IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/joupea/v44y2007i4p447-464.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

European Aid: Human Rights Versus Bureaucratic Inertia?

Author

Listed:
  • Sabine C. Carey

    (School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham, Sabine.Carey@nottingham.ac.uk)

Abstract

Most studies on foreign aid and human rights have ignored the role of bureaucratic inertia in the allocation process. By not controlling for which developing countries have received aid in the past and how much aid they have received, continuity of aid flows remains unaccounted for. Additionally, previous studies have not allowed for a possible non-linear relationship between human rights and aid. This study investigates aid commitments from the European Commission, Germany, France, and the UK, paying attention to non-linear effects of human rights on aid commitments and the role of bureaucratic inertia. Using data from 1978 to 2003, the study investigates how past aid commitments, the level of human rights violations, and substantial changes in the respect for human rights influence the decision of European donors on whom to give aid to, how to choose a new recipient country that did not receive aid previously, and how much aid to give to countries that made it past the gatekeeping stage. Controlling for various donor interests and recipient needs, the results show that, despite donors' emphasis on human rights in official documents, the human rights situation in developing countries does not consistently shape European aid commitments. Only Germany commits less aid to more repressive countries. However, recent substantial improvements of the human rights records are rewarded by both Germany and France when deciding whom to give aid to. Bureaucratic inertia seems to be a major obstacle to the consistent implementation of human rights consideration in European aid allocation.

Suggested Citation

  • Sabine C. Carey, 2007. "European Aid: Human Rights Versus Bureaucratic Inertia?," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 44(4), pages 447-464, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:joupea:v:44:y:2007:i:4:p:447-464
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/44/4/447.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lim, Sijeong & Mosley, Layna & Prakash, Aseem, 2015. "Revenue Substitution? How Foreign Aid Inflows Moderate the Effect of Bilateral Trade Pressures on Labor Rights," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 295-309.
    2. Cullen Hendrix & Wendy Wong, 2014. "Knowing your audience: How the structure of international relations and organizational choices affect amnesty international’s advocacy," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 29-58, March.
    3. Gerrit Faber & Michiel Gerritse, 2017. "Does Institutional Change Spread Across Countries? Explaining Spatial Patterns in Human Rights," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(5), pages 906-930, May.
    4. Gary Uzonyi & Toby Rider, 2017. "Determinants of Foreign Aid: Rivalry and Domestic Instability," International Interactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(2), pages 272-299, March.
    5. Asif Efrat, 2015. "Do human rights violations hinder counterterrorism cooperation? Evidence from the FBI’s deployment abroad," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 329-349, September.
    6. Asif Efrat & Abraham L Newman, 2020. "Defending core values: Human rights and the extradition of fugitives," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 57(4), pages 581-596, July.
    7. Abrams M E Tagem, 2017. "Analysing the determinants of health aid allocation in sub-Saharan Africa," Discussion Papers 2017-09, University of Nottingham, CREDIT.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:joupea:v:44:y:2007:i:4:p:447-464. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.prio.no/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.