing into the country to uniquely shape formal education provision. The purpose of this article is twofold. Firstly, via a synthesis of research literature and debate, it critiques the long‐running, primarily, Australia‐facing relationship Nauru has in terms of the educational assistance it receives, including the Nauru Education Program, a significant Australian development assistance initiative about to commence through to 2030. Secondly, with a basis in the advocacy literature of the Rethinking Pacific Education Initiative, the article highlights the possibility of a much more Pacific regionally facing Nauru over the next few decades as a result of relatively recent regional instrumentalities such as the Pacific Island Forum's 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign policy scholars often assume that leaders pursue a national interest. However, states often spread their foreign policy authority thinly across bureaucracies and programs with overlapping or conflicting interests. This is especially pronounced in foreign aid, which serves a clear foreign policy purpose but is often mired in bureaucracy. Why is foreign aid often so fragmented? Focusing on the United States, I explain foreign aid fragmentation as a byproduct of domestic politics. When moderate legislators are ideologically diffuse, leadership must persuade them to support a foreign aid agenda by offering pet projects. This increases aid's fragmentation. In contrast, when moderates are relatively homogeneous, leaders can gather support through more traditional compromise, decreasing the need for fragmented pet projects. I test this theory using a mixed-methods approach, employing a novel agency-level dataset of US foreign aid appropriations and a case study of a 1992 act delivering aid to the former Soviet Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the practice of using aid to control migration, which we refer to as 'inducement aid'. We examine two potential objections to inducement aid, each of which concerns a message that the practice communicates to two corresponding audiences: would-be migrants and other developed states. We suggest that the first objection has intuitive force but is undermined by a powerful reply. This finding seems to bolster the intuitive appeal that inducement aid might exhibit as a non-compulsory and apparently option-enhancing form of migration control. However, we argue that the second objection, which targets inducement aid in its capacity as a form of development assistance, has greater power. Developing the second objection, we argue that inducement aid threatens the establishment and maintenance of important international norms, thereby risking degrading the options of the world's poorest people and setting back the cause of cosmopolitan morality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis article studies the international determinants of extrajudicial police killings in Latin America. Human rights violations by security forces are a problem that has plagued Latin American countries, despite broad democratization efforts in the region. Addressing the problem requires a better understanding of the processes that underlie it. Although existing literature has explored the determinants of police repression in Latin America through country-specific studies, there has been a lack of cross-national analyses. In this article we use original data on human rights violations by security forces in Latin America between 1998 and 2018 to argue that, beyond domestic factors, foreign aid provided by the United States in the War on Drugs era has influenced police repression both by encouraging heavy-handed policies and by driving a substitution dynamic between violations by different security forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Cold War, large-scale urban development projects were launched in Mongolia with technical assistance from various socialist countries – China, East Germany (the GDR), Poland, Czechoslovakia and, above all, the Soviet Union. Looking at the involvement of these dissimilar countries to Mongolia, this article challenges simplistic narratives about bilateral East-South exchanges, and frames socialist development assistance as multilateral, asymmetric and complementary. It argues that some of the iconic projects of socialist development in Mongolia could hardly be called products of any one donor's aid programme, and instead required the cooperation of various providers, collaborating on multiple, interconnected fronts. Such multilateral assistance was marked by highly hierarchical racialised divisions of labour, and created strong interdependencies between various countries involved in Mongolia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tigray, a small region in northern Ethiopia, has faced serious problems over the last three years. The COVID-19 pandemic-related lockdowns come first, followed by history's longest and most destructive war and siege. The brutal war wiped out millions of people and destroyed Tigray's infrastructure. The Pretoria agreement makes it seem necessary to reconstruct the damaged region. To this effect, proactive strategies are required to integrate environmental and social factors into development projects. Hence, this paper synthesizes the extent of environmental and social integration practices in development initiatives of the pre-war period in Tigray to draw lessons for postwar reconstruction. In this research, the environmental impact assessments of twenty-one multi-sector development projects as well as 2327 project proposals processed for environmental clearance in Tigray were used to analyze legislative promises and performances. According to this study, private and public sector development initiatives had weak commitments compared to projects with external pressure from development aid organizations. This can be attributed to a dearth of regulatory agency expertise, a lackluster legislative foundation, and questionable institutional autonomy. Moreover, the absence of a context-based land use plan, a lack of cluster-based integrated watershed management, and a failure to consider eco-services and cumulative impacts during project appraisal are some of the gaps identified. Therefore, these confronting realities need a proactive solution before any reconstruction efforts are planned in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of International Business Studies is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article, we explore the effects of China's foreign aid on its exports. To do this, we use a sample of 165 countries during the period 2000–2014 and employ a gravity model. We find that the return on Chinese exports for every dollar spent on foreign aid is from $0.156 to $0.4, at the aggregate level. The aid provided in past periods continues to promote China's exports. We also show, while taking into account aid heterogeneity, that China experiences a higher return in terms of exports when providing development aid intended for infrastructure, to the recipients. Additionally, we find that China's international aid helps the country to trade more with similar income-level economies. Hence, it can, to a certain extent, foster South-South trade relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractIn this article, I present a theory of domestic support for foreign aid in the United States, focusing on the role played by American development firms