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Does Foreign Aid Bifurcate Donor Approval?: Patronage Politics, Winner–Loser Status, and Public Attitudes toward the Donor

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Abstract

While recent research has shown a growing interest in the consequences of China’s foreign aid giving, few have examined how public attitudes towards China in recipient countries have responded to the surging inflows of Chinese aid. Using a geo-referenced dataset combining individual survey data with foreign aid project sites information, this paper examines the association between Chinese aid projects and public approval of China’s influence in African countries. Despite contributing to development and growth in recipient countries, Chinese aid inflows may have a bifurcating effect on the approval of the donor along a partisan line. In the African context of neopatrimonialism and patronage politics, Chinese foreign aid packages are likely manipulated by the recipient government to further its domestic political interests, which could result in a partisan bias in the distribution of aid benefits favoring supporters of the incumbent government. As a result, the local presence of Chinese aid sites would be more strongly associated with a favorable attitude towards China among supporters of the incumbent political party than supporters of the opposition. We find support for our argument from a multilevel modeling of the association between the approval of China among individuals and the presence of nearby Chinese aid projects sites between 2009 and 2014.

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Notes

  1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/07/chinas-influence-looms-as-sierra-leone-goes-to-the-polls

  2. https://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/10/11/18/a-sham-sierra-leone-scraps-chinese-built-airport-project

  3. https://www.scmp.com/news/world/africa/article/2140363/sierra-leones-new-president-doesnt-mince-words-he-called-china

  4. https://www.africa-confidential.com/article/id/12360/Koroma_accused_of_grand_corruption

  5. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/business/international/in-nigeria-chinese-investment-comes-with-a-downside.html?module=inline

  6. https://thediplomat.com/2018/03/we-are-chinese-how-china-is-influencing-sierra-leones-presidential-election/

  7. Depending on the location of the respondents, we retain projects launched between 2009 and 2013 if the survey at the respondent’s location was administered in 2014, and those started between 2010 and 2014 if it was implemented in 2015. As a robustness check (Table A1), we adopt alternative time spans of projects by the year commenced when counting adjacent sites (i.e., 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2011). Following Isaksson and Kotsadam (2018), we retain aid projects with a location precision level of 1 or 2.

  8. Several countries in Round 6 of the Afrobarometer were excluded either because they did not receive Chinese ODA-type aid with precise location information during the sample period (Burkina Faso, São Tomé and Príncipe, and South Africa) or due to a lack of information in the country survey that records partisan winner or loser status (Egypt, Lesotho, and Morocco).

  9. While Ethiopia constitutes a good case for examining the attitudinal impact of Chinese aid inflows, excluding it is unlikely to substantially bias the representativeness of our sample provided that the majority of the biggest recipients are covered.

  10. Favorability of China among those who do not live near Chinese aid sites is 78.3% among partisan winners and 74.6% among losers. When there are more than four Chinese aid sites nearby, the average favorability of China increases to 79.2% among winners and decreases to 69.5% among losers.

  11. The nighttime luminosity data is collected from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program’s Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS), provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Regional population size is calculated using the Global Administrative Areas Database.

  12. The inter-class correlation coefficients for the second and third levels are 13.56 and 17.42, respectively, meaning that approximately 13.56% of the variation is accounted for by the country level and 17.42% of the variation is explained by the region and country levels. This provides another justification for using a multilevel model.

  13. Unfortunately, there is no comparable question directly capturing approval of the World Bank’s influence. We instead use a question asking whether respondents perceive “international organizations like the United Nations or the World Bank” as the most influential in their country. Nor is there a comparable question on approval of the USA. We therefore use a question asking whether respondents recognize the “United States” has the most influence in their country.

  14. This can be seen in the insignificant interaction term and in Appendix Figure A1.

  15. Isaksson and Kotsadam (2018) dealt with endogeneity concerns using a difference-in-difference (DID) method comparing cases of active vs. planned Chinese aid sites. Unfortunately, we cannot use a similar approach given that questions regarding China and Chinese aid were only asked in Round 6 of the Afrobarometer in 2014 and 2015.

  16. We use the closest seaport of neighboring countries if respondents are from inland countries.

  17. The correlation between distance to port (log) and number of aid sites is −0.279, and the correlation between latitude and number of aid sites is −0.121. The F-statistics for the excluded instrument clearly adhere to the “rule of thumb” that it should be at least 10 (10.18 for the number of Chinese aid sites and 15.27 for the interaction term) (Staiger and Stock 1997). Also, overidentification statistic for the Sargan-Hansen test is 3.574 (p = 0.1674), indicating that these are valid instruments.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Xun Cao, Zhenqian Huang, Xun Pang, Mi Jeong Shin, Dan Slater, Fangjin Ye, Suisheng Zhao, and the two anonymous referees for valuable comments on the paper. Jia Chen acknowledges the funding support from the National Foundation for Social Sciences (No. 17CGJ032). Sung Min Han acknowledges that this work was supported by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund.

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  1. Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Korea

    Sung Min Han

  2. School of Public Economics and Administration, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai, China

    Jia Chen

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Jia Chen and Sung Min Han contributed to the research and writing of the article equally.

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Chen, J., Han, S. Does Foreign Aid Bifurcate Donor Approval?: Patronage Politics, Winner–Loser Status, and Public Attitudes toward the Donor. St Comp Int Dev 56, 536–559 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-021-09341-w

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