Does Foreign Aid Support Autocrats, Democrats, or Both? Daniel Yuichi Kono University of California at Davis Gabriella R. Montinola University of California at Davis Does foreign aid prop up recipient governments? Although many people argue that it does, there is little systematic evidence to support this claim. We argue that aid’s effects on government survival depend on both the recipient’s regime type and the analyst’s time horizons. In the long run, continued aid helps autocrats more than democrats because the former can stockpile this aid for use against future negative shocks. However, because large stocks of aid reduce the marginal impact of current aid, current aid helps democrats more than autocrats. We test and find support for our argument with a survival analysis of 621 leaders in 123 countries from 1960 to 1999. Our results imply that donors should make both the nature of aid and the use of aid conditionality contingent on the domestic regime type of aid recipients. D oes foreign aid prop up recipient govern- ments? Many scholars and policy makers think so. On the right, free-market economists such as Bauer (1972) and Friedman (1958) decry foreign aid because they think it helps corrupt governments stay in power. On the left, socialists assert that aid props up ‘‘regimes that are complicit in the exploi- tation of their people’’ (Carter 1995, 615). At least one U.S. Congressman opposes foreign aid bills by saying that aid tends ‘‘to prop up bad governments that have mistreated their people’’ (Kiely 2001). There is thus agreement across the political spectrum that foreign aid has propped up dictators that would have, and probably should have, otherwise fallen. Moreover, this view appears to have influenced both the perceived desirability and the political feasibility of foreign aid. Despite its popularity, this view can be ques- tioned on two grounds. First, there is little systematic evidence that aid supports dictators. Although the oft- cited cases of Jean-Claude Duvalier, Ferdinand Marcos, and Mobutu Sese Seko seem to support this claim—all three received substantial aid and remained in office over 15 years—other dictators, such as Valentine Strasser of Sierra Leone, received more aid than any of the above and stayed in office less than half as long. 1 Second, there is little evidence, and little the- oretical reason to believe, that aid supports autocratic leaders but not democratic ones. Both types of leaders need resources to stay in power; hence both should benefit from aid. If so, then aid’s political effects may be less malign than the above authors suggest be- cause aid may help democratic as well as autocratic governments. Whether aid promotes political survival—and if so, whose—is a question of growing practical impor- tance. Foreign aid plays a central role in the Millenium Development Goals, the United Nations plan to re- duce global poverty by 2015. At the 2005 summit of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations, the G8 committed themselves to double aid to Africa by 2010, from $25 billion to $50 billion a year (Stevenson 2005). Foreign aid is thus on the rise, and so, not surprisingly, are concerns about its causes and effects. These concerns have inspired numerous studies on the determinants of foreign aid (Bueno de Mesquita and Smith 2007; Schraeder, Hook, and Taylor 1998), its effects on recipient policies (Bearce and Tirone 2007; Remmer 2004), and its impact on regime change (Knack 2004; Wright 2007). 2 Surprisingly, The Journal of Politics, Page 1 of 15, 2009 doi:10.1017/S0022381609090550 Ó 2009 Southern Political Science Association ISSN 0022-3816 1 Duvalier, Marcos, and Mobutu received annual aid flows equal to 6.5, 1.2, and 3.7 percent of gross national income, respectively. Strasser’s annual aid averaged 26% of gross national income, but he remained in office only four years. 2 Note that foreign aid’s impact on regime type is analytically distinct from its impact on government survival, our central concern. 1