SPRING 2016 ISSUE -- W EDITS 4:19 version

MONITORJOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIESVolume 21, Number 2 Spring 2016

Executive BoardArianna Talaie, Editor in Chief

Mitchell Croom, Managing EditorAmanda Blair, Senior Copy EditorCaper Gooden, Senior Copy Editor

Bryan Burgess, Director of Public RelationsThor Vutcharangkul, International Interviews Chair

Elizabeth Courtney, Production EditorShivani Gupta, Secretary

Alex ColeAndrew Warner

Austin SpiveyBrittany Parowski

Carolyn De RosterChris Gundermand

Courtney Blackington

Ellie DasslerEmily Jackson

Grace HofbauerGraeme Cranston Cuebas

James WillardJessica Joyce

Katherine LuKellie Strand

Matthew RibarNicole Walsh

Rowan AndersonTorey Beth Jackson

Tian WeinbergVenu Katta

Zarine Kharazian

Editorial Board

The Monitor is the journal of international studies at the College of William and Mary. Our aim is to promote and publish student work that contributes a new perspective to multicultural understanding. We are an interdisciplinary publication dedicated to serving an increasingly independent world.

Submissions should be sent to [email protected]. For more information, please visit our website at http://www.monitorjournal.org/

The opinions expressed in the articles in this journal are strictly those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions of the Monitor or its staff.

Contents

PREFACE Editor’s Note Double Blind- Review Process Acknowledgements

RACE & IDENTITY Mestizaje, Manuel Quintín Lame, and the Indigenous Struggle for Resguardos Jeremy Ross ELECTORAL PROCESSES & DECISION-MAKING The Operation El Dorado Canyon Decision-Making Process Christian McConville

Electoral System Shift and Political Representation in the Russian State Duma (2003-2007) Alexandra Cole

FOREIGN AID

Chinese Foreign Aid and U.N. Votes Darice Xue

3

8

21

32

43

Editor’s Note We believe in promoting an interdisciplinary approach to the world in which we live. It has been the foremost philosophy of the Monitor since 1993 to encourage a multiplicity of international research interests, from linguistics and psychology to race and economics; to diversify and widen the discourses that make up International Studies. With the support of the Reves Center for International Studies, this publication offers an outlet for student researchers who seek to spread knowledge and further contribute to their fields.

The four pieces we have selected for this issue span international electoral processes, presidential decision-making, indigenous resistant movements, and the impact of foreign aid on global dynamics. We commence the journal with a look inside the role of racial inter-mixing, or mestizaje, in the disbanding of communal landholding practices and indigenous identity in Colombia. The journal moves on to observe both the ideological and institutional factors that influenced President Ronald Reagan’s decision to raid Libya in April of 1986. Our third piece analyzes the new electoral system in the Russian State Duma, considering whether media and electoral polices have ostracized smaller political parties from gaining proper representation in the legislature. We conclude the issue with an investigation on what has been motivating Chinese foreign assistance to developing countries, and evaluate the effects of its economic escalation on international order.

Individually, each article presents new analysis and understanding in their respective subject field. Together, they prove that undergraduate research matters, and that it deserves a place in academic discourse beyond the classroom. On behalf of the 2015-2016 Editorial Board and Staff, I proudly present to you the Spring 2016 issue of the Monitor: Journal of International Studies.

Arianna TalaieEditor in Chief

Double-Blind Review Process Pursuant to our desire to adopt the best models of academic integrity and excellence within the academic community, the Monitor uses a double-blind review process similar to that used in most professional academic journals. The process seeks to divorce author from scholarship and personal considerations from editorial responsibility. When a submission is received it goes to an e-mail account to which the Managing Editor alone has access. The Managing Editor ensures that all identifying marks on any paper we receive are removed before they are sent to reviewers. Any reviewer that is acquainted or familiar with the paper or can identify the author returns it without review, and the paper is sent to someone else. Two reviewers review each submission, and a third is engaged in the case that the first two reviewers disagree. The only papers that are not reviewed are those that are determined to be out of scope, most commonly because they do not treat a foreign topic. Our reviewers are given uniform instruction and training in reviewing papers, minimizing variation between reviewers to the greatest extent possible. Reviewers are given papers on topics with which they have academic familiarity, and are given a week to review each paper to ensure that they have ample time to give each entry proper consideration. At the end of each semester, those papers that received either (a) two favorable reviews or (b) mixed reviews followed by a favorable tiebreaker review are read in their entirety by the Executive Board. The number of such papers vacillates, but is typically between ten and twenty. The selection thereafter occurs by deliberation and consensus of the Executive Board. The Managing Editor remains at this final stage the sole board member who, by necessity, knows the identity of authors. This editor refrains from comment or vote if personally familiar with the author. Any executive board member who can recognize by content or style the author of any given paper refrains from comment or vote on that paper. The Monitor, confident of the integrity of the process, does not prohibit editors from submitting papers. As our aim is to publish the best in undergraduate research, to exclude any individuals interested in scholarship would be counter- productive to our mission. Editors’ papers are subject to the same double-blind process and are held to the same scrutiny. Any editor with a paper under final consideration refrains from comment or vote. We share this information because to doubt the selection process is to question the merit of published papers. As it is the aim of the Monitor to support and encourage undergraduate scholarship, it is also our duty to preserve the integrity and transparency of selection. The double-blind review is not perfect—no process is—but we carry it forward with the utmost commitment to professionalism, excellence, and unbiased editorial responsibility.

Acknowledgements

The Editorial Board of the Monitor would like to thank the following indi-viduals for their support. Without the contributions, guidance, and effort

of these and many others, this issue would not have been possible.

