Looking at texts of election manifestos, this paper examines systematic differences among political parties within and across countries in how they position themselves on foreign aid and in how these manifesto pledges translate into commitments to disburse aid. Conventional wisdom suggests that left-leaning parties may be more supportive of foreign aid than rightwing parties, but also that foreign aid may not be sufficiently electorally salient for parties to stake out positions in campaign materials, such as manifestos. We leverage a new data set that codes party positions on foreign aid in election manifestos for 13 donors from 1960 to 2015. We find that parties differ systematically in how they engage with foreign aid. Left-leaning governments are more likely to express positive sentiment vis-à-vis aid than right-leaning governments. We evaluate the effects of positions on aid outcomes and find that positive aid views expressed by the party in government translate into higher aid commitments, though only for left-leaning parties.

中文翻译：

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从文本到对外援助的政治立场：1960年至2015年《党的宣言》中的援助提及分析

本文着眼于选举宣言的文本，考察了国家内部和国家之间政党之间系统性的差异，这些差异在于他们对外国援助的立场以及这些宣言中的承诺如何转化为对援助的承诺。传统观点认为，左倾政党可能比右翼政党更支持外国援助，而且，在选举方面，外国援助可能不足以使当事各方在竞选宣言等竞选活动中占仓。我们利用了一个新的数据集，该数据集编码了1960年至2015年期间13个捐赠者的政党在选举宣言中对外国援助的立场。我们发现，政党在与外国援助的互动方式上存在系统差异。左倾政府比右倾政府更有可能对援助表达积极情绪。