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<p>Does aid undermine incentives for local politicians to provide public goods? Even when politicians have no control over aid, they can claim credit for the aid in low-information environments, thus undermining their other efforts to provide public goods. I test these predictions using Kenya’s Constituencies Development Fund (CDF), which provides an ideal opportunity to measure legislators’ efforts since I can attribute CDF spending patterns directly to politicians. I examine two dimensions of these efforts: how much of the CDF they spent and how quickly they implemented their projects. Using a two-way fixed effects OLS estimation, I show that aid is not associated with how much CDF politicians spend, which is contrary to existing predictions. However, I find that aid slightly delays the implementation of CDF projects in low-competition constituencies—an effect that disappears in competitive races. This paper suggests that aid does not significantly compromise political responsiveness as previously expected.</p>

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Does Foreign Aid Undermine Political Responsiveness? Evidence from Kenya

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年6月5日

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  • Dongil Lee

摘要

Does aid undermine incentives for local politicians to provide public goods? Even when politicians have no control over aid, they can claim credit for the aid in low-information environments, thus undermining their other efforts to provide public goods. I test these predictions using Kenya’s Constituencies Development Fund (CDF), which provides an ideal opportunity to measure legislators’ efforts since I can attribute CDF spending patterns directly to politicians. I examine two dimensions of these efforts: how much of the CDF they spent and how quickly they implemented their projects. Using a two-way fixed effects OLS estimation, I show that aid is not associated with how much CDF politicians spend, which is contrary to existing predictions. However, I find that aid slightly delays the implementation of CDF projects in low-competition constituencies—an effect that disappears in competitive races. This paper suggests that aid does not significantly compromise political responsiveness as previously expected.