Foreign aid withdrawals and suspensions: Why, when and are they effective?

In this introduction to the special issue, “Foreign Aid Withdrawals and Suspensions: Why, When and Are They Effective,” we both summarize the current state of the literature and outline a robust new agenda for studying aid suspensions and withdrawals. A common contribution of the papers in this special issue is that they emphasize that donors and aid-recipient states have more options available to them than previous literature has allowed and that it is the creative ways in which aid-recipient governments seek to discipline their donors that make the effective use of conditionality so challenging. In this introduction, we not only summarize what we know about aid suspensions and withdrawals but also begin to unpack the complex decision-making that underlies aid suspensions, providing a simplified decision tree that can guide future research. Overall, we emphasize that, far from being a niche issue, aid suspensions and withdrawals are a fundamental part of the political economy of foreign aid and that much more work is needed to understand how recipient governments make decisions about how to respond or not to respond to (threats of) aid suspensions and withdrawals and how donors factor such political calculations into their initial or subsequent decision-making. The article highlights both the challenges and the opportunities of unpacking the complex decision-making behind aid suspensions and withdrawals.