Dependency Politics

Ryan Jablonski's Dependency Politics examines how democracy works in aid-dependent countries. He draws on over six years of fieldwork to investigate relationships between donors and politicians, showing how politicians make policy and how aid dependency changes voters' assessments of politician performance. He reveals that voters don't simply reward politicians for aid, rather they condition their votes on beliefs about how politicians influence aid delivery. This leads to a 'visibility-uncertainty' paradox where aid can either enhance or erode democratic accountability. Revisiting assumptions about the effects of foreign aid on political behavior, he also explains how aid can cause citizens to vote against their interests and sometimes benefit opposition candidates over incumbents. Drawing on surveys, interviews, focus groups, and field experiments, Jablonski challenges conventional wisdom about foreign aid and offers lessons for balancing trade-offs over aid effectiveness, political capture and capacity-building. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.