or aid awardees in domestic politics. US Agency for International Development (USAID) delivers foreign aid to recipient countries through contracts with private for-profit development firms and non-profit organizations, most of which originate from America. This article argues that these domestic firms promote domestic support for foreign aid by creating distributional effects and disseminating information through lobbying. This information includes not only the significance of foreign aid but also its distributive benefits to legislators’ districts. Analyzing district-level USAID award data and firm-level lobby data from the 111th to the 115th Congress, I found that the district-level allocation of aid awards is positively associated with the frequency of (co)sponsorship for pro-foreign aid bills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The southern region of Madagascar experiences a series of crises related to agro-climatic, nutritional, security, institutional, and political conditions despite the presence of numerous development aid projects over several decades. To understand this apparent paradox, this scoping review examines 63 peer-reviewed and grey literature studies in both French and English from 1990 to 2023, focusing on project failures in the southern region of Madagascar. The article makes two main contributions. Firstly, in terms of methodology, it presents an original approach to conduct a scoping review in a geographical area characterized by the presence of numerous development players and a low number of scientific articles. Secondly, it represents the very first article to offer a synthesis of the literature analyzing development failures in southern Madagascar. It thus appears that the equilibrium of maldevelopment in southern Madagascar is rooted in the systemic interaction between agri-environmental tensions, the failures of the state and aid, and the inadequate consideration of socio-anthropological dimensions and gender relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political economy explanations of regime resilience often look at domestic support bases and patronage systems. Foreign aid to the state is seen as a direct form of propping up regimes. This article attempts to track the flow of foreign assistance to one part of the domestic support base of a regime, namely the economic elite, thereby making a connection between domestic explanations and foreign support explanations of regime resilience. The core argument of this article is that multilateral financial flows from Western dominated institutions may preserve regimes in the Middle East and North Africa. Multilateral flows from the World Bank Group, the European Investment Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development went to regime insiders and thus potentially strengthened existing economic elites during the time in which the former Islamist opposition party led a coalition government. I draw on the linkage dimension of Levitsky and Way’s model to show the importance of specifying the nature and destination of multilateral financial ties with Morocco’s private sector. This contribution helps us link the international dimension to the domestic political economy. It thus potentially adds to our understanding of monarchical regime resilience post-Arab Spring by highlighting how multilateral financial institutions support an important part of the economic elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Covid-19 has reinforced health and economic cases for investing in pandemic preparedness and response (PPR). The World Bank and World Health Organization (WHO) propose that low- and middle-income governments and donor countries should invest $31.1 billion each year for PPR. We analyse, based on the projected economic growth of countries between 2022 and 2027, how likely it is that low- and middle-income country governments and donors can mobilize the estimated funding. Methods: We modelled trends in economic growth to project domestic health spending by low- and middle-income governments and official development assistance (ODA) by donors for years 2022 to 2027. We modelled two scenarios for countries and donors – a constant and an optimistic scenario. Under the constant scenario we assume that countries and donors continue to dedicate the same proportion of their health spending and ODA as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) and gross national income (GNI), respectively, as they did during baseline (the latest year for which data are available). In the optimistic scenario, we assume a yearly increase of 2.5% in health spending as a share of GDP for countries and ODA as a share of GNI for donors. Findings: Our analysis shows that low-income countries would need to invest on average 37%, lower-middle income countries 9%, and upper-middle income countries 1%, of their total health spending on PPR each year under the constant scenario to meet the World Bank WHO targets. Donors would need to allocate on average 8% of their total ODA across all sectors to PPR each year to meet their target. Conclusions: The World Bank WHO targets for PPR will not be met unless low- and middle-income governments and donors spend a much higher share of their funding on PPR. Even under optimistic growth scenarios, low-income and lower-middle income countries will require increased support from global health donors. The donor target cannot be met using the yearly increase in ODA under any scenario. If the country and donor targets are not met, the highest-impact health security measures need to be prioritized for funding. Alternative sources of PPR financing could include global taxation (e.g., on financial transactions, carbon, or airline flights), cancelling debt, and addressing illicit financial flows. There is also a need for continued work on estimating current PPR costs and funding requirements in order to arrive at more enduring and reliable estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a relatively stable democracy, Ghana has long been a popular country for international donors. However, recent changes in its classification by the World Bank and government proclamations have led to a reduction in foreign aid, forcing Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to confront the financial sustainability of their organizations. In this study, we test the typology proposed by Arhin et al. (2018. “Facing the Bullet? Non-Governmental Organisations’ (NGOs’) Responses to the Changing Aid Landscape in Ghana.” Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 29 (2): 348–60) which finds that CSOs in Ghana are using six different strategies to work toward financial sustainability. Based on an original survey of 42 CSOs, our findings indicate an almost exclusive focus on income generation in the form of social enterprises. The challenges this poses to the sector are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis study takes a unique approach by empirically examining the political economy of US aid to Pakistan in the South Asian regional strategic context, including the geopolitics of China, India, Iran, and Russia. Using the dynamic Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method from 1971 to 2016, we find that US economic assistance responds positively to regional wars in Afghanistan and the Indo-Russian strategic relationship in the long run. The improvement in the relationship between India and Pakistan increases US economic aid in the short run but reduces it in the long run. The Pak-Iran economic relationship reduces US economic assistance in the short run while in the long run, it is positive but insignificant. Washington’s policy for South Asia is now more China-centric in reshaping regional geopolitics. The US-foreign-aid-policy instrument generally plays a dynamic role in achieving manifold strategic objectives in the South Asian region. