Which Devil in Development? A Randomized Study of Citizen Actions Supporting Foreign Aid in Uganda

Debates over foreign aid effectiveness have neglected the views of recipients, especially as they compare aid to domestic government programs. We argue that citizens may see foreign aid as an escape from clientelism because aid is less politicized than government programs and citizens trust donors more. They may also favor multilateral over bilateral aid for similar reasons. We test the argument with a randomized experiment on a representative subject pool of roughly 3,600 Ugandan citizens. We randomly assigned the project funders for actual forthcoming projects and invited citizens to show support behaviorally. We find that citizens are significantly more willing to support foreign aid projects compared to government programs. A companion survey to the experiment reveals evidence that citizens perceive aid as less prone to politicization. Some evidence indicates that Ugandans also see multilateral donors as superior to bilaterals.