Michael TierneyStephen Hanson and the Reves Center

Lisa Grimes, Joel Schwartz, and the Charles Center Anita Hamlin Forrest and the Office of Student Leadership

DevelopmentThe Media Council

The Department of AnthropologyThe Department of History

The International Relations ProgramThe Department of Government

T.J. ChengBrian Blouet

William FisherHiroshi Kitamura

Laurie KoloskiSharon Zuber

Mestizaje, Manuel Quintín Lame, and the Indigenous Struggle for

ResguardosJeremy Ross

Between 1890 and 1939, a movement of indigenous resistance led by Manuel Quintín Lame took place at the height of a liberal assault on the material conditions that underwrote various indigenous cultures and societies in Colombia. Quintín Lame, his indigenous followers, liberal reformers, and missionaries recognized the simultaneous processes of peasantization and mestizaje, or racial inter-mixing, and associated these processes with the destruction of communal landholding, or the resguardo system. Indigenous identity was fraying in areas where resguardos had been broken up by white progressive-minded political figures over several decades. These processes motivated Quintín Lame’s militant and radical philosophy, as well as the character of indigenous resistance throughout Colombia. For every trope that appears in white and liberal writing on indigenous society and culture, Quintín Lame theorized a competing vision that rejected the need for white- and mestizo-directed change. His campaign of resistance diffused a vision of indigenous history and society that would be incorporated not only into those of his followers, but also those of indigenous movements during the internal conflict of 1964 to the present day.

Liberal Assault on Resguardos and the Disappearing Indian Since the War of Independence, liberal elites in Colombia viewed the privatization of resguardos not only as an essential element of building a post-colonial nation, but also as something that would benefit indigenous peoples. Liberals of the mid- to late-nineteenth century typically viewed conquest and colonial administration as responsible for the “Indian’s lack of spirit and enterprise.”1 By the late nineteenth century, Colombian liberals had defined citizenship in a way that required indigenous persons to adopt traits that exemplified whiteness, including: “money, commerce, comfort, hygiene, Christianity, and the cultural values associated with such things.”2 An earlier Bolivarian ideal of privatizing resguardo lands and

JEREMY ROSS is a senior at the College of William & Mary majoring in History and minoring in Latin American Studies. He would like to thank Professor Betsy Konefal, who has been a constant source of guidance and inspiration not only in this research, but also with several other projects over the past year and a half. He plans to attend graduate school in history and aspires to become a historian in the future.

7Indigenous Struggle

turning indigenous persons into freeholding farmers of small plots had faded in favor of a racial comparison of indigenous Colombians, Afro-Colombians and whites as producers, consumers, and citizens. For instance, according to a leading liberal educator, Enrique Cortes, “if we take a [black] Magdalena boatman or an Indian from Cudinamarca and compare him with an educated Bostonian, we will have before us both our starting point and our goal.”3 Of indigenous housing patterns, one observer states: “their material aspect and disposition in no way corresponds to the beauty of the land around them; the indigenous nature…does not attempt, nor does it conceive of, comfort in homes, limiting itself to putting up badly distributed and unsheltered thatched huts or houses.”4 This characteristic was cited as material evidence for the need to stimulate change within indigenous communities and societies. Elites offered suggestions as to the proper way to racially and economically modernize Colombia. Typically, the methods discussed included interbreeding to transform indigenous persons into mestizos, or influencing the indigenous through proximity to the supposedly positive characteristics of whites. In practice, the distinction between these two strategies was blurry. However, a clear preference emerged for the creation of a class of mestizo smallholders and sharecroppers.5 In 1863, one observer noted in response to the war with many Páez leaders in 1859-1862 that:

Liberals and elites increasingly relied on the promise that the influence of whites on indigenous Colombians would lead the country into an era of legitimate nationhood and civilization. When these expectations were not met, indigenous and Afro-Colombians were often blamed. The priest David Gonzalez, who worked in the locality of Quintín Lame’s birth, Tierradentro, Cauca, from the 1920s to 1960s, attributed the failure of civilizing missions squarely on the region’s indigenous population:

[We should] either give an English or North American speculator company part of the land, on condition that they found and maintain a settlement there; or mount a strong expedition against the Indians, by which, destroying their houses and crops, we would capture men and women of all ages and transport them to another location where an abundant population would restrain them…a foreign settlement would be like a colony and would impede, as in other countries, all sorts of upheavals and excesses.6

The government has tolerated the absurdity that the Indians believe and act as if they were the owners of immense plots of land…For this reason [the government] left the Páez race abandoned to their natural indolence, to their racial laziness, to vegetate in their lack of feelings of dignity, and in the absence of any desire for self-improvement, since it is a fact that the Indians by their natural inclination wish to remain in their primitive state.7

8 The Monitor - Spring 2016

Here, Gonzalez prompts the question: why would indigenous land ownership be considered absurd, especially given the long-standing practice of resguardos by Colombian elites? That Gonzalez is perplexed and indignant about the socioeconomic positions of indigenous Colombians at this time demonstrates the prominence of liberal ideologies regarding landholding and mestizaje, as well as the general success enjoyed by settlers at the expense of the indigenous population. It also betrays a common condescension towards indigenous conceptions of social and economic life. Efforts to alter the structures of indigenous life to fit liberal political philosophies of nationhood alternated between discussions of aiding the indigenous (i.e. guiding them from a savage to a civilized state) and shaping them into contributors to Colombia’s economy.8 As the ideology of whitening became a political consensus, white and mestizo social, religious, and political sectors adopted the notion that indigenous peoples must be pushed into economic development by geographical and biological mixing with whites and mestizos. By the time David Gonzalez was writing in the 1960s, his beliefs about mestizaje were extremely blunt: “Mestizaje is necessary for the material moral progress of this land. In spite of a thousand obstacles mestizaje has been inevitable; it ought to be overwhelming in its intensity, subject to the laws of Christian morality.”9 For Gonzalez, the conditions of landownership and race were inseparable. Indigenous persons could learn “those traits so natural in the white race” when leaving their own lands to work on haciendas (agricultural estates), where “they see the means to wealth: to improve the conditions of life, to educate children.”10 It is when “the Indian returns to his land and continues in the same life of his ancestors” that the lessons learned are forgotten, and indigenous people continue living as they were first encountered “by the conquistadors.”11 According to Gonzalez, the two key elements guiding the indigenous from a state of “barbarism” to one of civilization include the colonization of their lands by whites and the simultaneous intermixing of white and indigenous people. Without both aspects, the indigenous man would instinctively pick up and seek out his old life, dooming any possibility of racial and cultural improvement. Gonzalez elaborates, tying not only the development of the land and the indigenous and mestizo races to the division of resguardos, but also to the union of white men and indigenous women: With great slowness has the law of mestizaje been implemented, but

mestizaje has found itself attached to the [colonial] Law of the Resguardo. Mestizaje that ennobles the blood and makes prosperous the land, is that which is created between the white boy and the indian girl, NOT that of the indian boy and white girl.