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics of foreign aid and geopolitical relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation Purpose Approach and methods Findings Policy implications Qatar's humanitarian role in Afghanistan, a less‐explored example of a non‐traditional actor, is crucial in understanding international responses to geopolitical crises. Examining Qatar's involvement provides insights into the complex dynamics of humanitarian assistance, diplomatic efforts, and post‐crisis challenges.The study examines Qatar's multifaceted role in Afghanistan since 2021, highlighting its impact as a non‐traditional actor in complex humanitarian operations and diplomacy.The research combines a desk review of online sources, academic literature, reports, non‐governmental organization documents, and media articles with first‐hand observations and informal stakeholder interviews. It also analyses international aid statistics from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs' Financial Tracking Service and the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development's Development Assistance Committee.Qatar emerged as a key humanitarian player in Afghanistan, adopting a whole‐of‐society approach. Its efforts encompassed emergency relief, evacuations, educational support, and humanitarian diplomacy, effectively bridging the Taliban with international actors after the takeover.This research highlights the impactful role of non‐traditional donors, as seen with Qatar in Afghanistan, emphasizing their potential in complex humanitarian scenarios. The study advocates recognizing and leveraging the unique capabilities of smaller states and non‐traditional actors in humanitarian responses, promoting capacity building to harness their institutional agility and societal resources effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Despite a plethora of studies on the relationship between foreign aid and economic growth of the recipient countries, there is no consensus. We argue that the size of the winning coalition dictates the decision on how the aid capital is used because the top priority of national leaders is staying in power. To this end, we investigate how the size of the winning coalition affects the relationship between foreign aid and economic growth. Methods: To empirically test the effects of the size of the winning coalition on the aid‐economic nexus, we test 82 developing countries from 1960 to 2010. To address the methodological issues including heteroskedasticity, autocorrelation, overdetermination, and endogeneity, we employed a two‐step generalized method of moments estimation technique. Results: Our analysis reveals that the size of the winning coalition affects how the aid capital is used, which in turn significantly affects economic growth. The larger the winning coalition, the better economic growth. Conclusion: The size of the winning coalition significantly affects the economic effects of foreign aid on the recipient country's economic growth. In terms of policy implications, international donors may specify how the aid capital is allocated to improve the recipient country's economic infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can foreign aid reduce violence in recipient countries? Empirical studies on the aid–conflict nexus have had mixed results. This paper argues that foreign aid can alleviate political violence in the recipient country, especially when it contributes to economic growth. To test this hypothesis, I collected data on aid-receiving countries in Asia from 1980 to 2010 and empirically examined the relationships among development aid, winning coalition size, economic growth, civil wars, and domestic terrorism using a moderated mediation model. I find that the impact of foreign aid on economic growth depends on the size of the winning coalition. Countries with larger winning coalitions tend to have faster economic growth. And consequently, these countries are less susceptible to civil wars and domestic terrorist attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various topics related to evaluation in the journal Evaluation. It covers themes such as evaluation in peacebuilding and wartime, the role of theory in evaluation, culturally responsive evaluation, and the validity and acceptability of evaluation findings. The article also includes specific case studies and examples, such as the evaluation of STEM programs in universities and the evaluation of health committees in Uganda. Additionally, it explores different approaches to evaluation, including culturally responsive data analysis and graphical causal modeling. The authors emphasize the importance of incorporating diverse perspectives and local knowledge in evaluation practices. [Extracted from the article]

Agriculture has been the backbone of African economies, and agricultural development has the potential to drive overall economic growth. Considering the importance of agriculture in Africa, foreign aid donors have supported the sector to help push economic growth and reduce poverty. Studies indicate governance quality of a recipient country is an important factor for agricultural aid. Building upon this, the paper explores how bilateral donors provided agricultural aid to two African countries that have different institutional quality, Ghana and Uganda. The analysis of agricultural aid in those two countries was carried out with bilateral aidprofile data from 2011 to 2022. Despite the similar economic importance of agriculture in Ghana and Uganda, donors to Ghana invested the largest amount in agriculture among aid sectors, followed by health. On the other hand, donors to Uganda supported mainly health-relevant sectors with agriculture being ranked only fifth. Donors in both countries implemented agricultural aid mostly as project types. Yet, donors disbursed their aid funds through different aid channels. Donors to Ghana disbursed 48% of agricultural aid funds through the public sector institutions channel (or the state channel). By contrast, donors to Uganda disbursed only 24% of agricultural aid funds through the state channel, essentially bypassing Ugandan public agencies. They instead provided 76% of agricultural aid through the non-state channels such as non-governmental organizations, multilateral organizations, and private entities. Similar donor preferences of the aid disbursement channels were observed with total aid across all aid sectors. Overall, the donor aid profiles suggested donors provided Ghana with more flexible agricultural aid, while in Uganda they controlled agricultural aid more tightly. There could exist multiple underlying reasons for this, but the different level of institutional quality is highly likely one of the possible reasons. For foreign aid, governance quality is an important issue equally to both donors and recipients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation: China does not participate in the development co‐operation reporting mechanism