Public Preferences for Reallocating Aid in the Presence of Alternative Donors

Research has shown that people support foreign aid more when reminded of its strategic uses or when cued to think about international competition. Additional strategic considerations might affect evaluations of foreign aid. We examine whether citizens in aid-giving countries distinguish across different types of substituting donors, explore whether attitudes regarding aid are underpinned by countries’ relative power positions, and investigate citizens’ support for reallocating aid from one set of recipient countries to another. We test the impact of these strategic considerations using parallel online survey experiments conducted on representative samples from Japan and the United States. In Japan, we find that reference to either an adversary or an ally as a substitute donor reduces support for aid reallocation. Mediation analysis confirms that respondents’ attitudes are driven by national interest considerations. In the United States, respondents perceive that aid substitution by an adversary—but not an ally—will negatively impact national interests, but these concerns are not sufficient to change opinions regarding aid reallocation. We attribute these findings to donor publics’ different understandings of their country’s relative position in the international system and the differing roles of foreign aid in pursuing national objectives.