| It was argued that the Cold War's end would usher in a new global foreign aid regime in which donor countries would increasingly focus on several normative goods in international affairs, particularly the promotion of democracy. The primary purpose of this dissertation is to assess the factors that drive the bilateral foreign aid policies of the northern industrialized democracies and determine whether foreign aid has changed substantially following the end of the Cold War. The study focuses on the foreign aid policies of the northern industrialized democracies toward the African continent, the region that historically has been cited as being in greatest need of foreign aid, as well as difficult grounds for the promotion of democracy. Statistical analysis is employed to assess the bilateral foreign aid policies of fifteen northern industrialized democracies as an aggregate and separated into groups of former colonial, classic middle, and great powers, as well as case studies of three donor countries: France, Sweden, and the United States. The time frame of the analysis is the contemporary independence era, as a whole, and broken down into three major periods: Cold War I (1960-1974); Cold War II (1975-1989); and post-Cold War (1990-2000). This study seeks to inform the debate on foreign aid with insight into the importance of donor interests and their impact on bilateral foreign aid trends. While realist and neo-realist factors dominate the Cold War periods, a trend toward the increasing importance of democratization is observed for the post-Cold War period. |