of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development's (OECD) development co‐operation reporting mechanism, nor does it voluntarily publish overseas development finance data. Despite recent quantitative research on China's foreign aid to other sectors, such as health, no precedent exists for quantifying China's international education co‐operation (IEC). Purpose: This article will use AidData's Chinese Official Finance Dataset (AidData 2.0) to estimate the IEC using the OECD's internationally standardized definitions of development finance and frameworks for classifying IEC projects. Approach and methods: We thoroughly examined all types of IEC projects, including official finance projects other than those that meet the definition of official development assistance (ODA). In our comparative analysis of educational aid between China and traditional donors, we focused on ODA‐like projects and examined the number of projects and funding amounts to determine China's IEC priorities. Findings: The result shows that, between 2000 and 2017, China's IEC commitments totalled 1,524 education‐related international projects, representing 12% of the total international finance project portfolio, most of which are in Africa. Compared to the OECD framework, China prioritized higher education (n = 784, 51%) and education facilities and training (n = 244, 16%). An estimate of cumulative funding between 2000 to 2017 showed that China was the 10th largest donor of education aid to African countries, behind France, the World Bank, Germany, the United States, the EU, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, and the Netherlands. Policy implications: The findings of this study help our understanding of China's IEC finance. With China's involvement in education development aid growing in recent years and donors looking for solutions to developing countries' debt crises, this will allow for more effective collaboration, co‐ordination, and resource mobilization for both donor and recipient countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective Methods Results Conclusion This study mainly focuses on the relationship between development aid and growth as well as examines the role of the institutional development levels of countries in this relationship and makes economic inferences.The analysis is conducted for 64 countries receiving official development assistance in the 2000–2020 period. To provide robust estimates in these studies, the Driscoll and Kraay estimator is used after fixed and random effects models.In almost all of the estimated models, a significant relationship between official development assistance per capita and growth is found. Moreover, the models with institutional factors and interaction terms also support the results. According to the robust estimation results, official development assistance per capita positively affects growth.The results for all countries do not mean that good policies and strong institutions are unnecessary. In contrast, they show that the priority is the sum of aid per capita. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article has three objectives. The first is to reconsider the popular taken-for-granted categories of 'Global North'/'Global South' and 'Northern' donors/'Southern' providers and proposes an alternative account for examining Japan's role in West-engineered aid architecture. The second is to examine why Japan has constructed a 'sui generis' foreign aid model by accommodating both the OECD-DAC and SSC (South-South Cooperation) norms. Finally, this article aims to explain how Japan's alternative aid modality was possible by highlighting that the academic debate has failed to capture the significance of the emancipatory movements of the Global South epitomized by the 1955 Bandung Conference for Japan's aid policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is foreign aid an effective soft power tool to bolster the international image of donor states? This article explores this question in the context of China's humanitarian assistance to Europe amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Anti-coronavirus aid generated affinity for Beijing in some receiver countries while backfired in others. Borrowing insights from social psychology, this study presents an explanation for this heterogeneous effect. It argues that beneficiaries' initial views of China predispose Beijing's image to a confirmation bias, leading the perceptions of pandemic aid intent to be aligned with pre-existing assessments. Specifically, receiver states with predominantly favorable views of China tend to appreciate the transfer of resources as an act of goodwill. However, recipient countries which lean towards a negative belief of the PRC are inclined to interpret the assistance as a faulty mask diplomacy to manipulate narratives and to expand geopolitical influence. The theory suggests that foreign aid cannot alter donors' global standing, but rather, it merely reinforces their established images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religion is increasingly acknowledged as a driving force behind development processes; however, it has received little attention as a motivation for donors to give aid. The article analyses the stated motivations and hidden agendas behind the Hungarian government's 'Hungary Helps' aid programme, aimed at supporting Christian communities in the Global South and reducing migration to Europe. The programme fits with the government's rhetoric on religion and migration, however, the article reveals inconsistencies that suggest further motivations. While there is little evidence that there was domestic demand for such a programme, it has been used instrumentally to increase Hungary's influence among Christian interest groups and their political allies in the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bolivia's 'coca yes, cocaine no' policy towards drug crops offers a useful lens to examine Evo Morales government's decolonisation efforts, as unlike other government attempts, it had both local and international aspects. Using ethnographic data from the Chapare, one of Bolivia's two principal coca growing regions, this article traces how the Morales government's development policy between 2006-2019 broke with U.S.-led militarised eradication and crop substitution. Partially assisted by a European Union municipal strengthening program, coca policy was 'nationalised', permitting registered growers to cultivate a limited amount of the leaf. Unlike U.S.- financed 'alternative development', the new approach fostered self-determination, revalued coca's traditional role and front-loaded development assistance. These reflect both decolonisation goals and international development best practices. And yet, despite significant achievements, particularly in reducing violent confrontation with the state, the overarching international prohibitionist paradigm, domestic dynamics, and a steady demand for cocaine put the brakes on just how far domestic innovation in development-oriented drug control strategies can go. