Please join us Friday, January 26th from 3:30 to 4:30 PM for the next installment in the ongoing Friday Forum Series hosted by The Center for the Study of Global Issues (GLOBIS), to be held in the 2nd floor conference room of GLOBIS. This week’s talk, "Carrot or Stick? U.S Foreign Aid and Recipient Country U.N. Voting Compliance: 1997-2004," will be delivered by Xiaojun Li, a graduate student in the Department of International Affairs at the University of Georgia. The paper won the grand prize of the graduate student paper competition at ISA South, 2006, and is currently under review at ISQ. An abstract follows:
Historically, the use of aid has often been regarded as an effective foreign policy instrument in influencing the political behaviors of recipient countries. However, studies have been inconclusive when trying to determine how the effects of foreign aid are manifested with respect to recipients' voting pattern in the United Nations. Specifically, they have not provided clear evidence of if and how the United States uses aid as to induce compliance behaviors in recipient countries. This paper first reviews the theoretical paradigms that link foreign aid with voting compliance in the United Nations. It then shows that previous empirical studies have suffered from specification, measurement, and sample-composition problems. A cross-sectional time series simultaneous equations model is then proposed to address two important questions: namely, how effective U.S. foreign aid is as an instrument to enhance U.S. influence in the United Nations in terms of voting compliance and if U.S. aid is used primarily as an inducement ("carrot") or as a punishment/reward ("stick"). Using two-stage least squares random effects estimation procedures and correcting for measurement error in both foreign aid and U.N. voting compliance, I find evidence that U.S. aid is used as an inducement. I also find that military aid is more effective than economic aid in increasing voting compliance. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the results and directions for future research.
Also, please plan ahead for next week’s (February 2nd) presentation on Somalia by Dr. Abdulahi Osman of the Department of International Affairs. In addition, if anyone is interested in presenting a paper, thesis, prospectus, or dissertation to an interested and informed audience, please contact Jon Polk at the e-mail address or phone number listed below.
GLOBIS is located in the historic Franklin House on the corner of South Thomas St. and East Broad St. at the Northern edge of campus. Please email jonpolk@uga.edu or call 706-542-6633 for directions or to be removed from our mailing list.
