Local public goods and social services are delivered through a variety of funding and implementing channels in aid-dependent countries. Existing research proposes that international aid to governments undermines government legitimacy and the fiscal contract between citizens and their rulers. We outline how the implications of fiscal contract theory differ depending on whether aid takes the form of donors funding projects through the government, donors funding projects through NGOs, or the government outsourcing project implementation to NGOs. We test these predictions using an informational experiment among N = 2446 Ugandan adults in 18 communities with foreign-funded, NGO-implemented projects. We randomize the amount of information that we provide about these projects. Our results suggest that donor-to-government funding has limited effects on citizens’ opinions about their government. Only bypass aid (i.e., donor aid to NGOs) undermines citizens’ assessments of government performance, while only NGO implementation reduces the willingness of citizens to pay fees to the government or to donate to community funds. Government legitimacy, as measured by individuals’ willingness to comply with government instructions, is very low to begin with and is not influenced by information about different forms of aid.

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不同形式的对外援助如何影响政府合法性？来自乌干达信息实验的证据

在依赖援助的国家，地方公共产品和社会服务通过各种筹资和实施渠道提供。现有研究表明，对政府的国际援助会破坏政府的合法性以及公民与其统治者之间的财政契约。我们概述了财政契约理论的含义如何根据援助采取捐助者通过政府资助项目、捐助者通过非政府组织资助项目或政府将项目实施外包给非政府组织的形式而有所不同。我们使用信息实验在 18 个社区的 N = 2446 名乌干达成年人中测试这些预测，这些社区拥有外国资助的非政府组织实施的项目。我们随机分配我们提供的有关这些项目的信息量。我们的结果表明，捐助者对政府的资助对公民对其政府的看法的影响有限。只有绕过援助（即捐助者对非政府组织的援助）会削弱公民对政府绩效的评估，而只有非政府组织的实施才会降低公民向政府支付费用或向社区基金捐款的意愿。以个人遵守政府指示的意愿来衡量的政府合法性一开始就很低，并且不受有关不同形式援助的信息的影响。