Determinanten der Höhe staatlicher Entwicklungshilfe

Abstract

This study focuses on the explanation of different levels in foreign aid spending of 21 OECD-countries in five different periods from 1980 to 2005. It starts out by giving an overview of relevant issues and the history of international foreign aid. Examples of different measures of foreign aid are given and compared with each other. The Official Development Assistance (ODA)/GNI is taken as an indicator of foreign aid spending.The comparison of the different aid levels shows, that huge differences between the 21 donor countries exist.In the third chapter, different theoretical approaches of the comparative public policy research and a literature survey of the state of research in levels of foreign aid are given. Six schools of thought are described. Three of them are assumed to be central: the political-institutional school, the partisan theory, and the socio-economic school.Hypotheses are derived from that basis. They state that countries with a well developed welfare system, a strong left party power and a high economic capacity are the most generous donors of foreign aid. This is based on the theoretical assumptions, that there is a parallel between the principles of welfare states and the idea of foreign aid. Further on a higher generosity of left parties in comparison to right parties due to their believe system and the possibility of being more generous with higher financial resources.The results of a series of regressions give some evidence that the assumptions were valid.But the study also suggests that further research is needed to get a better understanding of the high variance in foreign aid spending between countries of the OECD and that qualitative research seems to be a useful complementary approach to reach that goal.