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media and information literacy (MIL) projects are crucial for a country's development. They provide citizens with access to vital information and resources. This enables them to learn about their rights and responsibilities, as well as gain access to critical resources to improve their quality of life. For the last decade several international organizations such as UNESCO, Internews, DW-Akademie annually have been providing grants for the training courses, and projects at various levels to increase the MIL level of the population in the Central Asian context. The present study will discuss ensuring the sustainability and efficiency of projects in the field of MIL in this region. The paper investigates the sustainability indicators of foreign aid initiatives in the realm of MIL within Central Asia. It aims to assess the long-term viability of foreign aid programs in fostering MIL across Central Asian nations through a comprehensive analysis of historical trends, policy frameworks, and stakeholder perspectives. As part of the research, face-to-face interviews were conducted with prominent trainers and experts from Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Emphasizing the role of public-private partnerships, technological integration, and cultural considerations, the paper explores avenues for promoting enduring change and enhancing the effectiveness of foreign assistance in this critical field. The findings contribute valuable insights to policymakers, practitioners, and scholars interested in optimizing foreign aid strategies for sustainable development in the ever-evolving landscape of media and information literacy in Central Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the economic impact of armed conflict in Afghanistan. During the armed conflict between 1978 and 2021, the country received $88 billion in official development assistance (ODA) and over $136 billion in war-induced USAID funding. We found that the one-year Afghan armed conflict, with an average of 17,661 battle-related deaths, increases the GDP per capita by at least 1.9%. Comparatively, a one-year US-led war relative to a USSR-led war increases the GDP per capita by at least 5.7%; in contrast, a one-year civil war reduces it by 4.1%. In addition, our cost estimation suggests that between 2002 and 2021, at least $40.9 ± 5% billion (45.9%) of the Afghan state budget is spent on war-related and war-affected institutions. This is equal to 1,062% of Afghanistan's total GDP in 2002 and 280% in 2021. Moreover, this study will be helpful in understanding the implications of the Sustainable Development Goals and achieving specific targets such as Goal 8 (economic growth) and Goal 16 (peace and inclusive societies) in Afghanistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latin America has witnessed a significant influx of foreign aid aimed at fostering development, particularly in rural areas, over recent decades. Despite these considerable investments, persistently high levels of poverty endure, and rural communities have not consistently witnessed improvements in livelihoods. Rural development initiatives frequently achieve their inherent objectives at the output level but less frequently attain the intended outcomes and are seldom successful in establishing the prerequisites for enduring impact over the long term. The existing literature on this topic is extensive but often fragmented, with some scholars examining the context through socio-economic and political lenses, others scrutinizing the intrinsic characteristics of projects, and still others emphasizing levels of empowerment and local participation. This paper synthesizes and critically evaluates key aspects that influence the sustained impact of rural development projects across these three analytical streams. Through an integrative compilation of insights from these disparate perspectives, this work lays the foundation for a comprehensive analysis, shedding light on crucial considerations that may have previously "fallen into the cracks" through an examination of the segmented discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey is one of the highest donors in the world, who also receives substantial amount of aids from various entities and countries. This paper aims to investigate the on going nexus between economic growth (EG) and foreign aid (AID) in Turkey; utilizing yearly data between 1960 and 2022 by employing wavelet analysis tools: namely the power spectrum, wavelet coherence, wavelet cohesion and Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) causality approach, which provides information of both long‐run and short‐run linkages for separate subperiods of time and frequencies. Our results reveal that; (a) the result of the power spectrum indicates that at different frequency and period, there is evidence of significant variation in EG and AID; (b) the outcome of the wavelet coherence confirms that there is comovement at varying frequencies and varying periods between EG and AID, with AID leading; (c) the outcome of the wavelet cohesion shows a positive/negative connection in the short and medium term, but a negative connection in the long term; (d) the result of the CWT causality approach confirmed the 'feedback hypothesis' at the aggregate level, in‐phase and out‐phase condition. As a result, policymakers should be more effective in supporting EG at high frequencies and only under the rule of the economic cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the ongoing debate surrounding the allocation of public funding to regions that have experienced economic decline or stagnation. Some economists argue against providing more funding to these areas, claiming that it would not generate significant economic returns compared to investing in more prosperous regions. This debate has led to narratives suggesting that elites in the capital are unfairly depriving these regions of their fair share of funding, which has contributed to the rise of populist and Eurosceptic parties. The article highlights the importance of transparency in the distribution of public funding and presents six benchmarks for determining a fair allocation, including autonomy, efficiency, continuity, equality of input, equality of output, and anti-disparity. The text also discusses the need to address the economic decline in these regions to prevent further decline and reduce the appeal of populist parties, but suggests that efforts should focus on adjusting public services and infrastructure to accommodate smaller populations rather than trying to reverse population decline. The article emphasizes the necessity of reliable data on public expenditure and calls for a more informed and nuanced debate on the distribution of funding. [Extracted from the article]

