Almost universally, foreign aid donors publicly proclaim that their assistance seeks to benefit recipient countries, and at minimum does no harm. Contributing to recent scholarship that raises skepticism to this proposition (e.g., see Jessica T. Darden, Aiding and Abetting: US Foreign Assistance and State Violence, 2019; Faisal Z. Ahmed, The Perils of International Capital, 2020), Salvador Santino F. Regilme Jr. provides a provocative account of how foreign economic assistance from the world’s largest bilateral donor—the United States—has harmed human rights in Southeast Asia after the Cold War. Aid Imperium advances a novel conceptualization of foreign strategic support (i.e., foreign aid in conjunction with public diplomacy) and provides an impressively researched narrative of its effects in the Philippines and Thailand.
Aid Imperium is motivated by two trends about US foreign relations with developing countries. First, foreign strategic support, which combines foreign aid programs and public diplomacy (“strategic discourse”), varies over time. In periods of heightened security concerns (e.g., the Cold War, post-9/11 years), foreign strategic support emphasizes state security and militaristic priorities. When security concerns wane (e.g., after the Cold War until 2001), foreign strategic support emphasizes human rights and democracy promotion abroad. This observation underlies, the book’s theory of “convergence” in which a prospective aid recipient strategically adapts its discourses and policy preferences to the interests of the potential donor and its own domestic public. If the donor prefers aid to enhance its security interests, recipient governments may opt to use aid to suppress human rights in the claimed pursuit of national security (e.g., counterterrorism efforts). In contrast, if the donor prefers to promote democratic rule and institutions, this assistance can empower reform-minded recipients’ governments to improve their human right conditions. In either scenario, the recipient government augments its public discourse to attract aid from the donor and to justify its use to its domestic public. The theory underscores how donor and recipient governments’ shared expectations and strategic purposes shape the patterns of use of foreign strategic support.
This theory of interest convergence connects with the book’s second observation: The variation in the amount and purpose of strategic support is associated with the magnitude and scope of domestic repression in the recipient countries. This claim is carefully evaluated with rich case studies of US post–Cold War foreign strategic support in the Philippines and Thailand. Structured in four chapters, the process tracing in each chapter is exemplary. Drawing on various primary documents, secondary accounts, and his own experience as a government analyst, Regilme meticulously describes how foreign strategic support from the United States and its emphasis on democracy promotion improved the protection of human rights—particularly physical integrity rights—in each country after the Cold War through to 2001 (chapts. 3 and 6 in the book). During this period, the ruling government in each country was also able to strengthen its domestic legitimacy. Yet, after the events of 9/11, US foreign strategic support shifted away from focusing on democracy promotion toward counterterrorism (chapts. 4, 5, and 7). This shift reoriented the discourse and subsequent behavior of each recipient government toward channeling foreign assistance to finance political repression, in large part to strengthen the regime’s waning domestic legitimacy.
While these two country cases provide persuasive evidence in line with the book’s theory of donor-recipient interest convergence, the empirical analysis exposes some gaps in the theory’s reasoning. One concern is why governments opt to use repression (primarily against opposition groups) as its means of strengthening its domestic legitimacy, rather than channeling foreign aid toward redistributive policies. For example, why not divert aid to shore up support from regime supporters? Another related concern is the (apparent) abrupt shift in domestic policy legitimacy as the orientation of US foreign assistance changes. Specifically, it seems that for foreign assistance to engender political repression, the recipient government has to also be experiencing declining public legitimacy. If this interpretation is correct, then this presents an important scope condition that refines the theoretical account. That said, the theory advanced in Aid Imperium does raise the possibility of several extensions that could be important to evaluate further. For example, the theory naturally leads one to ask: What are the possible dynamic effects of foreign aid over time? Would a reduction in aid have reversed effects? It also raises further inquiries into the effects of foreign aid on other measures of governance that are correlated with repression, such as military strength and the prospect for coups, or possible spillover effects, such as reduced economic growth stemming from political repression.
Turning to the empirical analysis, while Regilme does a solid job justifying the book’s case selection, it is unclear if the focus on Thailand and Philippines is representative of other US aid recipients; and relatedly, whether the insights from these cases are generalizable to other countries and/or periods (e.g., the transition from the Cold War to post–Cold War period). While Regilme discusses other possible country cases in the book’s final chapter, further discussion would have strengthened the book’s empirical reach. A natural next step is to evaluate Regilme’s argument in a broader set of countries, perhaps at the regional level or cross-nationally. Given the conditional nature of the book’s argument, this could be a statistical model that evaluates the joint effect of domestic political legitimacy and aid receipts (e.g., using “interactive effects”) on measures of human rights violations. Curiously, while Regilme is cognizant that endogeneity is a concern (e.g., US militaristic aid may be distributed to regimes with weak legitimacy), there is inadequate discussion of how the book’s case selection overcomes this challenge.
On the whole, these empirical and theoretical concerns are not fatal to the book’s central argument. Rather, they can be viewed as potential avenues for future research. A clear contribution of Aid Imperium is its conceptualization of foreign strategic support that combines the material and ideological components associated with foreign aid. In this regard, the book shows that depending on its ideological orientation, foreign aid can have negative or positive effects on human rights. This argument should appeal to scholars in comparative politics, international relations, and practitioners in human rights, foreign policy, and international development.
