International patron-cliency; a new framework for old questions: The case of United States aid

This project\u27s main purpose is to address the question of U.S. foreign aid transfers to the Third World. Previous studies attempting to demonstrate a causal relationship between U.S. aid and Third World compliance have largely resulted in disappointment. Most studies conclude U.S. aid does not lead to compliant behavior from LDCs. However, this project opts to reverse the causal direction so that we consider the impact of compliance on aid donations. In doing so we create a new framework conceived as a form of patron-cliency. By combining elements of dependency theory, comparative foreign policy, and anthropology, this new patron-cliency framework enhances our understanding of foreign policy interactions between LDCs and more powerful states. Moreover, patron-cliency\u27s ability to explain and predict large state-LDC interactions improves upon that of dependency theory. To test this framework we analyzed foreign aid transfers from the U.S. to the Third World. It was our belief that states with higher levels of cliency (as measured by the presence of affectivity, asymmetry, compliance, and reciprocity) toward the United States would receive more aid than states that displayed lower levels of cliency. The patron-client framework proved to be useful in explaining aid transfers to the Third World generally, and to certain regions specifically. Patron-cliency explained nearly seventy percent of the variance in U.S. aid transfers to the Mideast and East Asia, while explaining nearly fifty-five percent of the aid transfers to Africa. These findings have several implications. First, they suggest that the relationships between patrons and clients are extremely complex, rarely revolving on a single issue. Second, U.S. foreign aid transfers to the Third World are influenced by myriad factors, and that aid is not used to purchase compliant behavior from recipient states. Third, previous scholars who sought to establish a causal link between U.S. aid and LDC compliance have misconceived the true nature of aid relationships. And four, patron-cliency is a useful concept for explaining large and small state behavior