Regimes of International Giving: The Politics of Public and Private Foreign Assistance in the United States, Britain, and Sweden A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Ralitsa Donkova IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Jane Gingrich, advisor August 2015 © Ralitsa Donkova 2015 i Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of many people. I have incurred debts I can never repay. I could not have completed this project without the dedication and patience of my dissertation committee. This project emerged from the seminar papers I wrote for Michael Barnett’s class on humanitarianism and Jane Gingrich’s class on the welfare state. Since then, they have read multiple reiterations and countless incomplete drafts of the project, and have guided me in developing it. I wish to thank them for helping me through the many roadblocks and for not giving up on me when I avoided them. I thank them for sending recommendation letters at a moment’s notice, and for editing last- minute grant applications. I thank Michael Barnett for giving me the time and freedom to “find” my project in the early years of field research and writing, and for never making a research choice for me, but reminding me that I needed to make choices. I thank Jane Gingrich for her kindness, endless support and invaluable feedback, and for saving the dissertation in the eleventh hour. She pushed me to develop my ideas, and never stopped encouraging me. I thank Ronald Krebs for being my most ruthless critic. He has challenged me to think rigorously about the topic, and has spent countless hours talking through many ideas with me. This dissertation is better for his feedback. I thank Joe Soss for teaching me everything I know about methodology, and for opening my mind about the diversity of methodological options. I have not been an easy student to teach (to put it mildly), and it is a testament to my committee’s remarkable patience and mentorship that I ever finished the dissertation. I thank them for giving me a chance to defend it after I had long spent all my second chances. I owe great thanks to my family. They have suffered through many absences and freak- outs. I thank my mother for instilling in me the value of education, and for her infinite encouragement and generosity. I thank my brother for providing me with distractions, suggesting and providing novels and movies, fixing countless computer issues, and for making me laugh. I thank Jean Grossholtz and Eileen Elliott for giving me a home in the U.S., and for believing in me. Winters in Minnesota were bearable in part because I knew I could always escape to 10 Jewett Lane. My research has been funded by the generous support of several institutions. At the University of Minnesota, I was supported by a year-long dissertation writing fellowship from the Department of Political Science, the Hella Mears Graduate Fellowship from the Center for German and European Studies, and the Graduate Research Partnership Program from the College of Liberal Arts. From Mount Holyoke College, I received the Ruth Lawson Fellowship at the Department of Politics, and the Class of 1905 Fellowship at the Alumnae Association. The Harry S. Truman Library Institute provided me with a grant to conduct research at the Harry S. Truman presidential archives. Colgate University provided funding for an undergraduate research assistant in Spring 2014. I have presented research findings at multiple conferences with the financial support of the ii Department of Political Science and the Graduate and Professional Students Association at the University of Minnesota. Judith Mitchell, Alexis Cuttance, Beth Ethier, and especially Jessie Eastman helped me navigate the ocean of paperwork required to complete the Ph.D. degree. They have processed countless reimbursement forms, ordered meals, and scheduled rooms. Their invaluable support of my teaching and organizing MIRC allowed me to focus on my research knowing that they have everything else under control. Jessie Eastman signed and submitted mountains of forms to make it possible for me to defend the dissertation and complete the degree. I owe great thanks to many archivists and librarians at the University of Minnesota, the British Library, the National Archives, and the Harry S. Truman Library and Archives. Their dedication in hunting down documents and books for me was invaluable. Many friends have heard more about the joys and hardships of writing a dissertation than they ever cared for. Denis Kennedy has been the best dissertation sibling a graduate student could wish for. I thank him for the encouragement, feedback, accountability checks, and travel companionship through the years. Our Google chats solved many a problem. Hannah Rogal has nurtured my body and soul at wonderful dinners, porch talks, walks around Uptown, and long phone conversations. Erin McCarthy has been my constant cheerleader and toughest editor since the evenings we spent at the Mount Holyoke library. She has read every fellowship and grant application, and has spent hundreds of hours on the phone analyzing every heartbreak and triumph of writing this dissertation. Hannah and Erin have pushed me countless times to overcome my fears and have inspired me through their work to be a true Mount Holyoke woman. They have kept me sane through the dark times and shared my joy through the good times. I am grateful to Mount Holyoke for bringing them into my life. I thank Jenny Lobasz and Lauren Wilcox for being incredible mentors, for giving me shelter at conferences, and for being key nodes in my academic network. I have received valuable feedback, encouragement and support from many of my colleagues at the Department of Political Science: Veronica Michel, Moira Lynch, Darrah McCrakken, Geoff Dancy, Giovanni Mantilla, Brooke Coe, Rock, Henry Thompson, Robert Asaadi, David Forrest, Matt Hindman, Jonas Bunte, Matt Jacobs, Kathryn Sikkink, David Samuels, Joan Tronto, and Daniel Kelliher. The organizers of MIRC and the Comparative Politics Proseminar provided multiple opportunities for me to present my research and receive feedback. Eti Shechtman, David Collier, Rania Bellou and Charlotte Lydia Riley gave me friendship and cared for my wellbeing during my fieldwork trips. I thank them for visiting pubs and museums with me. In Hamilton, great friends helped me through the last two years of teaching and trying to finish the dissertation. Maggie Suhanovsky, Todd Springer, Deniz Civril, Danny Barreto, and Paul Humphrey provided encouragement and support, and even bribed me with food. I would like to give special thanks to Paul Goren for pushing me to finish the dissertation when I had given up. iii Abstract In 2014, the United States spent 0.19% of GNI on official foreign assistance, while private giving amounted to 0.13% of GNI. Whereas in Sweden, official giving was 1.1% and private giving was 0.003%. Most scholarship suggests that this variation demonstrates a general public preference for high government spending in Sweden versus a preference for a private solution in the United States. I challenge this claim, and argue that the spending patterns are only one expression of a deeper variation on the relationship between public and private foreign assistance. In all donor countries the public and private sectors of foreign aid are crucially linked; however, the form of the linkages – such as funding levels and autonomy of action – varies widely. For example, in Sweden, relief and development NGOs although dependent on the government for funds, have a surprisingly autonomous role. In Britain, the public and private aid sectors operate largely independently from each other, addressing different needs. And in the United States, despite comparatively large private funding, NGOs often have restricted autonomy and are highly dependent on official policy. This dissertation makes two key contributions: it theorizes the relationship between the public and private sectors of foreign assistance as a regime of international giving, and it explains the variation we observe on it as grounded in the historical development of domestic foreign aid institutions. I argue that domestic norms and beliefs about the role of charity at the time that countries created their official foreign aid institutions in the wake of World War II have deeply shaped their contemporary foreign aid regimes. These norms about the role of charity were institutionalized in a number of funding and regulatory institutions that defined how the public and private sectors of foreign assistance worked with each other. iv Table of Contents List of Tables ................................................................................................................... vii List of Figures ................................................................................................................. viii Chapter 1 – Introduction .................................................................................................. 1 Research Questions .................................................................................................................... 1 Literature Review ...................................................................................................................... 7 Official Foreign aid ................................................................................................................. 8 Humanitarianism ..................................................................................................................