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The Politics of Private Development Aid : Serving Recipient Needs or Donor Interests ?

Transnational NGOs allocate a large and increasing share of international development aid, much of it from non-governmental sources. Yet, we know not even how this private aid is distributed across recipient countries, much less what explains the allocation. This paper presents an original dataset, based on detailed financial records from most of the major US-based development NGOs, which allows us to map and analyze the allocation of private development aid. We find little support for the common, cynical claim that development NGOs prioritize their organizational self-interest when they allocate private aid. By contrast, we find strong support for the argument that recipient need is a key consideration in their aid allocation, consistent with a view of development NGOs as principled actors and constructivist theories of international relations. This finding is robust to the use of several different measures of aid recipients' objective need and controls for numerous other possible explanations.