Going Public? Aid-Receiving Governments’ Desires to Avoid Publicity for Donor

• In Event: The Political Economy of Aid from the Recipient Perspective

Abstract

This study explores conditions under which politicians desire publicity for aid projects that they signed. While past literature mostly focused on aid-receiving politicians’ desires for publicity and credit-claiming, I argue that aid-receiving leaders might also retain the desire to avoid publicity if the aid project is anticipated to negatively affect the chances of extending their terms in their office. Leaders whose primary goal is to remain in office are regularly assessed by the public under a democratic mechanism. To extend their term, strategic leaders might want to showcase their achievements to the public while hiding their failures from them. This study claims that democratic leaders might intentionally manipulate information space to be in the office. Specifically, I expect the public's affinity for funding sources and the performance of the project when leaders determine the extent of publicity. To test these hypotheses, I use OECD and World Bank data with a Panel Matching approach

Author

• Jaeyoung Lee, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign