On the Political Economy of Foreign Aid and Human Rights in Autocracies

Abstract

This paper presents a game-theoretic analysis of repression and resistance to show that foreign aid to autocratic governments may increase the incidence of conflict and human rights abuses. using a two-stage predictor substitution (2SPS) approach in 91 autocracies from 1981 to 2010. With various robustness checks, we find that aid significantly reduces government respect for human rights in autocracies. A further breakdown of autocratic regimes demonstrates that aid increases repression and human rights violations in personalist and single-party regimes more than their military counterparts. These empirical findings demonstrate strong evidence in support of the theoretical prediction that aid is generally ineffective in reducing human rights abuses in autocracies.