This quote establishes a vision of progress in which the white male, through his natural inclinations towards decency, ambition, patriotism, and sense of belonging to Colombia, improves everything around him. Gonzalez also laments that the central government failed to adequately support white settlers in Tierradentro, and although “laws [had] been decreed in favor of indigenous progress…[in practice], the government had not consented so that the white element, the civilized, could situate itself to put in movement the prosperity of the lands where the Indians circulate.”13 Colombia’s backwardness and inability to progress as a nation is perceived by Gonzalez as the fault of many actors, not just the indigenous. That the Colombian government and the Caucan municipal government failed to dismantle resguardos by the dawn of the twentieth century ultimately had “an effect against the indigenous, [and against] the Fatherland as well.”14 Still, the government’s failures lied in not forcing the indigenous of Cauca to change their land tenure patterns and culture. Only when the Caucan regional government accelerated the dismantling of resguardos in the 1890s and first decade of the twentieth century, finally backed by a stronger central government, could Tierradentro move in a direction in which it would no longer be a “region of barbarians,” but instead, one in which “that progress and that wealth only exist in an embryonic state.”15 Tierradentro was a region to which mestizaje and “civilization” had arrived late, explaining the embryonic state of the symbols of “progress” cited by Gonzalez. Recurrently, Gonzalez voiced the need for regional and national intervention to aid white incursion into Tierradentro and Cauca. Even by the 1960s, he felt that “[it] is found in the heart of the Fatherland, near Popayan, near Cali and Neiva, a block of barbarians, almost cannibals…[because] for many years Christian civilization was not seen, it was paralyzed [in Tierradentro].”16 Gonzales identified the end of the Thousand Days War in 1902, in which “came a reconciliation of the big Colombian family,” as when the government of Colombia finally began to adequately support whites mixing with the indigenous and improve the land through working private plots, often in the form of indigenous and mestizo peasants working on large white-held haciendas.17 By legally defining and regulating resguardos, the government created a key mechanism for the process of white settlement,

The white man raises the Indian woman, makes her a señora, a true companion; the white feels the ambition to possess, to improve, and this ambition grows as his children come in order to create in them decency and procure them education; the white man aspires to honor the fatherland with his children. The Indian man, in taking a white woman for a wife debases her, forces indigenous customs on her, the offspring are confused with a race in a primitive state. If the white woman wants to accommodate her Indian husband, she will see herself abandoned, as nostalgia takes control of him, and he seeks out his hut.12


land accumulation and the peasantization of the indigenous population of Cauca. Gonzalez speaks of Law 89 of 1890, in which the process of destroying resguardos was outlined and reified legally. The full title read: “Law 89 establishing the manner in which those savages in the process of being reduced to civilized life shall be governed.” Among its provisions was included the goal to “[determine] how ought to be governed the savages so that they are reduced to civilized life.”18 Law 89 of 1890 provided the legal basis for resguardos until the 1991 Constitution, serving as the foundation of Colombia’s “special legislation concerning Indians.”19 While Law 89 stipulated protectionist measures safeguarding resguardos, it explicitly stated that resguardos should be privatized within fifty years, or by 1940. The project, conceived in independence and matured during the liberal ascendance of the nineteenth century, aimed to accomplish its homogenizing mission by that date. In 1905, the Law was strengthened with an amendment allowing regional authorities to claim areas for non-indigenous settlement, called zonas de población.20 Gonzalez emphasizes the importance of the zonas in bringing about prosperity in Colombia, stating that all missionaries in Tierradentro worked for the zonas’ creation beginning in 1927. As places where “[all races] can live together,” Gonzalez felt that the zonas were essential to creating spaces in which whites could improve indigenous blood and land.21 In reality, zonas functioned as a legal mechanism that settlers could use to take and privatize indigenous lands. Explicitly enshrined into law was the presupposition that communal landholding was anti-progressive. Later, left-wing organizations such as the Regional Indigenous Council of the Cauca (CRIC) and the Armed Movement of Quintin Lame (MAQL) would seize on Law 89 and demand its maintenance as a legal protection of their resguardos. However, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the title of the law and its aim echoed the sentiments of liberals, missionaries, and white settlers aiming to destroy any form of indigenous sovereignty or power, and transform the indigenous from a “savage” to a “civilized” state. Gonzalez’s views on landownership are a striking reflection of Law 89.

Manuel Quintín Lame: Enemy of Civilization and Mestizaje Manuel Quintín Lame outlines his philosophy on race, whiteness, nature, the history of Colombia, and the struggle to preserve indigenous humanity in his 1939 manuscript, The Thoughts of the Indian Educated in the Colombian Forests, hereinafter referred to as Los Pensamientos. Quintín Lame identified himself as a greatly needed leader for the indigenous people of Colombia, and his manuscript is intended to serve as a “horizon in the midst of darkness for the generations of Indians who sleep in those immense lands


of Divine Nature.”22 For Quintín Lame, indigenous identity and resguardos are inseparable, just as they are for Gonzalez. Ultimately, Quintín Lame constructs an anti-white, pan-indigenous construction of identity that is founded in a psychological and physical proximity to nature and a militant commitment to the preservation of all indigenous ways of life. Quintín Lame’s five major political positions were (1) “defense of resguardo against attempts to divide it; (2) consolidation of the cabildo as a center of political authority and organizing; (3) the reclaiming of lands usurped by landlords and the rejection of titles not based on royal decrees; (4) refusal by sharecroppers to pay rent; and (5) a reaffirmation of indigenous cultural values and a rejection of racial and cultural discrimination.”23 Each of these demands reflects Quintín Lame’s reaction to pressures from state actors, hacendados, and settlers. His thoughts on education, settlement, prosperity, civilization, and the contrasting lifestyles of whites and indigenous persons rejected wholesale ideologies of liberal progress. Quintín Lame opposed the idea that the indigenous existed in a savage state. Sarcastically referring to indigenous persons as “little indians,” a common phrase used condescendingly by whites and mestizos, Quintín Lame was conscious of liberal arguments. While he was a proponent of increased education and literacy, as well as widespread cross-ethnic and cross-regional indigenous struggle, he did not believe “civilization” was preferable to indigenous life as it was:

Here, Quintín Lame references the pejoratives that regional elites and whites frequently called him, and claims these as marks of pride. He does so by identifying any fight against white civilization, or the civilization that arrived with Columbus and the Spanish, as a just one. In his manuscript, Quintín Lame uses “the Spanish civilization,” “the white man’s civilization,” and “the Colombian civilization” interchangeably.25 Quintín Lame argues that the indigenous of Colombia should resist “civilization” if it denies their prerogatives and instead accommodates the system that arrived on October 12, 1492. In direct opposition to the progressive aims of Law 89, Quintín Lame rejects the idea that the indigenous need anything from whites and mestizos:

The Indian Quintín Lame, “the wild jackass,” “the savage Indian,” “the brute,” has been transformed, not into the jurist of the pedagogue, but into the wild jackass who renders homage to the newly born surrounded by poverty in the Inn of Bethlehem…in solitude [nature]…where the thinker is not afraid of any event engendered by civilization which arrived on October 12 of 1492 to murder, cowardly and villainous my ancestors who had been born and raised in this Guanani land before October 12.24


Los Pensamientos unequivocally rejects every aspect of white encroachment. “Capitalism” references the taking of indigenous land and the demotion of indigenous persons into positions of economic subordination to whites. Quintín Lame targets priests like David Gonzalez, who instead of seeking to shore up colonial-era protections of the indigenous, want to destroy them. Moreover, Quintín Lame explicitly rejects mestizaje. He rejects all policies that Gonzalez and other liberals viewed as necessities for rearing Colombia’s indigenous persons into “modernity.” Quintín Lame explicitly criticizes the utility of notions such as “prosperity,” noting that if the living conditions of whites represent prosperity, their actual conditions indicate that prosperity is not imitable: “after sixty [the white] becomes bent, because his blood is degenerated.”27 He also contrasts white and indigenous poverty, explaining that when faced with scarcity, whites “[become] like the rotten trunk of a tree thrown in the garden, eaten by worms.”28 The double blow of white settlement and mestizaje was the death knell of indigenous life that Quintín Lame fought against. His purpose was always to push back against “civilization,” so that “justice shall arrive and the Colombian Indian shall regain his throne.”29 Cauca was a region in which indigenous Colombians were particularly resistant to white settlement and mestizaje.30 The progressive project was most successful with the highland Indians of the north and center of the country than in the southwest/Cauca.31 Although Gonzalez stated that “progress” was in an embryonic state even by the 1960s, the resistance in Cauca had preserved resguardos and indigenous identity relatively well compared to the movement in Tolima, where Quintín Lame moved to in 1922. In Tolima, civil authorities did not consider the indigenous to be indigenous any longer, and all resguardos had been declared dissolved.32

Indigenous landholders were reduced to sharecroppers, or terrazguerros, contributing to a rapid weakening of indigenous identity. In response, Quintín Lame strongly advocated for the rights of sharecroppers and the return of their land. He recognized that this process was fundamentally linked to the development of rural capitalism, which was more advanced

The Indigenous race here in Colombia has been hated by all capitalism, and very few priests and religious have spoken out for it, because their thoughts have been far removed from the ideas of Father Friar Bartolomé de las Casas, because there have not been priests from our own race to point out the true right that the Indians of Colombia have: we the legitimate Indians, not those in whose veins already runs Spanish blood stained with envy, selfishness, and pride, and whose conscience from generation to generation comes down stained with sprinkles of Indian bloodshed.26


in Tolima than in Cauca during the 1920s and 1930s. The designation of Tolima’s indigenous population as non-indigenous rendered those who were able to hold onto resguardo land more susceptible to fraud, violence, or official confiscation and sale by public auction. The latter was the mechanism by which resguardo land was turned into zonas de población and haciendas, effectively destroying indigenous socioeconomic life. Quintín Lame was aware that resguardos must be protected and reconstituted to safeguard indigenous identity. His crowning achievement, in his own eyes, was the reconstitution of the resguardo of the locality of Ortega in the department of Tolima, which served as an example to indigenous Colombians as they “[rose] with the greatest aplomb to confront the Colombian Colossus.”33 Quintín Lame’s reception, at times as a messiah-like figure, as well as the backlash he received from local elites and whites, demonstrates the scope of his influence. On May 18, 1927, the document “The Right of the Indigenous Woman in Colombia” appeared as a broadside carrying the signatures of several thousand indigenous women from southern Tolima, stating, “the Son of an Indian woman shall sit on the throne” and referring to Quintín Lame as “the man who has never even clouded the mirror of truth.”34 The significance of his leadership among the indigenous population is reflected in the harsh reactions of whites, who saw Quintín Lame as a direct affront to their progressive plans for the modernization of Cauca and Tolima.35 For example, the governor of Cauca referred to Quintín Lame as the “instigator of a racial war.”36 Gonzalez agreed, noting that Quintín Lame invited “racial hatred” into the region.37 Regardless of the success of the movement at restraining progressive “civilization” in its destruction of communal and indigenous landholding, Quintín Lame’s rhetoric and campaign clearly echoed throughout the region among white, mestizos, and indigenous alike.

