Dependency Politics

Ryan Jablonski's Dependency Politics examines how democracy works in aid-dependent countries. He draws on over six years of fieldwork to investigate relationships between donors and politicians, showing how politicians make policy and how aid dependency changes voters' assessments of politician performance. He reveals that voters don't simply reward politicians for aid, rather they condition their votes on beliefs about how politicians influence aid delivery. This leads to a 'visibility-uncertainty' paradox where aid can either enhance or erode democratic accountability. Revisiting assumptions about the effects of foreign aid on political behavior, he also explains how aid can cause citizens to vote against their interests and sometimes benefit opposition candidates over incumbents. Drawing on surveys, interviews, focus groups, and field experiments, Jablonski challenges conventional wisdom about foreign aid and offers lessons for balancing trade-offs over aid effectiveness, political capture and capacity-building. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Ryan Jablonski is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He specializes in the political economy of public service delivery in low-income democracies, with particular expertise in foreign aid, voting behavior and elite politics. His research is published in leading political science, international relations and economics journals including the American Political Science Review, Journal of Development Economics, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), World Development, International Studies Quarterly, British Journal of Political Science, and World Politics. His research has been supported by the British Academy, the World Bank, the UK Department for International Development, USAID and others.