Strategic Samaritanism: how armed conflict affects aid receipts

How does armed conflict affect the flow of foreign aid? Aid scholars have frequently argued that assistance is given either to serve donor interests or meet recipient needs and evaluated their theories using a single measure of aid. In this project we introduce the concept of an aid portfolio comprised of different types of assistance that a conflict-affected country might receive: humanitarian, economic, and aid to support governance and the social sector. We expect these components of a recipient country’s aid portfolio to vary according to both its needs and its capacity to absorb them. We call this logic, which assumes donors are motivated in part by considerations of efficacy, ‘strategic Samaritanism.’ We also expect conflict-affected countries’ needs and capacity to vary in predictable ways, with states that are severely affected by violence in need of more aid but less able to absorb some types of assistance until the fighting is over. Meanwhile, countries heavily affected by refugee flows should both need and be able to absorb more of each type of aid. We test our argument on a dataset of aid flows and violent conflicts in developing countries from 1989–2009 and find considerable supporting evidence for our expectations.