Using a panel threshold regression approach, we consider multiple dimensions of socioeconomic inequalities and examine their heterogeneous relationships with sectoral foreign aid. Conditioned on the level of socioeconomic development, three types of inequality and four channels of sectoral foreign aid are considered. We use a comprehensive dataset covering 65 aid‐recipient countries from 1990 to 2017 and find that education aid effectively reduces inequalities but only when the level of institutional quality and other socioeconomic factors is above its 75th percentile value in our sample. These results are robust to alternative measures of income inequality, aid and estimation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation Purpose Approach and methods Findings Policy implications Donors allocate huge sums for assistance intended for poverty reduction to countries that arguably do not need it. For example, the United States spends more in Jordan—with no extreme poverty—than it does in the six countries with the highest poverty rates in the world combined, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia. Prior studies have suggested that if global aid were allocated according to need, it could roughly double its impact on poverty reduction.Country need can be broken down into the magnitude of the development challenge and the domestic resources available. This study examines these two components of development need to determine which countries have the greatest need for foreign assistance.I produce a set of data‐driven observations documenting the magnitude of the challenge and the resources available. I first explore which countries have the highest rates of absolute and multidimensional poverty. I then examine which countries have the ability to redistribute by comparing their poverty gaps with the potential domestic resources available. This produces the marginal tax rate (MTR) required for a country to finance its own poverty eradication.There is a clear trend in the magnitude of the challenge: low‐income countries (LICs) have the highest poverty rates by far; lower middle‐income countries (LMICs) are more mixed; and upper middle‐income countries (UMICs) have comparatively little extreme poverty, except in a small handful of countries. The implied MTRs required to close a country's extreme poverty gap are excessively high for LICs and most LMICs but easily manageable for most UMICs. This strongly suggests that both the magnitude of the challenge is much greater and the resources available much lower in LICs and LMICs.The policy implication is that LICs and LMICs should be strongly favoured in terms of aid allocation. The two different components of country need point in the same direction and both suggest a strong focus on allocating assistance towards the poorest countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThe Russian aggression on Ukraine (2022) has marked a significant critical juncture for Japan’s foreign and security policies, and Japanese government has deployed a multitude of political, economic/financial, and limited military measures to support Ukraine. The article investigates a less-explored aspect of Japan’s foreign policy change in the post-2022 crisis setting, namely the development assistance provided to Ukraine. The manuscript discusses this subject from a long-term perspective, exploring the trends in—and directionality of—Japanese development assistance to Ukraine in the context of Japan’s evolving role in the international community between 2014 and 2023. It utilises a role theoretical approach to explore the frictions between the ambitious proactive contributor to peace national role conception promoted by PM Abe Shinzō (2012–2020) and the issue-specific role conceptions guiding Japan’s foreign policy behaviour towards Russia that shaped Japan’s response to the Ukraine-Russia tensions. The article elucidates how the fluctuations in Japanese ODA flows to Ukraine may contribute to our understanding of role conflict and how it was managed, as well as the rebalancing of and changes in Japanese foreign policy that have been occurring since 2022 under PM Kishida Fumio’s leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a bilateral or multilateral international policy, foreign aid has the potential to contribute to economic growth in recipient countries, but the impact on green growth, especially aid flows to the energy sector, is unclear. Existing studies have paid little attention to the actual effects of whether energy aid is effective in raising green total factor productivity (GTFP) in recipient countries. To fill this gap, this study investigates the dynamic impact of energy aid on GTFP in recipient countries using balanced panel data for 92 countries from 2002 to 2019, and the study also examines potential sectoral heterogeneity and impact mechanisms. The results show that energy aid can effectively contribute to improving GTFP in recipient countries, but this scale effect varies significantly by aid type, revealing sectoral heterogeneity in the impact of energy aid. In addition, energy aid can indirectly enhance GTFP in recipient countries by promoting financial development, optimizing energy mix, and improving energy efficiency. Both government quality and human capital have a positive moderating effect on the energy aid-GTFP relationship. These findings reveal an important mechanism for energy aid to contribute to green economic growth and provide theoretical support and a practical basis for the formulation of more targeted aid policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article contains reviews of several books, including "Dead Aid" by Dambisa Moyo, which addresses the problems of development aid in Africa, "Africa and the Making of the Modern World" by Howard W. French, which tells a comprehensive history of Africa, "No Time Like This" by Nadine Gordimer, which illuminates the story of a South African couple after the end of apartheid, and "Vocational Education in Sub-Saharan Africa" by Björn Haßler, Inka Stock, and Jens Schaffer, which deals with vocational education in Sub-Saharan Africa. Other articles discuss topics such as the integration of refugees into education systems and gender transformation in technical education. The article also analyzes the impact of education campaigns on social prestige and the decisions of young people in northern Benin. Parents are increasingly taking on additional costs related to the education system. [Extracted from the article]

Many aid donors from the developed world have engaged in democracy promotion, especially following the end of the Cold War. One strand of this effort—democracy aid—involves assistance to governments, political parties, and other nongovernmental groups and organizations. Like more general foreign assistance, democracy aid is substantially driven by donor interests. While ideational and humanitarian factors matter, donors seek political and economic benefits from their democracy aid, just as they do for their foreign aid. Does democracy aid deliver and provide those benefits? Building on studies of foreign and democracy aid that find significant roles for donor interests in allocation decisions, this article examines US democracy aid allocations to assess the impact of democracy assistance on donor political and economic interests in recipient countries. We argue that, because of its nature, democracy aid helps to cultivate political friends for and provide economic benefits to the US. We test our argument against US democracy assistance to the developing world from 1975 to 2013, controlling for other factors relevant to political, economic, and security relationships and find evidence to support our argument. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for democracy promotion policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The June 2024 issue of Politics & Policy covers a wide range of topics including narrative policy, ethnic voting, government transparency, public opinion, development, foreign aid, income inequality reduction, tariff liberalization, international organizations, and globalization. The articles explore various aspects of these topics, such as the effectiveness of narratives in generating support for policies, the impact of government spending and financial development on income inequality reduction, the power of international organizations in framing global health challenges, and case studies from sub-Saharan Africa and Asian countries. The issue provides valuable material for researchers and scholars in these fields. [Extracted from the article]

