ABSTRACT
The use of foreign aid for democracy promotion or “democracy aid” is not faring well. The West is less committed to democracy promotion while autocrats have access to aid from donors like China. Authoritarian regimes have learned how to neutralize democracy aid and challenge the ideal of democracy. The result has been a global loss of democratic momentum. In an age of feckless democracies and resurgent authoritarianism, how can we still use foreign aid to nudge authoritarian recipients towards democracy? We should take both the reluctance of Western donors and the pushback by recipients seriously. Since political liberalization hurts authoritarian recipients, they can be expected to offer alternative policy concessions for the aid and in lieu of democratization. This means some recipients, like Egypt, will have leverage against the West and are effectively immune to donor pressure. It also implies some recipients, like Fiji, will lack the attributes to make counteroffers attractive enough to the West. This implies these “secondary recipients” are more likely to liberalize. Thus, secondary recipients should be the proper emphasis of democracy aid. If we filter recipients by their leverage, democracy promotion with aid need not be a lost cause.