Changing Responses of the State and New Movements of Indigeneity Following the writing of Los Pensamientos in 1939, Quintín Lame’s volume of activity in Tolima declined significantly. The efforts of CRIC and MAQL in the 1970s and 1980s to achieve land reform for the indigenous of Cauca were not singularly inspired by Quintín Lame, although his movement had engendered a deep legacy. Specifically, CRIC appropriated his ideas in the 1970s. Los Pensamientos was published under the title En Defensa De Mi Raza in 1971, at the same time that various movements were forming in and around Cauca. Brett Troyan states that “in 1972 Quintín Lame was essentially a forgotten political leader and his demands were not on the forefront in the indigenous communities.”38 On the other hand, Joanne


Rappaport notes, “[Los Pensamientos] was a fundamental source of teachings for the Indians of Ortega, Tolima, [where] Lame passed the last 40 years of his life.”39 The indigenous of Cauca and Tolima were well aware of Quintín Lame due to high degree of political activity. Still, the publication acted as crucial tool that allowed new movements led by non-indigenous leftists to establish new relations with the state and various left-wing guerrilla armies, the latter emerging mostly between 1964 and 1970 at the beginning of the armed conflict. This new relationship was oriented to protect the indigenous persons in Cauca from the violence of the internal conflict. Two organizations in particular, CRIC and MAQL, responded to how the state targeted class-based political activity. The articulation of their political goals demonstrates the shift of the Cold War era Colombian state away from liberal progressive ideals of mestizaje and towards rigid anti-communism that allowed indigenous Colombians a degree of political voice, as long as reformist demands were shrouded in racial rhetoric. From the late 1960s on, the Colombian state and these organizations worked through an uneasy and often violent relationship to construct a new racial identity for the indigenous of Cauca. CRIC emerged from a previous organization, the National Association of Peasants (ANUC), which operated between 1966 and 1973. The organization successfully mobilized peasants in the late 1960s and developed a class-based revolutionary discourse that was antagonistic towards the state. The state met calls for an economic restructuring of Colombia with repression, which effectively caused a fracturing of the left in Cauca. CRIC arose in the context of this fracturing. In its first meeting on February 24, 1971, “some individuals made long speeches about the imminence of revolution and the need for revolutionary action.”40 What would become one of the most active indigenous rights organizations in the Cauca was not initially moving in that direction. Rather, it was focused on issues of class rather than race. A core group of organizers, notably non-indigenous, altered the rhetoric of CRIC so that by the second meeting in September 1971, the organization was decidedly on a path towards race-based strategies and goals. The non-indigenous activist Victor Daniel Bonilla explained this change in direction by stating, “I was not interested in the homogenizing discourse of Marxism...for the indigenous question Marxist theory was not usable.”41 Echoing the ideas of Quintín Lame, CRIC began to focus on a discourse that originated in the communities of Cauca, as opposed to the rigidly Marxist political vision of movements such as the guerrilla organization, the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC).42 In reality, CRIC’s ethnic demands became a vehicle for what


ultimately could not be separated from class-based discourses. CRIC, and MAQL later on, was staffed with non-indigenous persons at the highest levels.43 MAQL’s founders also solicited assistance with training from the guerrilla armies M-19 and the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN).44 Victor Daniel Bonilla, who was non-indigenous, felt that the singular identity of Páez did not yet exist in 1971, and was instead created by organizations such as CRIC: “Now [in 1998] the Páez can be spoken of almost as an identity, twenty or twenty-five years ago, no. One said ‘you are Páeces and the Páeces would say, What is that? We are from Jambolo [a place], etc.’ I had to use a lot of force to push that identity.”45 By the organization’s third meeting in July 1973, CRIC had decided on an ethnic strategy that transferred leadership roles to indigenous individuals, while previous non-indigenous leaders took advisory positions.46 Organizing in a way that emphasized indigenous rather than peasant identity provided a relatively less violent path forward. Thus, at this point, CRIC was keenly maneuvering around a state that was more focused on internal conflict than advancing mestizaje. The founding and composition of MAQL further illustrates that the defense of the indigenous movement in Cauca remained a partially non-indigenous affair, even after the leadership of CRIC was primarily passed to indigenous persons after the third meeting in 1973. The self-defense army was formed in response to heightened violence by agents of Caucan landlords in the late 1970s and early ‘80s and specifically, assassination attempts against members of CRIC.47 Trained by non-indigenous guerrilla armies, MAQL did not go public until 1985, when the organization responded to the assassination of a local indigenous priest and to heightened repression by the state. The timing of the announcement served to indicate to other guerrilla armies that the indigenous movement in Cauca wished to remain unaffiliated with other elements of the armed, class-focused left.48 Although the movement named itself after Quintín Lame to index the “resurgence of a pre-republican and age old tradition of indigenous people,” their leaders and members included some nonindigenous individuals.49 For instance, the first leader of MAQL was an Afro-Colombian man named Luis Angel Monroy.50 These two organizations cited Quintín Lame to establish the legitimacy of their struggle as an ethnic one—the only clear path against state repression at that time. That Quintín Lame had discussed “making the white the tenant of the Indian,” frequently spoke of eradicating whites within a given area, and recognized “legitimate Indians” as those with no Spanish blood, did not seem to matter to CRIC or MAQL. Because so many of the dispossessed in Cauca were indigenous, by grounding the


revolutionary struggle for the redistribution of land and resources in the colonial struggle for indigenous rights and protections, non-indigenous and indigenous activists alike could achieve their goals. Moreover, CRIC and other indigenous organizations subsequently scrubbed any serious narrative about non-indigenous leaders or members from their own histories.51 The National Indigenous Organization of Colombia stated in opening notes to the 1987 edition of Los Pensamientos:

