United Nations General Assembly Voting and Foreign Aid Bypass

Does holding different foreign policy positions relative to the USA in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) influence US aid delivery decisions? Conventional wisdom on foreign aid suggests that donors provide more government-to-government assistance to well-governed countries and use non-state development actors in recipient countries with poor governance. This paper argues that strategic considerations also determine the choice of the channel of aid delivery. Countries that support US-backed resolutions in the UNGA witness more government-to-government aid than countries that hold different positions. I find considerable empirical support for this theory using newly available data on UN voting and an originally constructed measure of aid delivery from 2004 to 2011.