Information Operations Increase Civilian Security Cooperation

Information operations are considered a central element of modern warfare and counterinsurgency, yet there remains little systematic evidence of their effectiveness. Using a geographic quasi-experiment conducted during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, we demonstrate that civilians exposed to the government’s information campaign resulted in more civilian security cooperation, which in turn increased bomb neutralisations. These results are robust to a number of alternative model specifications that account for troop presence, patrol-based operations, and local military aid allocation. The paper demonstrates that information campaigns can lead to substantive attitudinal and behavioural changes in an adversarial environment and substantially improve battlefield outcomes.

New Donors, New Goals? Altruism, Self-Interest, and Domestic Political Support in Development Cooperation in Latin America

ABSTRACTThe literature on aid allocation shows that many factors influence donors’ decision to provide aid. However, our knowledge about foreign aid allocation is based on traditional foreign aid, from developed to developing countries, and many assumptions of these theories do not hold when applied to southern donors. This article argues that south-south development cooperation (SSDC) can be explained by the strength of development cooperation’s domestic allies and foes. Specifically, it identifies civil society organizations as allies of SSDC and nationalist groups as opponents of SSDC. By using for the first time data on SSDC activities in Latin America, this article shows the predictive strength of a liberal domestic politics approach in comparison to the predictive power of alternative explanations. The results speak to scholars of both traditional foreign aid and south-south development cooperation in highlighting the limits of traditional theories of foreign aid motivations.

Dynamics of democracy aid allocation : from democratic donors to authoritarian regimes

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze democracy aid allocation mechanisms between Western donors and authoritarian regimes in recipient countries. The theoretical mechanism explains how strategic choices of donors and recipient countries based on their interests affect the composition of democracy aid. As a part of democracy promotion policy, Western donors have increased democracy aid after the end of the Cold War. They provide various types of democracy aid targeting the advancement of democratic institutions, practices, and norms in authoritarian regimes. I classify democracy aid into two types: regime-compatible democracy aid and regime-incompatible democracy aid based on authoritarian regimes' preference regarding democracy aid. Then, I discuss that donors' strategic choice based on security and/or economic interests changes the shape of democracy aid patterns. The empirical findings from the analyses of U.S. democracy aid toincreased regime-compatible democracy aid to their client states. Moreover, authoritarian regimes secure more regimecompatible democracy aid using their leverage over the U.S., when they have a higher political instability. The findings suggest that the strategic choices of donors and recipient countries affect decisions on types of democracy aid and shape the democracy aid allocation patterns.

Does Aid Matter for Foreign Direct Investment in ECOWAS: Investigating The Infrastructure Channel?

We ask the data whether and how aid targeted at specific sub-categories of economic infrastructure could assist ECOWAS economies to attract higher Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflow via improvement in infrastructure in Water Supply and Sanitation (WSS), energy, transport, and ICT. By relying on the 3SLS estimation technique that is able to explicitly account for dependencies between 3 structural equations on the allocation of targeted aid, the determinants of infrastructure, and the determinants of FDI – we found quite interesting results. First, aid targeted at infrastructure indicates strong positive effect on the countries’ infrastructure endowment, as expected. Second, there is robust evidence that aid promotes FDI but, surprisingly, not necessarily through the infrastructure channel. Targeted aid appears to exert a positive and direct knock-on effect on FDI - apparently, because investors anticipate the positive effect that targeted aid is almost always inclined to produce on host countries’ infrastructure endowment. Finally, aid allocation by Development Assistance Committee donors seems to have primarily been merit-based, followed by weaker evidence for ‘need’. Therefore, we recommend more need-based aid allocation particularly in economies where initial infrastructure endowment is minimal. There is also need for extended effort at index construction (e.g., index of infrastructure need) and data collection to drive country-case studies. This should identify the transmission channel from aid to FDI and how the associated binding constraints could be overcome.