Disasters, Donors, and Democracy: Matching Donor Types and Aid Channels in Post-Disaster Humanitarian Aid Giving

Research into the determinants of foreign aid giving suggests different predictions for the effect of recipient country democratic institutions on the probability and amount of aid given by donor countries. While some suggest that better governance in recipient countries may increase the amount of aid provided by donors, others adhere to the notion that less democratic recipient governments may be better poised to exchange donor aid for recipient policy concessions. Furthermore, most of this current research makes the assumption that donors are homogenous in their preferences for foreign aid distribution. This paper uses humanitarian aid distribution following natural disasters to distinguish between donor types based on their responsiveness to disasters and tests whether different donor types channel aid based on the presence or absence of democratic institutions in a recipient country. The results suggest that stronger democratic institutions in recipient countries increase the probability of bilateral aid giving for donors highly responsive to disasters, while strong democratic institutions have no significant effect on the probability of bilateral aid giving for donors that have low levels of humanitarian responsiveness to disasters.