Pakistan's economy since its creation has remained heavily dependent on foreign aid, especially to manage the ever‐widening gap between the available financial resources, development expenditure, fiscal deficit, and current account deficit. This article critically evaluates the effectiveness of foreign aid in Pakistan from 2000 to 2022 via an in‐depth literature review and the rational actor model (RAM). Furthermore, a mixed‐method approach based on descriptive quantitative and in‐depth qualitative research methods was adopted for this study. The article demonstrates that RAM can assist policy makers, enabling them to make decisions vis‐à‐vis foreign aid while safeguarding national interests, particularly economic interests. However, this study finds that for Pakistan to achieve sustainable economic growth, increasing exports and attracting more foreign direct investment hold greater potential than continued reliance on foreign aid. In conclusion, the article prescribes policy measures to restructure Pakistan's political system to foster socioeconomic development through trade liberalization and good governance. Related Articles: Asongu, Simplice A., and Joseph Nnanna. 2019. "Foreign Aid, Instability, and Governance in Africa." Politics & Policy 47(4): 807–48. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12320. Dobransky, Steve. 2014. "Violators amongst Us: International Regimes and the Role of Compliance, a Case Study on Official Development Assistance." Politics & Policy 42(4): 593–634. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12082. Scarlato, Margherita, and Giorgio d'Agostino. 2019. "The Political Dimension of Cash Transfers in Latin America and Sub‐Saharan Africa: A Comparative Perspective." Politics & Policy 47(6): 1125–55. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12332. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work explores China's African public relations and image‐building effort, focusing on Nigeria. Thus, the paper's purpose is twofold: first, to investigate whether China's conduct of public diplomacy through its soft power resource—development assistance—has effectively shaped positive Nigerian public perception of China, and second, to determine the media's role in advancing China's public diplomacy in Nigeria. Specifically, it explores the interaction of economic development assistance, media, and public relations. I do this by comparing China's foreign direct investment (FDI) in Nigeria (2010–2019) with the public's perception of the FDI's influence on the Nigerian economy (2016 and 2020) and the media's role in shaping public support toward the investments. Utilizing a range of datasets, I find that Chinese economic investment alone is insufficient to substantially shape positive Nigerian public perception of China. Within a framework of mediated public diplomacy, I demonstrate that the Chinese image‐building effort in Nigeria would likely enhance when the country links economic investments with public relations to make the investments more visible through effective media representation. Related Articles: Ayhan, Kadir Jun, and Nancy Snow. 2021. "Introduction to the Special Issue—Global Korea Scholarship: Empirical Evaluation of a Non‐Western Scholarship Program from a Public Diplomacy Perspective." Politics & Policy 49(6): 1282–91. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12440. Hodzi, Obert, and John H. S. Åberg. 2020. "Introduction to the Special Issue: Strategic Deployment of the China Model in Africa." Politics & Policy 48(5): 804–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12378. Huijgh, Ellen. 2017. "Indonesia's 'Intermestic' Public Diplomacy: Features and Future." Politics & Policy 45(5): 762–92. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12221. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a cyclical nature to the dilemmas confronting international donors willing to operate in Myanmar. Brief periods of relative openness led to rapid surges in development assistance, regularly interrupted by long phases of military rule and disengagement by donors. Amidst all this, many predicaments remain. This article engages with one of them: the inequality between regions. How have international donors reacted to the issue of domestic regional inequality? Recent studies suggest that official development assistance (ODA) does not target poor regions very well, but it is not always clear why this is the case. Myanmar's sudden, yet uneven and unequal liberalization from 2011 to 2021 catalyzed huge inflows of ODA, while it also confronted donors with new policy dilemmas. The article shows that aid providers struggle with the problem of rising regional inequality, especially for political reasons. Donor and recipient interests often do not align well on this issue. In the case of Myanmar, donors who press for regional inequality to sit prominently on the agenda might fare less successfully than those who address the issue indirectly. The article concludes that regional inequality and the politics of targeting deserve a more central role in the political economy of ODA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the shadow economy seems to have both positive and negative effects on a country's macroeconomy, almost all governments have attempted to control the shadow economy to prevent the loss of tax revenues and the attendant impact on the government budget. Even though official development assistance (ODA) has no formal link with the shadow economy, we often observe a relationship between the two in recipient countries. We argue that ODA can increase the size of the shadow economy in recipient countries through both government and individual-level flows of ODA to the shadow economy. We analyzed data on the shadow economies of 107 ODA recipients from 1990 to 2018 using both fixed effect and Driscoll–Kraay estimators. The results show that recipients receiving a higher volume of ODA are more likely to have a larger shadow economy. Moreover, the relationship between ODA and the shadow economy is stronger in more corrupt recipients. We dealt with endogeneity issues using the generalized method of moments, which supported our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do governments pursue flashy international development projects despite more basic material needs? I argue that economically questionable "prestige projects" can be politically useful for legitimacy-seeking governments of small states in the Global South. Prestige projects provide these governments with otherwise unavailable symbolic capital as well as a means for seeking international status. Using new data on China's global development finance since 1949, I document nearly 400 prestige projects and show they are concentrated in developing countries with small economies that increase their support for China's diplomatic interests. An illustrative case study of Costa Rica's national stadium shows how host countries use prestige projects to acquire national symbolic capital and pursue status. Evidence from a survey experiment in Papua New Guinea further demonstrates that prestige projects are uniquely associated with the national government and status-seeking motives. The findings contribute to research on the