When civilians flee conflict, concerned donors adopt policies intended to curb both violence and large refugee flows, viewing these objectives as complementary. Can such policies reduce the flow of refugees while safeguarding civilians? Using a model of refugee flight in civil conflict, I find donors who link aid and migration policies may fail to restrain government violence, risking increases in displacement and repression. Specifically, when donors lack leverage or have inconsistent priorities, their goals are undermined by strategic government violence. Policies aimed at reducing migration, like increasing humanitarian aid or reducing access to asylum, can yield more intense fighting because they leave a larger base of support for rebels. Threats to suspend aid similarly do not deter violence when it is clear donors’ primary concern is migration. I find if donors condition assistance on reducing both migration and violence against civilians, but prioritize curbing repression, they can achieve both goals.

Historically the United States uses both bilateral aid and influence over multilateral development finance to further its geopolitical objectives. Past studies explain the choice between these two instruments based on either a divided government effect or whether the recipient government is a traditional US ally (the dirty work hypothesis). We advance a theory explaining the bilateral/multilateral choice in terms of the confluence of these factors and test its predictions using United Nations Security Council voting, US bilateral aid flows, and World Bank lending. Results confirm theoretical expectations: higher bilateral aid goes to allies who support the United States in the Security Council but only when the US government is not divided and higher World Bank lending goes to non-allies who support the United States in the Security Council but only when the US government is divided. This detailed understanding of the link between domestic politics and governance in international organizations has important implications as the international order moves beyond a US-dominated system.

A growing body of work suggests that authoritarian regimes can enhance their external legitimacy by undertaking reform—from democratic or “pseudodemocratic” institutional changes at the domestic level to participation in international efforts to mitigate climate change. Yet the shared theoretical logic underlying this work has received surprisingly little empirical attention. This research contributes by offering findings from an iterative series of original survey experiments conducted over nationally representative samples of US citizens. Study 1 tested the foundational hypothesis—that reforms build external legitimacy—by adopting a simple independent groups design. Studies 2 and 3 subjected that hypothesis to harder tests via conjoint designs, and also evaluated extension hypotheses about when and in what sense “legitimacy” is gained. Across studies, the results consistently demonstrate that reforms (of a variety of types) do generate external legitimacy, offering both positive benefits as well as shielding benefits in keeping with theoretical arguments. The results also provide support for several new and previously undocumented findings concerning the role of reform type, type of legitimacy-derived gain, and the conditions under which such gains are more or less likely to accrue.