McKinlay and Little’s influential series of studies spawned a large family of publications which continues to grow (Hoeffler and Outram 2011, 237; Neumayer 2003, 18)25. Since the 1970s,
scholars building on McKinlay and Little’s work have made increasingly sophisticated attempts to disentangle the relative importance of selfish and selfless motives in aid policy by employing quantitative methods (Berthélemy 2006, 179). Studies that are direct descendants have two distinguishing features: they employ variations of the donor interest (DI) versus recipient need (RN) model first introduced by McKinlay and Little; and they utilise DAC datasets26. Scholars have
worked to advance this literature by refining the standard DI-RN model (for example by populating it using different variables) 27, interrogating newly available data, or doing both (see,
for example, Tierney et al. 2011). The models utilised by most studies control for the “political, economic, military-strategic and cultural interests of donors”, while per capita income is the
25 The almost exclusive use of DAC datasets in the determinants of aid literature has meant that the determinant of
aid literature is overwhelmingly focused on traditional donors, especially the largest of these (i.e. the United States, Japan, Germany, France and the UK).
26 Key studies in the determinants of aid literature that examine bilateral aid allocation include (Maizels and
Nissanke 1984; Schraeder, Hook, and Taylor 1998; Alesina and Dollar 2000; Gates and Hoeffler 2004; Berthélemy and Tichit 2004; Berthélemy 2006; Hoeffler and Outram 2011; Heinrich 2013). McGillivray and White (1993) survey the earlier literature, while Neumayer (2003) provides a more recent overview.
27 Neumayer (2003, 21–29), provides an excellent summary of existing studies in this family in an exceedingly
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most regularly employed proxy for recipient need (Neumayer 2003, 19). Models which include variables which account for the social needs of recipient states, such as levels of health and education, or the broader economic needs of the recipient, such as the state of government finances, are also common (Neumayer 2003, 19).
The aggregate conclusion of the determinants of aid literature is that donor behaviour is better explained by self-interested motives than selfless ones (Gates and Hoeffler 2004; Hoeffler and Outram 2011, 237; Alesina and Dollar 2000, 35; Lightfoot, Davis, and Johns 2015, 12). In their seminal study, Alesina and Dollar (2000, 35) point out that the “idealistic view [of aid motivations] sharply contrasts with a voluminous literature that has argued that strategic foreign policy concerns explain the pattern of foreign aid”. These results imply that the selfless rhetoric political leaders use to explain (or justify) aid policy decisions does not match their ultimately selfish motivations (Schraeder, Hook, and Taylor 1998, 319; Thiele, Nunnenkamp, and Dreher 2007, 596). As Schraeder, Hook and Taylor (1998, 319) conclude: “the results clearly reject the rhetorical statements of policymakers within the industrialized North who public assert that foreign aid is an altruistic tool of foreign policy.”
There is one striking departure from the general finding of the determinants of aid literature that states provide aid for self-interested reasons: “the aid allocation patterns of the Nordic countries are not the same as those of other bilateral aid agencies” (Gates and Hoeffler 2004, 2). The behaviour of these Nordic states—Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, with the Netherlands and sometimes Canada included—has consistently been found to be driven at least in part by selfless motives28. Alesina and Dollar (2000, 33) and Berthelemy (2006) have emphasised that
these donors respond more readily to the ‘correct’ incentives. This finding aligns with the general reputation the Nordic donors enjoy as superior performers when it comes to good development practice. All have a long history of providing aid for development, have usually been ranked amongst the most generous donors (measured as proportion of GNP), and are perceived to be at the vanguard of development practice and innovation.
Qualitative studies designed to probe the insights of the determinants of aid literature are not as beholden to the selfish-selfless dichotomy as their quantitative counterparts. Instead, these studies invariable find that donor behaviour is more complicated than the quantitatively-driven selfish-selfless model implied. Nonetheless, this family of studies reinforces the notion that donor states provide aid primarily for self-interest reasons. Scholars tracing the foreign aid
28 See, for example, Alesina and Dollar (2000, 33), Berthélemy (2006), Degnbol-Martinussen and Engberg-Pedersen
Literature Review
Page33 policies of individual countries over time, including the US (Atwood, McPherson, and Natsios 2008; Lancaster 2007a), the UK (Williams 2005), Japan (Rix 1993) and Australia (Davis 2006; Firth 2005, 270–294; Rosser 2008; Davis 2011), for example, have shown them to be substantially driven by self-interest.
One key way that scholars working in the qualitative tradition have sought to escape the strictures of the prevailing selfish-selfless dichotomy is by suggesting typologies which allow for a more nuanced appreciate of donor motivations. For example, Carol Lancaster (2007a, 13), in her seminal comparative study investigating why countries give foreign aid, found that governments give aid for four main purposes: diplomatic (“goals involving a government’s international security and political interest abroad”); developmental; humanitarian relief (“the least controversial of aid’s purposes”); and commercial29. While such typologies point to the
underlying complexity of state behaviour, and are certainly useful heuristics for understanding state motivations, they ultimately remain wedded to the Manichean categories they are trying to escape, as each of the typologies is readily reducible to a self-interested or selfless motivation. For example, aid provided for ‘commercial’ purposes can be interpreted as a subcategory of ‘selfishness’. These taxonomies therefore represent augmentations to the dominant conceptual apparatus for understanding why states give aid, and do not provide a fundamentally different lens through which to generate new insight.
The same can be said for another approach which is regularly used to try and escape the analytical strictures of the selfish-selfless dichotomy. Essentially, this approach conceives of a state’s foreign aid policy as comprising a mix of motivations (Lancaster 2007a, 6) which, when aggregated together, reveals a ‘summary motivation’ that can be located along a spectrum ranging from entirely selfish to entirely selfless30. This result is that a proliferation of studies that
could be termed ‘donor profiles’ have emerged, outlining whether selfish or selfless motives predominate in state’s bilateral aid policy31. This approach can be helpful in providing a more
detailed snapshot of donor behaviour at a point in time and for revealing how motivations shift
29 In contrast, van der Veen (2011, 10), identifies seven broad frames relevant to aid policy; security,
power/influence, wealth/economic self-interest, enlightened self-interest, reputation/self-affirmation,
obligation/duty and humanitarianism. Riddell (Riddell 2007, 91), meanwhile, talks of “six main clusters of motives” which have, “historically influenced donor decisions to allocate aid”.
30 As Maizels and Nissanke (1984, 880) argue, “[b]oth of [the] broad motivations for giving aid - to assist
development and to promote the interests of the donor - are no doubt present in most aid allocation decisions, and it is to be expected that the balance between the two will vary among the different donor countries as well as over time” (Maizels and Nissanke 1984, 880).
31 For the USA, national security and commercial interests predominate. For France, veneration of former colonies is
important (Degnbol-Martinussen and Engberg-Pedersen 2003, 9; Lancaster 2007b, 29). Commercial and diplomatic imperatives drive Japan’s aid policy (Rix 1993). On the other hand, moral and humanitarian obligations concern the Nordic countries (Degnbol-Martinussen and Engberg-Pedersen 2003, 9; Gates and Hoeffler 2004; Ingebritsen 2002; Berthélemy 2006).
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over time. Yet we are still left with little insight as to precisely what triggers these changes. Once again, the ‘donor profiles’ approach augments the dominant conceptual apparatus for understanding why states give aid, rather providing a new lens through which to view the question at hand.