CRIC and MAQL were both involved in the publication of the above text. The political claims of these two organizations were based in a tradition of resistance that extended back to the conquest, particularly as it was framed by Quintín Lame. Recognizing Quintín Lame’s writing in tandem with his struggle for the protection of resguardos was aimed to reveal the resilience of indigenous Colombians and legitimize their claims to their lands. If indigenous activists or their allies could claim the tradition of Quintín Lame’s resistance as an indigenous man, it provided a new argument for land reform that escaped the danger created by the internal conflict for class-based activism. Ultimately, this ethnic strategy resulted in the inclusion of indigenous perspectives in the drafting of the 1991 Constitution, which facilitated substantial land reform in Cauca by transferring ownership of nearly a quarter of Colombia’s land to the indigenous communities and persons.53 The spirituality and mysticism that Los Pensamientos effused was employed as a tool to support a nominally indigenous-led political movement. The political aims of Quintín Lame were adopted as a basis for the demands of CRIC and MAQL, and these organizations played an instrumental role in incorporating his vision into the Constitution of 1991. CRIC, MAQL, and the indigenous movement as a whole, diverged sharply from the armed resistance led by ELN and FARC. In 1997, one author stated that “the indigenous movement…considered itself clearly as a movement within the current system, economically and politically of Colombian society, to whose democratization it wishes to contribute…Its goal is to transform the current system, but not to overthrow it.”54 While indigenous persons in the Cauca region still dealt with the violence of internal conflict, the material success institutionalized by the 1991 Constitution changed the conditions for organizing. The project implemented by figures such as Victor Daniel Bonilla and other leaders of MAQL and CRIC seemed

The indigenous of Colombia have shown since the arrival of the Spanish a resistance to disappear as peoples (desaparecer como etnias), and also to cede our ancestral territories to the dominant castes that have governed the country since the conquest to our times…To recognize indigenous thought would be to admit to the impotence of the colonial and republican regimes to destroy a cultural heritage that has contributed to the formation of this country.52

17Indigenous Struggleall but natural after that time.

Conclusion On one hand, the functional preservation of Law 89 to protect the rights of indigenous Colombians was central to the missions of CRIC and MAQL. When these organizations won the rights to nearly a quarter of Colombia’s national land through the 1991 constitution, the indigenous movement achieved a major step towards its goals. Yet, in the words of Vasco Uribe, “this Constitution…marked a road towards integration, internationalization, and not towards recognizing pluralism and economic diversity…[thus] for the indigenous it is necessary to resist [these aspects of the Constitution].”55 The question of whether these reforms actually enable indigenous sovereignty, let alone place an “Indian on the throne” in any pocket of Colombian territory, goes beyond the scope of this paper. With the guerrilla warfare, as well as the paramilitary and state violence that has characterized Colombia since the 1960s, it is unlikely that these constitutional protections for resguardos alone can fully protect their inhabitants. The rhetoric and demands of Manuel Quintín Lame inspired many indigenous movements in twentieth century Colombia, demonstrating a reaction against progressivism and mestizaje. Such homogenizing trends, which sought to strip colonial-era remnants of economic and territorial sovereignty from indigenous Colombians, essentially amounted to plans for ethnocide, and in the eyes of Quintín Lame, the realization of the conquest’s harshest legacy: the destruction of indigenous life, culture, and history. While mestizaje may not have failed, given that less than four percent of Colombians currently identify as indigenous, the fight for indigenous identity and ethnicity carried well into the twentieth century, and internal conflict continues to the present day.


1 Frank Safford, “Race, Integration and Progress: Elite Attitudes and the Indian in Colombia, 1750-1870,” HAHR 71, no.1 (1991): 25. 2 Brooke Larson, Trials of Nation-Making: Liberalism, Ethnicity and Race in the Andes, 1810-1910 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 80. 3 Enrique Cortes, Escritos Varios (Paris: Imprenta Sudamericana, 1896), quoted in Marco Palacios, Coffee in Colombia, 1850-1970: An Economic, Social and Political History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 72. 4 Safford, “Race, Integration and Progress,” 24-25.

5 A smallholder owns his land and a sharecropper rents land, or resides on land in return for cultivating crops.

6 Joanne Rappaport, The Politics of Memory: Native historical interpretation in the Colombian Andes (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 82-83; the Páez, or Nasa, were an indigenous group from the Cauca region to which Manuel Quintín Lame belonged.

7 David Gonzalez, Los Paeces o Genocidio y luchas indígenas en Colombia (Bogotá: Editorial la Rueda Suelta, no date), 124, quoted in Gonzalo Castillo-Cárdenas, Liberation Theology from Below: The Life and Thought of Manuel Quintín Lame (New York: Orbis Books, 1987), 27.

8 See the quotation from Uribe Uribe; Rappaport, Politics of Memory, 82.

9 Gonzalez, Los Paeces o Genocidio y luchas indígenas en Colombia, 127.


11 Ibid.

12 Ibid., 127; “indian” is written in lowercase when quoted from works that used the lowercase spelling, and is otherwise is spelled as “Indian.”


14 Ibid.

15 Ibid., 123.

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid., 128.

Notes

19

19 Ibid., 21. 20 Rappaport, Politics of Memory, 86.

21 Gonzalez, Los Paeces o Genocidio y luchas indígenas en Colombia, 128. 22 Los Pensamientos par. 6 in Gonzalo Castillo-Cárdenas, Liberation Theology from Below: The Life and Thought of Manuel Quintín Lame, (New York: Orbis Books, Maryknoll, 1987): 98. 23 Rappaport, Politics of Memory, 103. 24 Manuel Quintín Lame, Los Pensamientos del indio que se educó dentro de las selvas colombianas, par. 238, quoted in Gonzalo Castillo- Cárdenas, Los Pensamientos del indio que se educó dentro de las selvas colombianas, ed. Cristóbal Gnecco (Cali: Editorial Universidad del Cauca, 2004) 150. 25 Quintín Lame, Los Pensamientos, par. 38, quoted in Castillo-Cárdenas, 107. 26 Quintín Lame, Los Pensamientos, par. 31, quoted in Castillo-Cárdenas, 105. 27 Quintín Lame, Los Pensamientos, par. 146, quoted in Castillo-Cárdenas, 130. 28 Ibid. 29 Quintín Lame, Los Pensamientos, par. 33, quoted in Castillo-Cárdenas, 105. 30 Rappaport, The Politics of Memory, 103. 31 Larson, Trials of Nation-Making, 82-83. 32 Castillo-Cárdenas, Los Pensamientos, 35. 33 Quintín Lame, Los Pensamientos, par. 57, quoted in Castillo-Cárdenas, 112. 34 Castillo-Cárdenas, Los Pensamientos, 37. 35 Castillo-Cárdenas, Los Pensamientos, 33. 36 Ibid. 37 Gonzalez, Los Paeces o Genocidio y luchas indígenas en Colombia, 121. 38 Brett Troyan, “Ethnic Citizenship in Colombia: The Experience of the Regional Indigenous Council of the Cauca in Southwestern Colombia from 1970 to 1990,” Latin American Research Review

Indigenous Struggle


43, no.3 (2008): 178. 39 Rappaport, Politics of Memory, 108.

