nach oben

Studies in Comparative International Development

Erschienen in:

19.05.2020

How Do Different Forms of Foreign Aid Affect Government Legitimacy? Evidence from an Informational Experiment in Uganda

verfasst von: Kate Baldwin, Matthew S. Winters

Erschienen in: Studies in Comparative International Development | Ausgabe 2/2020

Einloggen

Aktivieren Sie unsere intelligente Suche, um passende Fachinhalte oder Patente zu finden.

search-config

KI-gestützte Suche

Aus

Abstract

Local public goods and social services are delivered through a variety of funding and implementing channels in aid-dependent countries. Existing research proposes that international aid to governments undermines government legitimacy and the fiscal contract between citizens and their rulers. We outline how the implications of fiscal contract theory differ depending on whether aid takes the form of donors funding projects through the government, donors funding projects through NGOs, or the government outsourcing project implementation to NGOs. We test these predictions using an informational experiment among N = 2446 Ugandan adults in 18 communities with foreign-funded, NGO-implemented projects. We randomize the amount of information that we provide about these projects. Our results suggest that donor-to-government funding has limited effects on citizens’ opinions about their government. Only bypass aid (i.e., donor aid to NGOs) undermines citizens’ assessments of government performance, while only NGO implementation reduces the willingness of citizens to pay fees to the government or to donate to community funds. Government legitimacy, as measured by individuals’ willingness to comply with government instructions, is very low to begin with and is not influenced by information about different forms of aid.

Vorheriger Artikel Rethinking Foreign Aid and Legitimacy: Views from Aid Recipients in Kenya

Nächster Artikel The Impact of Aid Dynamics on State Effectiveness and Legitimacy

Sie haben noch keine Lizenz? Dann Informieren Sie sich jetzt über unsere Produkte:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

Nur mit Berechtigung zugänglich

We asked respondents to name projects carried out in their area in the past 5 years that had improved the situation of the people. Among the subset of respondents who named specific development projects, 53% named the project we had selected for our information experiment as the most impactful project that had happened. We collected this information only during the second round of the survey (i.e., in 10 communities).

Suchman (1995) refers to legitimacy that originates in organizational accomplishments as “consequential legitimacy” and to legitimacy that originates in organizational characteristics that confer a favorable taxonomic status as “structural legitimacy.”

Similarly, Bodea and LeBas (2016) show how tax morale decreases in urban Nigeria in places where community club goods provision substitutes for state public goods provision.

According to the 2012 Afrobarometer survey, 36% of respondents had contacted a local government councilor in the past year, whereas only 19% had contacted their MP. Unfortunately, the Afrobarometer wording does not allow us to distinguish between contact with sub-county councilors and district councilors. In our own survey, 18% of respondents report having contacted their sub-county chairperson in the past year, and 8% of respondents report having contacted their MP.

Upon arriving in selected communities, we used convenience sampling to mobilize focus group participants.

We collected data in two rounds. Our initial round was pre-registered with Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) as ID #20160113AB (http://egap.org/registration/1673), and our second round was pre-registered as ID #20170505AB (http://egap.org/registration/2507). In the first pre-analysis plan, we described a set of government legitimacy outcomes that correspond to those we analyze below; we did not, however, make a directional prediction about the effects of the treatments on government legitimacy.

The parish is the administrative level below the sub-county.

As described below, we collected information on politicians’ assessments of the projects through a separate survey of sub-county chairpersons.

We initially identified the GGP projects for the 2016 wave of data collection using information from the Ugandan Aid Management Platform (http://www.finance.go.ug/amp/portal, accessed 12 July 2016) before obtaining a comprehensive list of projects from the Embassy of Japan website (http://www.ug.emb-japan.go.jp/02en/e04develop/ggp/ggp_projects.html, accessed 12 July 2016). We appreciate the guidance that we received from AidData about using the Uganda Aid Management Platform. For the 2017 sample, we consulted directly with Embassy of Japan staff about the most recent GGP projects.

“As of … 2011, GGP projects have been implemented in 138 countries and territories around the world” (Embassy of Japan, Uganda 2015, 1). Since 1992, there have been over 200 projects in Uganda; currently, the embassy awards around 15 projects per year (Embassy of Japan, author’s interview, January 2016).

In Uganda, there are some cases where Japan has given GGP funds directly to local governments; we did not include any such cases in our study.

In the first round of the survey, we also excluded projects in communities where incumbent politicians were not seeking reelection.

We randomized treatment assignment within strata defined by the sub-county and the respondent’s gender.

We first screened respondents for whether or not they already paid such fees and then asked them to either imagine an increase in such fees (if they were already paying them) or else to imagine both that they were paying such fees and that the fees were increased. We pool together the responses from respondents currently paying such fees and respondents not currently paying.

This represents somewhere between one-sixth and one-half of average daily earnings in the areas we surveyed.

All money collected in the donation game was given to the NGO in charge of the GGP projects that formed the basis of our survey. We reported these donations to the Embassy of Japan.

This prompt was carefully worded so that it was consistent with the Ugandan government’s policies and laws, and did not involve deception or undue pressure to donate. Dolan also uses this framework in her contribution to this special issue.

We declined to collect additional donations beyond the money that we provided to the respondents.

Alternatively, respondents may not have assumed the money would be given directly to the NGO without passing through the government first in this treatment arm.

This interpretation is related to the explanation put forward by Cilliers et al. (2015) for the fact that citizens donate more funds in behavioral games in the presence of a foreigner.

Dolan (this issue) finds similar negative results of government endorsement on donations in Kenya.

