How has the emergence of China affected the use of US aid as a foreign policy tool? Previous studies have argued that the presence of an alternative donor can undermine an existing dominant donor's ability to gain influence through aid. However, less is understood about how previous donor-recipient relations can shape this dynamic and how recipients change their alignment over time. Recipients vary in their degree of reliance on an existing donor (i.e., share of that donor aid among total aid received). Dependent recipients are more susceptible to aid-for-policy deals and are less likely to defect even after an alternative donor enters. Yet, they can exercise their autonomy by gradually diverging from the dominant donor's preference in low-salient issues. Consequently, alignment change may be more gradual and partial for these recipients. I tests these expectations using UNGA votes as a proxy for foreign policy alignment. The results show that recipients can effectively exercise their autonomy amid great power competition via foreign aid.
Draft available upon request.
How do domestic protests affect the foreign policy of target governments? Mass mobilization, especially pro-democracy protests, undermines the survival of an authoritarian incumbent and increases the need for support from foreign partners (for resources, security, etc.). Given the US agenda of promoting democracy and human rights, international and domestic audiences can urge the US to place pressure on the authoritarian regime. When the United States was dominating bilateral aid, it could leverage aid to extract policy concessions from vulnerable incumbents, either in the leader’s response to protests or in other issue areas. Regardless, recipient autocratic leaders are constrained by their dominant donors’ interests. Yet, China and its alternative aid regime could change this dynamic. Because Chinese aid is not conditional on regime type and governance, autocratic leaders can turn to China for more aid. In short, I argue that the emergence of China as a prominent bilateral aid donor presents an outside option for threatened autocrats. I expect that pro-democracy protests will increase the likelihood of requests for aid and cooperation sent by autocratic regimes to China and decrease those to the US. I develop a measure of request for cooperation using the International Crisis Early Warning System (ICEWS) event data and find support for the hypothesis. The findings have implications for alignment choice amid US-China competition – threats to incumbent security may tip the balance between the US and China. In addition, they shed light on the consequences of the US pro-democracy agenda in strategically important regions with many autocratic regimes such as Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific more broadly.
Draft available upon request.
with Songying Fang
Middle powers, historically overlooked in international relations literature due to their limited ability to independently shape the global order, are now receiving renewed attention with the emergence of great power competition between the U.S. and China. Conventional wisdom suggests that these countries face pressure to choose sides in this rivalry, weighing close security relations with the U.S. against close economic ties with China. This paper argues that middle powers’ alignment decisions extend beyond binary choices and are shaped by historical foreign policy legacies, significant third-country relationships, and regional identity. Using a survey experiment in Vietnam, we explore how these factors influence public views on U.S.-China alignment, revealing that the alignment strategies of middle powers are multidimensional, influenced by complex domestic and international considerations.
with Iji Tetsuro
The conventional wisdom is that Southeast Asian states tend to balance their relations with China and the United States to ensure autonomy. This study explores varying policy narratives and evaluates to what extent shifting discourse corresponds to tangible changes in cooperation with these major powers. We use bilateral trade and foreign aid to measure the depth of economic cooperation, and arms sales and troop presence for security relations. We also extend data on South China Sea incidents to examine whether and how China has reacted differently to the Philippines’ stance. The results show that while the Aquino III and Duterte administrations advanced sharply contrasting narratives toward the major powers, the structural realities of the Philippines’ economic and security relations, as well as China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea, remained largely unchanged. As such, the study advances an understanding of the logic and limits of small-state hedging amid intensifying US-China rivalry.