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AbstractDonor proliferation and the fragmentation of aid delivery is an important problem besetting foreign aid policy. Increased donor coordination is widely seen as a fix to this problem. This article explores theoretically and empirically the collective action problems and incentives that donors face when coordinating their actions, based on the distinction between private and public goods properties of aid. I introduce the concept of lead donorship, develop a measure that accounts for the exclusive and long-lasting ties between a lead donor and a recipient country, and show that lead donorship is in long-term decline. I test my theory combining spatial autoregressive (SAR) models, nonparametric model discrimination techniques, and data on aid delivery channels. I recover evidence of collusion in the provision of private goods aid in the presence of a lead donor, and lack of coordination and competition in the absence of a lead donor.

Concerns about international terrorism make the stability of failing states central to Western foreign aid policies. This paper explores how donors reduce the volatility of aid to avoid political destabilization of recipient countries. Using a formal model, we show that stability-oriented donors control the risk of conflict, but they never fully eliminate it. Recipient governments can exploit donor preferences for stability through increased rent extraction. As a result, stability-oriented aid reduces the risk of political destabilization only under narrow circumstances. If these conditions are not met, stability aid makes conflict more likely. We present evidence for key predictions of our model.

Spatial statistical methods in political science provide a tool to deal with spatial and other forms of interdependence in observational data. In this article, I derive a statistical model from a game of impure public goods provision. The resulting strategic autoregressive model (StratAM) allows the researcher to systematically explore the sources of free-riding behavior in the provision of public goods. The StratAM model is tightly related to the well-known spatial autoregressive (SAR) model and can be estimated in a maximum likelihood framework. I demonstrate the use of the StratAM model by analyzing free riding in the provision of foreign aid. Indicators of developmental needs and good governance strongly increase free-riding during the 1990s. Free-riding patterns in the 2000s are more similar to Cold War patterns.

Outside options can induce bargaining asymmetries that influence the outcome of international negotiations. This article focuses, however, on the impact of a regime-provided inside option on the willingness to cooperate and the distributive outcomes reached. Using a new data set covering 417 maritime boundaries, that fall under the Law of the Sea framework, this article shows that the ability to find agreement is closely linked to the distributional outcomes that states are able to realize. Different potential gains from cooperation result in bargaining asymmetries that influence both the ability to settle a maritime boundary and the distributive outcome reached when cooperation succeeds. Our evidence shows that the opportunity to invest in long-term projects that require legal certainty, such as offshore oil, facilitates cooperation and is associated with smaller distributional adjustments.

Recent debates have focused on the negative role of the proliferation of foreign aid facilities and donor fragmentation for development outcomes and recipient country institutions. This article investigates an overlooked positive side effect of donor proliferation. With an increasing number of donors, exposure to negative aid shocks decreases, as well as the impact of such shocks on violent political conflict. Using data on 106 recipient countries for the years 1970 to 2008 and employing event history and mediation analysis, we find strong evidence that fragmentation significantly reduces the risk for political destabilization associated with aid shocks.