TY - JOUR
T1 - A matter of trust
T2 - Public support for country ownership over aid
AU - Hirose, Kentaro
AU - Montinola, Gabriella R.
AU - Winters, Matthew S.
AU - Kohno, Masaru
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - International donors emphasize greater recipient-country ownership in the delivery of foreign assistance because it ostensibly promotes the efficient use of resources and strengthens recipient-country administrative capacity. The preferences of citizens in developing countries, however, are not well understood on this matter. Do they prefer that their own governments control foreign aid resources, or are there conditions under which they instead prefer that donors maintain control over how aid is implemented? We explore these questions through parallel survey experiments in Myanmar, Nepal, and Indonesia. Our experimental vignettes include two informational treatments: one about who implements aid (i.e., the donor or the recipient government) and the other about the trustworthiness of the foreign donor. The trust-in-donor treatment, on average, increases levels of support for aid in all three countries. In contrast, we observe heterogenous average treatment effects regarding aid control: control of aid by the donor rather than the government reduces levels of support in Indonesia and Myanmar, whereas it increases support levels in Nepal. We show how the cross-country variation in ATEs originates in consistent individual-level variation in reactions to aid control that is more shaped by respondents’ trust in their own government than their trust in the donor.
AB - International donors emphasize greater recipient-country ownership in the delivery of foreign assistance because it ostensibly promotes the efficient use of resources and strengthens recipient-country administrative capacity. The preferences of citizens in developing countries, however, are not well understood on this matter. Do they prefer that their own governments control foreign aid resources, or are there conditions under which they instead prefer that donors maintain control over how aid is implemented? We explore these questions through parallel survey experiments in Myanmar, Nepal, and Indonesia. Our experimental vignettes include two informational treatments: one about who implements aid (i.e., the donor or the recipient government) and the other about the trustworthiness of the foreign donor. The trust-in-donor treatment, on average, increases levels of support for aid in all three countries. In contrast, we observe heterogenous average treatment effects regarding aid control: control of aid by the donor rather than the government reduces levels of support in Indonesia and Myanmar, whereas it increases support levels in Nepal. We show how the cross-country variation in ATEs originates in consistent individual-level variation in reactions to aid control that is more shaped by respondents’ trust in their own government than their trust in the donor.
KW - Asia
KW - Foreign aid
KW - International development
KW - Public opinion
KW - Survey experiment
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U2 - 10.1007/s11558-024-09534-7
DO - 10.1007/s11558-024-09534-7
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85186540861
SN - 1559-7431
JO - Review of International Organizations
JF - Review of International Organizations
ER -