Aid Bypass and Public Trust in Institutions By Morgan Snow and Tracey Zhang

Background Previous aid bypass studies Effect of public opinion on foreign aid Looked closely at Dietrich’s research → quality of governance and state bypass of aid; corruption and state bypass of aid → looked at recipients of aid, we’re looking at donors

Research Question How does public trust in government compared to trust in nonstate development actors affect the allocation of state-to-state aid versus aid to non-state actors? Hypothesis

Theory Public opinion serves as a proxy for cultural attitudes, which in turn shape policy Government officials listen to public opinion due to public pressure

Methodology Variables: Independent: the ratio of trust in government and trust in nonstate development actors “I am going to name a number of organizations. For each one, could you tell me how much confidence you have in them: is it a great deal of confidence, quite a lot of confidence, not very much confidence or none at all?” Dependent: proportion of non-state aid to state-to-state aid Looked at surveys rating how a much population trusts govt/aid talk about control variables too

Methodology

Results In short, not much Donor Welfare significant at the 10% level

Results (Japan Omitted)

Conclusions & Next Steps Collect more, better data Consider developing countries Thank you!