40 Troyan, “Ethnic Citizenship in Colombia,” 175. 41 Ibid., 177. 42 Ibid., 175-177. 43 MAQL’s central founder was a Colombian of Hungarian descent. 44 Troyan, “Ethnic Citizenship in Colombia,” 184. 45 Ibid., 177. 46 Ibid., 181. 47 Ibid., 183. 48 Ibid., 185. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., 175-176. 52 Manuel Quintín Lame, Los Pensamientos del indio que se educó dentro de las selvas colombianas (National Indigenous Organization of Colombia, 1987), 3. 53 Troyan, “Ethnic Citizenship in Colombia,” 188. 54 Luis Guillermo Vasco Uribe, Entre Selva y Páramo: viviendo y pensando la lucha india (Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia, 2002), 245-246.

55 Ibid., 148-149.

The Operation El Dorado Canyon Decision-Making Process

CHRISTIAN McCONVILLE is a senior at the College of William & Mary majoring in International Relations and minoring in Economics. He has completed study abroad programs in Jordan and India. He would like to thank Professor Wilkerson for his assistance with this research as well as for his support both inside and outside the classroom. Moving forward, Christian hopes to combine his interest in U.S. national security with a focus on the Middle East and South Asia.

Operation El Dorado Canyon, a raid on Libya conducted by elements of the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy in April 1986, was a direct response to the Libyan-sponsored bombing of the La Belle Discotheque in West Berlin that killed Army Sgt. Kenneth Ford and fatally wounded Sgt. James Goins. Both the bombing and the raid were the culmination of a series of events in which Muammar Qaddafi, the late leader of Libya, challenged the United States primarily through his support for international terrorism targeting American citizens. He also nationalized the Gulf of Sidra, which led to a series of incidents off the coast of Libya in which the U.S. Navy clashed with the Libyan military. Ultimately, Operation El Dorado Canyon set the precedent for a militarized response to terrorism. This paper analyzes President Ronald Reagan’s decision to raid Libya. First, the paper discusses the key members of Reagan’s Administration and the social dynamics among his team. Next, the paper covers Reagan’s ideology and more broadly, the Cold War decision-making framework. Third, the paper examines the international circumstances of the period, focusing on Qaddafi’s support for and American frustration with terrorism. Finally, the paper evaluates the documents that institutionalized Reagan’s anti-terrorism policy and allowed for a military response. After addressing these elements of the decision-making process, the paper examines specific incidents in the Mediterranean Sea, Qaddafi’s response, the subsequent bombing at La Belle Discotheque, and Reagan’s decision to launch the raid on Libya.

Personalities and Team Sociology Ronald Reagan won the 1980 presidential election in a landslide. The election was, in fact, the largest non-incumbent victory in American presidential history.1 His success was partially attributed to his message of strength that counteracted President Jimmy Carter’s perceived weakness and remedied the general national malaise regarding American power in the

Chrsitian McConville


aftermath of Vietnam and the Iran Hostage Crisis. Once elected, Reagan implemented a national security policy that shifted away from relying on his National Security Adviser and towards his Secretaries of State and Defense as primary foreign policy advisors, a departure from the policy of his predecessors.2 Reagan’s management style emphasized the importance of delegation, and he often “preferred to convey general goals…letting his subordinates work out the details.”3 He wanted to establish the strongest team possible, and then interfere only when his expectations were not met. Additionally, his world-view was largely shaped by black-and-white, good-versus-evil ideas. This dichotomy enabled decisiveness, but could also produce hasty decisions without a full understanding of all conditions. With this mindset, Reagan perceived Muammar Qaddafi as a source of evil and interpreted his support for terrorism as a problem that needed to be addressed sooner rather than later.4 The relationship between Secretary of State George Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger also played an important role in Reagan’s decision-making process. David Rothkopf, CEO and Editor of the Foreign Policy Group, describes the interplay between the two secretaries as “the nastiest and most relentless of all the nasty, relentless battles that have riven every bureaucracy of the modern era.”5 Shultz had previously served as the head of the Office of Management and Budget, Secretary of Labor, and Secretary of Treasury, while Weinberger had been a close confidant of the President since their time working together in California, where Reagan served as governor and Weinberger held several high-ranking positions in state politics. Shultz and Weinberger rarely agreed on any issue, particularly in confronting terrorism. For example, American policy towards Lebanon in 1982-83 resulted in a divisive split between the two. Shultz favored leaving troops in place after Hezbollah bombed the Marine Barracks in Beirut, while Weinberger wanted to withdraw forces immediately. The bombing killed 241 service members, making it the deadliest day for the U.S. Marine Corps since 1945. Ultimately, Weinberger prevailed.6 Following the U.S. withdrawal from Lebanon, Shultz became the primary advocate for the use of force against terrorism, promoting “prevention, preemption, and retaliation,” because he wanted to counter perceived American weakness in the aftermath of the Barracks bombing.7 Weinberger instead advocated for a narrower approach, especially given the lack of a clear perpetrator when dealing with terrorism. He “could not help but recall that the 16-inch guns of the battleship USS New Jersey had failed to halt shelling and sniper fire directed at the Marines in Beirut,” and therefore cautioned against a massive military response.8 Shultz sought the support of the CIA and the Pentagon to employ stronger tactics against terrorist organizations, while Weinberger

