Disease control and donor priorities: the political economy of development aid for health

Disease remains the primary threat to human life and prosperity in developing countries. Over the last two decades, development aid for health has increased substantially, yet the affects of disease remain severe in many countries. Unlike other types of development aid, health aid is often viewed as technical and apolitical. I argue that, development aid for health is subject to political influences and distributional incentives similar to other forms of foreign aid. Although allocations undoubtedly reflect some aspects of recipient need, I contend that the benefits received by donors' constituencies as a result of health aid will condition these allocations. I examine the distribution of aid across diseases using disease burden as an objective measure of need. Using variation across disease characteristics --- including geographic spread, cost of prevention and treatment, and both donor and recipient burden of disease --- I illuminate the effects of donors' interests upon disease specific health aid allocations. I then extend the analysis to the distribution of health aid across disease control activities. Donors' interests play a significant role in the distribution of aid across diseases, yet have little effect on the selection of disease control activities

Democracy Promotion and Electoral Quality: A Disaggregated Analysis

The international community spends significant sums of money on democracy promotion and support, focusing especially on producing competitive and transparent electoral environments in the developing world. In theory, this aid empowers a variety of actors, increasing competition and government responsiveness. Most efforts to determine the effect of democracy aid, however, have focused on how aggregate measures of democracy, and broad concepts, such as electoral competition or media freedom, respond to aid efforts. We argue that to fully understand the effect of aid on democratization one must consider how democracy aid affects specific country institutions. Building on theory from the democratization and democracy promotion literature, we specify more precise causal linkages between democracy assistance and electoral quality. Specifically, we hypothesize about the effects of democracy aid on the implementation and quality of elections. We test these hypotheses using V-Dem's detailed elections measures, using Finkel, Perez-Linan & Seligson's (2007) data and modeling strategy, to examine the impact of democracy aid. Intriguingly, we find that there is no consistent relationship between democracy and governance aid and the improvement of specific micro-level indicators of democratic institutions or election quality, but that aggregate measures still capture a relationship between aid and democracy. We then investigate the possibility that empirical relationships between aid and democracy may not re aid-induced democratization, but may instead reflect investments countries make in regimes they observe democratizing.This research was supported, in part, by: National Science Foundation, Grant SES‐1423944; Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Grant M13‐0559:1

Sponsoring Democracy: The United States and Democracy Aid to the Developing World, 1988–2001

As democratization has advanced in the developing world, developed countries such as the United States have implemented explicit strategies of democracy promotion by providing assistance to governments, political parties, and other non-governmental groups and organizations through a variety of channels. This analysis examines the relationship between democracy support by the US Agency for International Development and democratization in the developing world between 1988 and 2001. In a model that examines the simultaneous processes linking democratization and democracy aid, we argue that carefully targeted democracy assistance has greater impact on democratization than more generic economic aid packages. We test the relationship in a simultaneous equation model, supplemented by several time-series cross-sectional regressions. Our data reveal a positive relationship between specific democracy aid packages and progress toward democracy. We conclude by weighing the implications of these findings for democratization and democracy promotion policies