Assistance, Resistance, and the 'Informalization Incentive:' Rethinking the Aid-Conflict Nexus in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

There exists an abundant literature exploring how foreign aid impacts conflict across recipient countries, especially aid-dependent states across the African continent. However, existing literature fails to 1) appropriately theorize this relationship within a coherent model of conflict; and 2) account for the vast variety of types of conflict and conflict actors on which aid can have differential impacts. I begin to address this gap by constructing a novel, shift-share instrument approach based on the plausible exogeneity of 'shifts in the shares' of aid sectors in a given country year. This allows me to interrogate the relationship between foreign aid from the U.S. and different types of political violence on the continent of Africa. I find that U.S. aid impacts only certain types of political violence, namely activity by political militias. I argue that these results are consistent with a particular theory of conflict in which U.S. aid creates an 'informalization incentive' in the recipient country, where states seek to maintain aid flows from the U.S. by outsourcing some repressive violence to political militias and unofficial armed actors. I substantiate this finding with additional tests, including comparing this effect to the effect of aid from China and by comparing my results to previous findings. They ultimately demonstrate that understanding the aid-conflict nexus requires disaggregation of the dependent variable.

Recommended Citation

Pavlik, Melissa. 2023. "Assistance, Resistance, and the 'Informalization Incentive:' Rethinking the Aid-Conflict Nexus in Sub-Saharan Africa." Working Paper.

Notes

Presented at American Political Science Association (APSA), 2021; and Midwestern Political Science Association (MPSA), 2022. Draft available upon request.