Dependency politics: how foreign aid shapes electoral behaviour

Foreign aid is often understood as a financial or developmental relationship between donor organisations and governments. But in many aid-dependent countries, foreign aid has become deeply embedded in both the way politicians deliver services to voters and how voters judge the work of their elected representatives.

In his new book, Dependency Politics: how foreign aid shapes electoral behavior, Dr Ryan Jablonski, Associate Professor of Political Science in the Department of Government at LSE, examines how democracy operates in countries where governments are heavily dependent on foreign aid. Drawing on fieldwork conducted over many years, Dr Jablonski explores the relationships between NGOs, donors and politicians, and how aid dependency can change the way voters review political performance.

The research challenges the assumption that voters simply credit donors or politicians when aid-funded projects such as health clinics and schools appear in their communities. Instead, voters make judgements based on what they believe the politician’s role to be in securing those projects, creating what Jablonski describes as a '‘visibility-uncertainty’’ paradox. This means aid can improve democratic accountability when voters are aware of the part played by politicians, but it can also weaken it when responsibility for delivering services is unclear.

[In countries like Malawi] both politicians and donors have power in determining how, where and when aid projects get delivered.

When aid becomes political

Dr Jablonski opens the book with an observation about the political effects of aid in highly aid-dependent countries.

“If we look particularly at what politicians do in very aid-dependent economies, such as Malawi (the main case study in the book), Mali, Sudan, Zambia or Mozambique, it doesn't always align very well with our typical view of what a politician should do in a democratic society,” he explains.

“Rather than focusing primarily on legislation, politicians may spend much of their time trying to secure the infrastructure and public services their constituents want, often by developing relationships with donors and NGOs.

“Like in many countries, voters want better education, better health, new clinics and cleaner water. But the difference in a very aid-dependent economy is that delivering those services almost always involves donors or NGOs.”

In Malawi, Dr Jablonski found that government budgets leave little room for capital investment in education.

“There is very little money in Malawi’s official budget for capital expenditure, which accounts for around two per cent of the education budget. If you’re a local politician trying to get re-elected with an electorate requesting new schools or repairs to existing schools, unless you're very well connected to the government you probably need to work with donors in some way or another.”

Politicians need resources to meet voters’ demands, while donors need governments and local political actors to help make projects effective and sustainable, Dr Jablonski explains. “And so, as a result, both politicians and donors have power in determining how, where and when aid projects get delivered.”

Who gets the credit for aid-funded projects?

This relationship, however, creates a problem for democratic accountability. When a new school, bridge or health clinic is built, voters may not know who was responsible for making it happen.

Dr Jablonski describes this as a problem of uncertainty. A politician may have helped secure an aid-funded project, but the project may also have involved an NGO, a donor, a government ministry, bureaucrats, contractors and other political actors.

“One of the major challenges with foreign aid, and what makes it different from a council building a new park in the UK, is that in the UK you can easily check official records to see who is responsible. If you're in Malawi and you see a new health clinic, however, then you don't necessarily know whether a politician was responsible for it or not,” he says.

This problem is outlined in a story Dr Jablonski heard from a local government bureaucrat in northern Malawi. An NGO had built a bridge that had been destroyed by flooding. The bureaucrat knew it was an NGO project, but a local councillor subsequently visited the village and claimed credit for the bridge. The following week, the local MP arrived and made the same claim.

“The next week, the MP of the same area showed up to the village, not knowing what the councillor had done, went to the leadership of the village and said, ‘Look at this great bridge that I built.’ They didn't believe the MP and they got very upset at the MP for lying to them.”

For voters, there is no equivalent of the UK’s Parliamentary Hansard to provide an objective record of who was responsible for a particular development project.

“With aid, it’s not so clear. The decisions are made in opaque ways and there's no easy way to access the information. And even as a very well-informed citizen, you're going to struggle to figure out who actually built that bridge.”

Voters may punish politicians for projects they had no control over or reward politicians who had little involvement.

Aid and electoral behaviour

This uncertainty matters because, Dr Jablonski’s research suggests, voters do not simply reward politicians when aid-funded projects benefit their communities. Instead, their response depends on what they believe about the politician’s involvement.

Dr Jablonski explains: “I carried out a set of surveys with voters, before and after the delivery of an NGO project. The objective was to understand what voters know about donor and government activities in their community, and how the NGO investment changes voters’ perceptions of the politician and of the NGO.”

The findings suggest that aid can benefit incumbents when voters believe that politicians were responsible for securing a project.

“What we find is something interesting, which is that that the NGO project ended up helping the incumbent in some places but not others. When voters saw benefits from the NGO project, they think their incumbents did a good job. But these effects are conditional on what voters believe the role of the incumbent was. If voters believe the incumbent was involved in making the decision, the response is to think that the politician has done a great job, because the politician had this great relationship with the donor and was effective in delivering the project.”

However, the same uncertainty can produce the opposite result. Voters may punish politicians for projects they had no control over or reward politicians who had little involvement.

“A problem is that these voter beliefs can be wrong. I show in the book that when those beliefs are wrong is exactly when we see the most perverse political effects take place.”

Trying to separate foreign aid from democracy … does not keep aid from being political.

When aid benefits the opposition

The consequences can be particularly striking when aid projects are delivered to communities outside a politician’s core area of support.

“A voter in a community receiving aid may see a health clinic being built. They may believe the incumbent was responsible and reward the incumbent by voting for them again,” says Dr Jablonski.

Voters in neighbouring communities, however, may reach a very different conclusion: “Suppose you're in a neighbouring community. You might think, ‘why didn’t the politicians deliver the health clinic to my community?’”

The political consequences depend on whether that judgement is accurate. If the politician genuinely chose to prioritise another community, voters may be holding them accountable. But if the decision was made by an NGO or donor, the voter may be punishing a politician for something outside their control.

“This happens more frequently than we might think,” highlights Dr Jablonski. “NGOs and donors are trying to benefit marginalised, remote, very poor communities for good reasons. But those are also communities that are often marginalised for political reasons. If politicians benefit from spending on pivotal regions and donors are pushing to spend on marginalised regions, potentially that disconnect drives an anti-incumbent effect.”

The implication is that aid can have very different political consequences depending not simply on what donors fund, but on what voters understand about the process.

Rethinking aid and democracy

If aid affects how voters judge politicians, then the way aid is delivered becomes as important as the aid itself. Dr Jablonski argues that governments need genuine ownership over aid projects, alongside greater transparency about who is responsible for decisions. “We need to prioritise ownership. But we also need to prioritise transparency at all levels of the aid process.”

Ultimately, the book asks readers to rethink the relationship between development and democracy, particularly at a time when foreign aid is undergoing significant change.

“Democracy and foreign aid are intertwined. Trying to separate foreign aid from democracy and treating foreign aid as a purely technocratic process do not keep aid from being political and may end up doing more harm to politics than simply accepting that foreign aid is part of politics.”

Dr Ryan Jablonski was speaking to Helen Flood, Media Relations Officer at LSE.

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