Foreign Policy as Pork-barrel Spending: Incentives for Legislator Credit Claiming on Foreign Aid

• Date: 01 August 2020
• Author: Timothy M. Peterson,Tobias Heinrich
• DOI: 10.1177/0022002719896838
• Published date: 01 August 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Foreign Policy as

Pork-barrel Spending:

Incentives for Legislator

Credit Claiming

on Foreign Aid

Tobias Heinrich

1

, and Timothy M. Peterson

1

Abstract

Foreign policy often creates geographically concentrated domestic benefits. A

prominent example is the tying of development aid to purchases from the donor

country. This feature of aid highlights the utility in examining foreign policy as an

instance of pork-barrel politics. Considering tied aid in terms of legislators’ incen-

tives to provide constituent benefits, we argue that people will support an increase

in foreign aid spending more when it would promote local economic activity, while

opposing aid cuts more when reduced local economic output would result. Cru-

cially, we also expect that people will support their state’s US senator more when

informed that the senator attempted to secure (or retain) locally beneficial funds.

We find support for our expectations in a novel survey experiment of US citizens.

Our results suggest that legislators’ electoral incentives, and consequential local

spending, can help explain the adoption of foreign policies despite national- level

public disapproval.

Keywords

foreign aid, foreign policy, domestic politics, cooperation

1

Department of Political Science, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Timothy M. Peterson, Department of Political Science, University of South Carolina, 312 Gambrell Hall,

Columbia, SC 29210, USA.

Email: tim@timothypeterson.org

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2020, Vol. 64(7-8) 1418-1442

ªThe Author(s) 2020

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0022002719896838

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

Foreign policy often has domestic consequences that in turn incentivize its use. For

example, contrary to the popular conception of foreign aid as a handout to recipient

states, a considerable proportion of aid spending is tied to purchases from firms

and nongovernmental organizations located in the donor state. Howev er, the prac-

tice of aid tying faces criticism (Easterly and Williamson 2011). Development-

minded activists routinely apply pressure on donors to end what they see as wasted

spending, as it would be more efficient to purchase goods and services from within

the region benefiting from aid rather than importing them from a geographically

distant donor (Oxfam 2009).

Common attention to the effects and effici ency of tied aid impl ies an interest in

policy prescription (Easterly and Pfu

¨tze 2008). However, research on the politics

underlying tied aid is nearly absent.

1

In this article, we contend that scholars can

better understand foreign policy in general, and tied aid specifically, through the

lens of distributive politics (Milner and Tingley 2015). Specifically, we direct

focus to the fact that a large proportion of foreign aid is composed of locally

targeted spending in the donor country—that is, pork-barrel spending. We argue

that citizens will demonstrate a greater appreciation of government spending on

aid when they expect it to have a positive local economic impact. We further

contend that politicians will pay attention to these citizen preferences and claim

credit accordingly. When local politicians communicate that they managed to

secure funds for a specific area, we expect residents of this area to view that

politician more favorably (Grimmer 2013; Grimmer, Westwood, and Messing

2014; Fenno 1978). Reelection-minded politicians desire more favorable evalua-

tions and thus face an electoral incentive to secure local tied aid spending. The

localized consequences of this policy create a direct link between public opinion

and the motivation of politicians (Gottfried and Trager 2016).

To test whether legislators face an incentive to secure local tied aid spending, we

design a survey experiment that exami nes how communications regarding loca l

foreign aid spending affect individual evaluations of their legislators. We present

respondents with a vignette announcing a change to foreign aid outlays that result in

either an increase or a reduction in spending within a specific locality. Randomiza-

tion determines whether this change affects the nearest large city within the respon-

dent’s home state or a populous city elsewhere in the United States. We also

randomly vary whether a member of the US Congress (specifically, a US senator)

is mentioned as working to secure the increased funds or trying (and failing) to stop

funding cuts. We then examine consequential variation in individual support for aid

policy and approval of local US senators.

Our results show evidence for both aspects of our arguments. Individual support

for additional aid spending is higher when such spending would have a beneficial

local impact, and opposition to aid cuts increases by a comparable amount when

these cuts entail local losses. Respondents also express warmer feeling thermometer

scores toward senators who are shown to have worked (successfully) to secure funds

or (unsuccessfully) to prevent cuts in locally targeted funds. To explore the electoral

Heinrich and Peterson 1419