Losing Hearts & Minds: Aid and Ideology

Travers B Child

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2023, vol. 67, issue 2-3, 457-493

Abstract: “Hearts and minds†theory contends development aid strengthens community support for counterinsurgents by providing jobs and public goods. Based on field interviews in Kabul, we develop an alternative theoretical framework emphasizing instead the ideological preferences of civilians. In our model, some aid projects are ideologically contentious while others are benign. Given a mix of foreign aid, each civilian supports either the counterinsurgents or rebels, depending on his/her idiosyncratic preferences. In this setting, greater provisions of aid can actually erode community support. Donors therefore calibrate the mix of foreign aid to appease population groups with relatively strong ideological sensibilities. Individual-level analysis based on unique Afghan data substantiates key features of our theory. Benign projects lead to favorable opinions of development, while contentious aid has the opposite effect. Moreover, favorable opinions of development are associated with stronger support for government and counterinsurgents, and weaker support for rebels.

Keywords: hearts and minds; foreign aid; public opinion; ideology; conflict (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00220027221074898 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jocore:v:67:y:2023:i:2-3:p:457-493

DOI: 10.1177/00220027221074898

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Conflict Resolution from Peace Science Society (International)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().