Analysis of the Article about Foreign Aid, Democratization, and Civil Conflict by Saun and Tirone - Assignment Example

FOREIGN AID, DEMOCRATIZATION, AND CIVIL CONFLICT The big question asked by (Saun and Tirone is, how does the receipt of democracy aid contribute in various states, regarding civil conflicts? The conclusion drawn is that there exists a potential means to democracy that improves the risk of democratization, and that programs of democracy assistance can significantly play a positive role (Saun and Tirone 2011). The article contains literature discussing the concept of democracy. An advanced argument by Mansfield and Snyder (1995) indicates that democracy transition are potentially violent, implying that democratizing states, usually, are prone to civil and interstate wars. There are other scholars with similar contribution (e.g., Fearon 1998; Lake and Rothchild 1996). A contention by (Saun and Tirone 2011) is that democratic transitioning develops an environment that easily encourages the rise of conflicts through the induction of exclusionary polarization and nationalism in the society. Significant exceptions towards the democratization-conflict tendency emerge in such countries as Tanzania, Malawi, Burkina Faso, and Kenya, all having experienced a democratic move within 20 years period without encountering much civil conflict. The authors argue that the key factor that “shelters” such democratizing states from violence comes from the democratization aid (Saun and Tirone 2011). The basic hypothesis by (Saun and Tirone 2011) is that countries that receive external democratic help are least impacted by domestically initiated political violence (Saun and Tirone 2011). The proposition by Snyder (2000) regarding instability indicates that in the initial phases of democratization are favored by two conditions via which civil conflict may emerge: there is the exploitation of rising nationalism by political elites, in the name of achieving their selfish ends and, therefore, creating society divisions, and that there is a general weakness on the side of central government in preventing the polarizing tactics of elites. (Saun and Tirone 2011) proposes that the assistance programs of democracy can potentially provide a restrictive force regarding the danger of politically initiated domestic violence; notably, even when a state lacks strong institutions, which would help, manage democratization, democracy aid can potentially provide an external source of stability, strength, and state credibility to ease the transition. The role played by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) when Indonesia underwent the transition. Ideally, Indonesia attained democracy in 1999 from the Suharto’s regime (Saun and Tirone 2011). Some of the specific ideas developed as measurable and testable variables can be identified from the literature itself. An argument by Carothers (1996) indicates that even when a failure is experienced from the assistance programs of democracy in realizing the desired impacts in some states, they can also be significant to act as a boost in public commitment and morale in the initial phases of democratization. Improving the morale and commitment of the public to attain principles of democracy may be key in maintaining domestic political stability since the advanced commitment towards democracy can help reduce attacks which may be directed to the newly come regime. The authors, therefore, hypothesize the scenario. The plan to test hypothesis uses an ODA sample. The sample used by the authors in their study encompasses the Official Development Aid (ODA) integrating eligible states from 1990 to 2003. Additionally, the authors use dataset of UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict to assume that variability (Gleditsch et al. 2002). Notably, the democracy aid level is used as the major theoretical variable. Conflict Initiation is assumed the dependent variable. The source of data for the variable is drawn from the categorization aid of OECD as expected for “Civil Society and Government” (OECD 2007, 118). The approach of statistics takes the dependent variable to represent the Conflict Initiation, and further be represented by dummy variable in the assumption of 1 as the annual value when the experienced domestic violence starts, registering the death of 25 or above without an initiation of external aid of democracy (Gleditsch et al. 2002; Marshall and Jaggers 2002). Use of a negative coefficient instead of a negative one would generate different results. computed marginal effect would be a positive value with a very small standard error implying that a state in the recipient of a Democracy Aid dollar for every 1,000 people is at a lower danger of encountering a conflict compared to the statistic generated when using a negative coefficient. The resultant of the expected interaction helps in drawing conclusions (Ree and Nillesen 2009). The process of issuing aid external democracy aid may be described as endogenous, and it is concerned with the basis of providing democratic aid. In cases where immediate conflict’s threat somehow influences the decision of donors on whom the recipient should be and the capacity of assistance; such interfered model would therefore be established on biases (Saun and Tirone 2011). To help solve the problem of end endogenous aiding, lagging is recommended. The implementation of lagging of aid flows would be a significant means of dealing with both the short run and long run endogeneity. However, as argued by (Nillesen and de Ree 2009), lagging aid may cover democratic need in biases, thus insufficiently attending to the problem in question, and donors may be caused to adjust the aid capacity. (Angrist and Krueger 2001; Angrist and Pischke 2009). For their IV analysis, they decide to base their models on the ones adopted by various studies analyzing the effect of the regressors of endogenous (aid allocations and economic growth). In line with the acquired studies, the authors estimate the effect of democracy aid on conflict initiation by the use of the “Instrumental Variables Two-Stage Least Squares” approach (IV-2SLS) (Saun and Tirone 2011). Figure 1 shows a graphical representation of the predicted chances of conflict while undergoing democratization, given that there is the provision of democratization aid (Vreeland 2008). The conclusion reached is that the external democratic aid assists the afflicted countries in addressing their commitments in a better way in the initial democratic phases (Saun and Tirone 2011). Notably, most arguments presented by other theorists tend to be similar regarding democratic aid, and therefore a significant variance can be observed in the integrated democratic dynamics. The sound recommendation is that the future work conducted on the same phenomenon should assess whether the same democracy aid may be adversely effective in peace maintenance (Saun and Tirone 2011). Reference Saun, Burch, and Tirone, C Daniel. “Foreign Aid, Democratization, and Civil Conflict: How Does Democracy Aid Affect Civil Conflict?” Read More