Foreign Policy and British Bilateral Aid: A Comment on McKinlay and Little

In the July 1978 issue of this journal McKinlay and Little have written an interesting interpretation of British aid policy from 1960 to 1970, based on a statistical study of aid allocation during that period (viii (1978), 313–31). The purpose of the following Note is to question the adequacy of the support for their conclusion that the foreign policy objectives of aid have been dominant compared to humanitarian motivation. It is not intended to deny the existence of foreign policy objectives in aid giving. Aid policy in the United Kingdom, like most other policies, is not made by one ministry but is a compromise between ministries. The question at issue is the relative weight of different motives in aid allocation. There is no doubt that the authors' study has revealed clearly some interesting statistical associations and non-associations between aid allocation to different countries and, inter alia, their size, degree of poverty, colonial, trading and security links with the United Kingdom, Communist bloc associations, and various measures of their political stability and democratic character. However, the main question which must be raised is whether the statistical evidence amassed and analysed really permits the authors to draw their firm conclusions about the relative weight of different British objectives during this period.