Browsing by Subject "Foreign aid"

Scholars and practitioners recognize the importance of coordination in mitigating the costs of aid proliferation and improving the effectiveness of foreign aid. However, low levels of donor coordination persist. In this dissertation, I address this donor coordination puzzle. I offer a novel theory of coordination called Constrained Coordination, in which I posit that two key factors that play a crucial role in shaping coordination. First, I argue that donors strategic interests are a damper on coordination – the greater the strategic political, economic, and security interests of a donor government in a recipient country, the less coordination its aid agency will engage in. Second, I argue that aid agency autonomy is positively associated with coordination – the greater the level of autonomy – or freedom – that an aid agency has from its home government, the more that aid agency will coordinate. In order to test my Constrained Coordination theory, the dissertation uses mix-methods, and includes a quantitative analysis of hundreds of donor agencies coordination. I also leverage over one hundred extensive interviews with key stakeholders to present two qualitative case studies of donor coordination in Nigeria and Zambia. Finally, I use qualitative evidence to look at the coordination of South-South donors, a group of donors growing in importance. I find that a donor government’s strategic interests have a significant impact on whether its aid agency will coordinate within recipient countries. Similarly, when a recipient is strategic to a large number of countries, donors will not be well coordinated. Second, I find that aid agencies with greater levels of autonomy from their home governments coordinate more. And finally, I find that these effects amplify one another – a high autonomy donor working in a low priority country coordinates more than any other combination of strategic interests and autonomy.

This dissertation investigates the politics of global health and how international actors shape women’s outcomes in low- and middle-income countries. Using a three-paper model, it consists of three separate studies that highlight the interconnectedness of gender, health, and international politics. The first paper explores the spillover effects of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) implemented in Migori, Kenya in support of the World Health Organization’s cervical cancer elimination strategy. An original follow-up survey was administered to women living in the intervention and control villages to understand the RCT’s impact on non-medical outcomes. The second paper focuses on the international politics of foreign aid for family planning and demonstrates that a country’s response to dynamics within the international arena can determine how and why countries choose to contribute to policies that target women. Specifically, it investigates the international response when the United States, the largest aid donor, withdraws funding for family planning through its Mexico City Policy, better known as the “global gag rule.” The third paper looks at foreign aid termination more broadly, and how the use of this sanction instrument by the United Nations, United States, and European Union affects women’s health and safety in the target countries. These papers employ quantitative methods on a variety of data sources, ranging from original survey data collected in rural, western Kenya, to observational data on a range of indicators for multiple countries. Taken together, these studies show that women in low- and middle-income countries are subjected to consequences that stem from the political actions of international players.