Banks N, Hulme D. The role of NGOs and civil society in development and poverty reduction. Brooks World Poverty Institute Working Paper. 2012. p. 171. http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=2072157. Accessed 17 Feb 2019.

Batley R. Engaged or divorced? Cross-service findings on government relations with non-state service-providers. Public Adm Dev. 2006;26(3):241–51.CrossRef

Blair, Robert A. Legitimacy after violence: evidence from two lab-in-the-field experiments in Liberia. Brown University; 2017. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2326671. Accessed 5 May 2017.

Bodea C, LeBas A. The origins of voluntary compliance: attitudes toward taxation in urban Nigeria. Br J Polit Sci. 2016;46(1):215–38.CrossRef

Brass JN. Blurring boundaries: the integration of NGOs into governance in Kenya. Governance. 2012;25(2):209–35.CrossRef

Bräutigam, Deborah A. Aid dependence and governance. Washington, D.C.: American University; 2000. http://www1.american.edu/faculty/brautigam/Aid%20Dependence%20and%20Governance.pdf. Accessed 24 Sept 2009.

Bräutigam, Deborah A. Introduction: taxation and state-building in developing countries. In: Bräutigam DA, Fjeldstad O-H, Moore M, editors. Taxation and state-building in developing countries: capacity and consent. New York: Cambridge University Press; 2008.

Bräutigam DA, Knack S. Foreign aid, institutions, and governance in Sub-Saharan Africa. Econ Dev Cult Chang. 2004;52(2):255–85.CrossRef

Christensen D, Weinstein JM. Defunding dissent: restrictions on aid to NGOs. J Democr. 2013;24(2):77–91.

Cilliers J, Dube O, Siddiqi B. The White-man effect: how foreigner presence affects behavior in experiments. J Econ Behav Organ. 2015;118:397–414.CrossRef

Dafoe A, Zhang B, Caughey D. Information equivalence in survey experiments. Polit Anal. 2018;26(04):399–416.CrossRef

Dambisya YM, Manenzhe M, Kibwika-Muyinda AB. Faith-based health services as an alternative to privatization? A Ugandan case study. Municipal Services Project Occasional Paper. 2014;25.

Dietrich S. Bypass or engage? Explaining donor delivery tactics in foreign aid allocation. Int Stud Q. 2013;57(4):698–712.CrossRef

Dietrich S. Donor political economies and the pursuit of aid effectiveness. Int Organ. 2016;70(1):65–102.CrossRef

Djankov S, Montalvo JG, Reynal-Querol M. The curse of aid. J Econ Growth. 2008;13(3):169–94.CrossRef

Embassy of Japan, Uganda. Grant assistance for grassroots human security projects (GGP) guidelines. 2015.

Eubank N. Taxation, political accountability and foreign aid: lessons from Somaliland. J Dev Stud. 2012;48(4):465–80.CrossRef

Lambright GS. Decentralization in Uganda: explaining successes and failures in local governance. Boulder: Lynne Rienner; 2011.

Levi M. Of rule and revenue. Berkeley: University of California Press; 1988.

Levi M, Sacks A, Tyler T. Conceptualizing legitimacy, measuring legitimating beliefs. Am Behav Sci. 2009;53(3):354–375.

Ministry of Education and Sports. Education Abstract 2016. Kampala; 2016. http://www.education.go.ug/files/downloads/The%20Education%20Statistical%20Abstract%202016.pdf. Accessed 23 Feb 2019.

Moore M. Between coercion and contract: competing narratives on taxation and governance. In: Bräutigam DA, Fjeldstad O-H, Moore M, editors. Taxation and state-building in developing countries: capacity and consent. New York: Cambridge University Press; 2008.

Schmelzle C, Stollenwerk E. Virtuous or vicious circle? Governance effectiveness and legitimacy in areas of limited statehood. J Intervention Statebuilding. 2018;12(4):449–67.CrossRef

Suchman MC. Managing legitimacy: strategic and institutional approaches. Acad Manag Rev. 1995;20(3):571–610.CrossRef

Swedlund HJ. The development dance: how donors and recipients negotiate the delivery of foreign aid. Ithaca: Cornell University Press; 2017.CrossRef

Tyler TR. Why people obey the law. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 2006.

Werker E, Ahmed FZ. What do nongovernmental organizations do? J Econ Perspect. 2008;22(2):73–92.CrossRef

Titel: How Do Different Forms of Foreign Aid Affect Government Legitimacy? Evidence from an Informational Experiment in Uganda
verfasst von: Kate Baldwin
Matthew S. Winters
Publikationsdatum: 19.05.2020
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: Studies in Comparative International Development / Ausgabe 2/2020
Print ISSN: 0039-3606
Elektronische ISSN: 1936-6167
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-020-09303-8

Springer Professional

Abstract

Bitte loggen Sie sich ein, um Zugang zu Ihrer Lizenz zu erhalten.

Sie haben noch keine Lizenz? Dann Informieren Sie sich jetzt über unsere Produkte:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Weitere Artikel der Ausgabe 2/2020

Foreign Aid and State-Society Relations: Theory, Evidence, and New Directions for Research

Foreign Aid, Government Spending, and Contributions toward Public Goods: Experimental Evidence from the Philippines

Rethinking Foreign Aid and Legitimacy: Views from Aid Recipients in Kenya

The Impact of Aid Dynamics on State Effectiveness and Legitimacy

Aiding Dependency: a Cross-National Analysis of Foreign Aid and Tax Compliance

Premium Partner