political economy of foreign aid, international development, status-seeking, and Chinese development finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research shows that economic coercion successfully influences targeted states' behavior 38 percent of the time. This article integrates research on economic sanctions and foreign aid by assessing the relative effectiveness of two types of economic coercion: economic sanctions and foreign aid suspensions. It argues that suspending aid is more effective than adopting economic sanctions because (1) aid suspensions are economically beneficial for the adopting state, while sanctions are costly, (2) aid suspensions directly affect the targeted government's budget, (3) market forces undermine sanctions but not aid suspensions, and (4) aid suspensions are less likely to spark adverse behavioral reactions. A quantitative analysis estimates the success rate of imposed aid suspensions to be 44 percent and that of economic sanctions to be 26 percent. The results are robust across two alternative datasets on economic coercion, and qualitative evidence corroborates the outlined mechanisms. The findings suggest that economic sanctions are less effective than previously thought and that large donor states have a higher chance of achieving political goals through economic coercion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign aid is a controversial tool for helping developing countries achieve economic growth and welfare. Nevertheless, the early 2000s saw a rise in development assistance dedicated to the health sector. The concept of sustainable development highlights the importance of a healthy population to achieve overall development. Using a dataset containing Official Development Assistance channelled towards 100 countries between 2002 and 2020, this paper studies the effect of health aid on health outcomes. To test aid effectiveness, regression models are estimated using infant mortality and life expectancy as proxies for health outcomes. The analyses show that health aid has a positive effect on population health. Moreover, this study tests whether domestic government health expenditure can give further insights into the complex relationship between aid and health improvements. Results yield no significant effect of health aid on public health expenditure; hence no mediation effect can be found. Findings are robust to varying controls and an instrumental variable approach, where two-year lagged health aid is used as instrument. Results also suggest that socioeconomic factors like urbanisation have a positive effect on health outcomes, which implies that population health depends on many factors besides monetary resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As donors channel more of their development assistance through private companies, a discussion is growing on what this shift means for international development. This paper focuses on four Central European donors, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, who have recently implemented new incentives to promote the greater engagement of the private sector in their international development programmes. The paper uses new survey data of project managers at organisations implementing aid projects funded by these four donors to explore how private actors differ in their approaches to aid implementation. The analysis reveals that the type of implementing organisation does not affect their focus on internal project goals (budget, schedule, and scope), but project managers at private firms consider long-term impact and economic sustainability of the project less important. These findings support claims that for-profit organisations exercise a short-term approach to satisfy funders, but lack a deeper focus on long-term development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Gaza Strip is dependent on external aid to deliver basic services, including water and sanitation. Such services are not sustainable due to the Israeli occupation and the limited financial and technical capacities of service providers and the state. This paper examines the incentives of stakeholders in delivering sanitation services in the Gaza Strip through a qualitative institutional economics analysis of literature supplemented with qualitative key informant interviews. External aid is crucial to deliver basic services in the Gaza Strip. However, this has created a dependency that undermines the sustainability of sanitation services. Donor agencies often prioritise capital expenditure on visible infrastructure, such as wastewater treatment, without addressing its long and short-term operational needs; hence the Gaza Strip's needs are continually addressed as an emergency response. The Palestinian Authority and Hamas de facto governments lack sovereignty over the Gaza Strip and Palestine. Therefore, they also lack the capacity and incentives to create an enabling environment for delivering safely managed sanitation. This paper contributes to development policy literature, the politics of infrastructure and wider politics of settler colonialism and siege basic services such as water and sanitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the short-run and long-run impacts of foreign aid and remittances on economic growth in a panel of 31 African countries from 1980 to 2019 utilizing the ARDL Pool Mean Group (PMG) estimation technique. The PMG is utilized based on the outcome of the Hausman test which justifies it appropriateness. There is long-run association among the regressors and the regressand in the model. Our results indicate that, in the short-run, remittance and foreign aid respectively have a negative impact on economic growth but that impact is statistically insignificant. In the long-run, however, remittances have a positive and significant impact on economic growth while foreign aid has a positive but insignificant effect on economic growth on the continent. These results have substantial policy implications. African governments should adopt effective policies to maximize the usefulness and effectiveness of foreign capital, such as foreign aid and remittances, in boosting economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing literature on the intersection between tourism and politics has recognized that tourism planning and development can be a political process in which decisions are made in order to implement specific political policies and goals. However, there has been very little acknowledgment that political actions themselves can shape tourism. The current research seeks to address this gap. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as our context, we explore the potential implications of foreign aid on country image and tourists' travel intentions, we show that participants hold a more positive country image and thus are more likely to visit a country that provides aid to their own country compared to a country that is the recipient of aid provided by their own country. We also show that participants' patriotism in their own country can actually strengthen the country image and travel intentions they hold of the country that sends aid to them. The findings are among the first to show how political actions influence tourism and provide insights to managers and policy-makers in understanding how foreign aid may also influence tourism by improving their country's image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]