ABSTRACT
Does Saudi Arabian aid challenge the effectiveness of Western democracy promotion? We argue that if democracy promotion is credible, the reform-oriented local elite will prefer cooperation with the Western donors over unconditional aid from an authoritarian donor. Whether such cooperation results in the effective implementation of democratic reforms, as demanded by the Western donor, then depends on the size of political adaptation costs, in relation to the size of the incentives promised by the Western donor and the authoritarian power, respectively. In this article, however, we focus primarily on the first part of the argument and assess its plausibility using congruence analysis.35 That is, we address the question of whether the credibility of the external actor (independent variable) and cooperation of the pro-reform local elite (dependent variable) relate in the expected positive manner. To this end, we first ascertain the value of credibility in the selected case and then explore whether the behaviour of the pro-reform local elite is consistent with our theoretical expectation. In doing so, we also consider the alternative argument of immediate influence of an authoritarian power, regardless of the Western donor’s credibility.
