International Assistance And Domestic Politics

In the field of international aid, there is often a dilemma in donor countries’domestic politics: the inconsistent preferences and asymmetric informationbetween voters and government bring about commitment credibility problems inforeign aid area, so as to make the relevant foreign aid budgets and reform billcould not pass. In donor countries, the preferences of voters and government areoften inconsistent. The government hopes that foreign aid is mainly used to meetthe donor’s own interests, while voters hope that foreign aid is mainly used for thepoorest, neediest countries, meeting the needs of the recipient countries. At thesame time, due to the longer authorization chain, the government holds privateinformation. How to solve this commitment credibility problem is the mainresearch question of this paper. This paper argues that the introduction ofinternational multilateral process, although to a certain extent will weaken thegovernment’s controlling on this issue in the field, will enhance the government’scommitment credibility to domestic voters in this field, so that they can get moresupport at home, and mobilize more domestic forces.This paper uses the Blair government’s application of the InternationalDevelopment Goals proposed by OECD-DAC in1996as a case for furtherargument. During the early day of Blair, the commitment to reform in the foreignaid area could not win the support of domestic audience. And the newlyestablished department of international development faced a lot of difficulties. Tosolve this problem, DFID introduced and vigorously promoted IDT in the cabinet,domestic and international levels. The introduction of IDT successfully deliveredthe information that the government’s preference had changed to the voters, madea breakthrough of budget constraint bottleneck in a short span of two years, andstrengthened commitments credibility of the reform in the field of foreign aid.