Legislative debates on foreign policy

We focus in particular on foreign aid policy. While development agencies largely control individual project decision, national legislatures (the U.S. Congress, the British Parliament, etc.) generally have considerable influence over broad policy outlines. Our goal is to identify the arguments for or against foreign aid that shape legislative outcomes, and to uncover patterns over time and across donor states in the salience of particular arguments. These patterns, in turn, can be used to improve our understanding of aid policy decision-making.

_{Photo: David Iliff - European Parliament, 2014. (CC BY-SA 3.0)}