Overall Research Project Description With mass economic disparities between the Global North and the Global South, prosperous nations across the globe collectively allocate over 150 billion dollars a year in financial aid to developing countries. Foreign aid allocations have developed into a crucial tool that states use to advance their interests at home and abroad. Nations give countries foreign aid to achieve domestic and international political objectives, solve global crises, and to gain international or regional status and influence. Donor nations use foreign aid to help domestic industries by requiring recipient nations to open their markets for donor nation exports and by mandating that a certain percentage of the aid they allocate be used to buy products from the donor nation. The allocation of foreign aid can be instrumental for donor nations in achieving their foreign policy goals. States use foreign aid to bring conflicts to an end, buy United Nations Security Council (UNSC) votes, attain access to natural resources, and to influence the policies of the recipient. Additionally, donor nation can turn to foreign aid to enhance their international status.
This project explores how an aid-for-policy deal with one donor nation impacts other donor nation’s ability to make aid-for-policy deals with the same recipient state. I argue that the effect of foreign aid on a recipient state's behavior is conditional on 1) how much aid a recipient state receives from donor nations and 2) how many donor nations give the recipient state foreign aid. Viewing foreign aid as a network, where countries are the nodes and the directed weighted edges are the amount of foreign aid donor nations allocate to recipient states, I test to see how a state's position in the network (who they get aid from and how much they receive from each node) changes when they are serving as a nonpermanent member in the United Nations Security Council. I argue that a state’s position in the network before it’s term on the Security Council effects the amount of aid that is required to “buy” its vote.