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The pursuit of material rewards, most notably foreign aid, is often cited as a motivation for the ratification of human rights treaties by developing countries. However, this argument has been rarely tested empirically and its theoretical foundations remain unclear. In this paper, we introduce an alternative explanation in which states ratify human rights treaties as part of an effort to defend existing aid relationships from international criticism related to their human rights practices. Intriguingly, this argument suggests that, among aid dependent states, those with the worst human rights records should be the most likely to ratify. We find support for our argument using data drawn from all aid-receiving countries between 1970 and 2004. No evidence is found to support the rewards-for-ratification thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democracy promotion has often been presented by policymakers as an important goal for US foreign aid, especially after the end of the Cold War. However, existing studies have produced conflicting results concerning the effects of democracy on the amount of aid that states receive. This paper adds to this discussion by critiquing conventional assumptions about how aid is used to encourage political reform and suggesting that democracy is likely to have a greater bearing on aid cessation, an aid policy decision that has yet to be thoroughly explored. This argument is tested using a hazard model with time-varying covariates and data on all recipients of US military and economic aid for the years 1946-2000. It is found that sharp decreases in the level of recipient democracy dramatically increase the probability of aid cessation, even when controlling for measures of US strategic and economic interests. These results suggest that democracy does have an impact on aid policy and that the aid cessation decision needs to be investigated further. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although a considerable body of research has begun to explore how the behavior of international migrants is influenced by governments in their countries of origin, few comparative studies of sending-state migration policy currently exist. This paper uses time series cross-sectional data to examine the impact of sending-state policies on the patterns of economic and political transnationalism exhibited by Latin American migrants living in the United States. It provides a test of several theories about how transnationalism evolves over time and investigates how political concerns within the sending state can shape these changes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]