Trading favors? UN Security Council membership and subnational favoritism in aid recipients

Sustainable Development as set out by Agenda 2030 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals will require substantial investments in low and middle income countries. Foreign aid is needed to fill some of the widest gaps between required and available funding in the poorest and most fragile settings. This Misum Academic Insight reveals how temporary UN Security Council membership affects where and how aid is distributed among recipients.

This Misum Academic Insight is based on the research article "Trading Favors? UN Security Council Membership and Subnational Favoritism in Aid Recipients" which will be published in The Review of International Organizations in 2022.

Temporary membership in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) presents an opportunity for smaller countries to play an amplified, if temporary, role in global geopolitics. Being a member also carries certain benefits, from increased bilateral foreign aid, a form of financial support directly under the control of aid giving governments and multilateral aid from some institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF.

By tracking the regional allocation of World Bank aid projects, and matching it to temporary UNSC membership, the researchers analyzed what happened to total inflows during membership years. They ask, does the global strategic “salience” of a recipient government increase subnational biases in multilateral aid allocation?

Read the Misum Academic Insight here.

Authors

Maria Perrotta Berlin

Research Affiliate in the Human Capital and Sustainable Development Research Platform and Assistant Professor in the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics

Anders Olofsgård

Research Affiliate in the Human Capital and Sustainable Development Research Platform and Associate Professor in the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics

Raj M. Desai

Professor of International Development at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and in the Department of Government at Georgetown University