23Operation El Dorado Canyon

was reluctant to resort to force in the fight terrorism. Reagan considered himself out of his depth in foreign affairs, but he sided somewhat with Weinberger because of their long working history.9 However, Shultz continued to speak publically in an attempt to generate public debate regarding counterterrorism policy. He believed that the government had both the right and the responsibility to respond to any entity that attacked the United States or American interests. Weinberger critiqued Shultz’s approach as ‘unfocused’ and instead argued that the United States should respond only when terrorists could be unequivocally identified. Shultz reacted to Weinberger’s proposal with disdain. Ultimately, this debate paralyzed American decision-making regarding terrorist activity, rendering the United States both unable and unwilling to take action.10 Because foreign affairs were beyond his expertise, Reagan faced difficulty in managing the dispute. Consequently, his National Security Adviser, Admiral John Poindexter, arranged private meetings for each Secretary to express his view to the President. In doing so, Poindexter was able to accommodate the views of both Shultz and Weinberger. When the situation in Libya arose, the two secretaries vehemently disagreed over action versus restraint in the Gulf of Sidra. Shultz argued that if Libya made aggressive moves during Freedom of Navigation exercises (FONs), the United States should attack several facilities on the Libyan mainland. Weinberger instead advocated restraint on behalf of U.S. naval forces. FONs involve sending the U.S. Navy into contested waters, in this case to challenge Qaddafi’s claim over the entire Gulf of Sidra. Qaddafi claimed a “Line of Death,” which meant that if any ship crossed it, a Libyan attack would ensue. Using the military concept of ‘proportional response,’ Poindexter decided to grant the onsite commander the ability to respond to aggressive Libyan behavior.11 Poindexter managed this dispute in a way that allowed each secretary to argue independently for their own counterterrorism policy, enabling both men to work together effectively. The key component of the anti-terror policy that Poindexter helped to engineer was “if Libyan action caused American casualties Reagan would authorize a strike against military and terrorist-related targets.”12 While this strategy was part of the series of FONs, it also established the basis for El Dorado Canyon and a military response to terrorism.

An Ideological Framework Although Operation El Dorado Canyon took place in the 1980s, the decision to raid Libya was not a direct outcome of the Cold War. Instead, the Cold War mindset shaped how the Reagan administration viewed regional


dynamics, despite the fact that they were often independent of competition between the U.S. and USSR. This globalist world-view formed the way the administration perceived events in the Middle East as part of the greater competition between the Soviet Union and the United States, more so than as a result of regional dynamics.13 Rather than analyzing something like the rise Islamic terrorism as an independent force, they saw it as an opportunity in which each actor in the region, whether it be a state or a non-state actor, could align with the United States or the Soviet Union.14 Therefore, Libya’s support for terrorism was seen as a result of Soviet influence. The Committee on Present Danger, a hawkish foreign policy interest group, influenced this globalist world-view. The Committee wielded strong influence over Reagan’s foreign policy because fifty members of the Committee had positions in the Reagan Administration.15 This organization molded the Administration’s Libya policy using a Heritage Foundation report that identified countries where Soviet influence needed to be challenged, among them Libya.16 The Cold War mentality led some members of the Administration to believe that the Soviets were supporting states like Iran, Syria, and Libya, which in turn were using terrorism to destabilize the West. Because of the supposed Soviet influence, terrorism became part of the Soviet Cold War challenge, elevating it in importance. 17 Reagan’s personal ideology was founded in several different concepts which made him susceptible to the beliefs of the Committee on Present Danger. First, Reagan was elected on a mandate of a hawkish foreign policy, especially in regards to terrorism. He applied Cold War rhetoric to understand terrorism as a struggle for civilization and a battle between good and evil.18 Furthermore, as part of his electoral mandate, the legacy of American weakness in the post-Vietnam era necessitated a strong response. Therefore, the Reagan Administration sought sufficient proof that would justify a military response to terrorism. Because they were unable to find it in the case of Beirut, Reagan sided with Secretary Weinberger in the aftermath of the attacks in Lebanon.

International and Domestic Circumstances Muammar Qaddafi, the late ruler of Libya, possibly influenced Operation El Dorado Canyon more than any other individual. After seizing power in a bloodless coup 1969, Qaddafi sought to establish Libya as the leader of Arab nationalism. His powerful anti-Western ideology stemmed from atrocities committed at the hands of Italians in Libya during World War II.19 Qaddafi’s personal hero, Egyptian ruler Gamal Abdul-Nasser, championed the Arab nationalist ideology. As a political movement, Arab nationalism advocates for a linguistically-unified Middle East, free from


outside domination and the perceived threat of Israel. However, Qaddafi became disillusioned with Nasser’s version of Arab nationalism after Egypt’s defeat in the Six Day War. In an attempt to revive Arab nationalism, Qaddafi promoted his “Third International Theory” that sought neutrality in the context of the Cold War.20 In his foreign policy, Qaddafi worked to establish himself as a global player, advocating for Arab unity and removing external influences from the Middle East. Practically, his foreign policy involved several attempts to merge Libya with other nations, whether through diplomacy in Egypt and Syria, or with force in Chad. Qaddafi also sponsored terrorist groups throughout the world, including the Black September Organization, the Irish Republican Army, and the Abu Nadal organization. While terrorism was the immediate cause of Operation El Dorado Canyon, it was Qaddafi’s attempts to nationalize the Gulf of Sidra that set a path towards inevitable conflict between the United States and Libya. Domestic politics placed pressure on the U.S. government to fulfill Reagan’s electoral promises, and to react to foreign terrorist groups that increasingly targeted American civilians. The American populace was disappointed in the Carter Administration’s failure to resolve the Iranian hostage crisis, perceiving Carter as inept. In contrast, Reagan promised that his response to international terrorism would be “swift and effective retribution.”21 Under the new Administration, it was less likely that Qaddafi would get away with his support of terrorist organizations that explicitly targeted U.S. civilians. Reagan’s campaign platform, along with a series of high-profile incidents that occurred during his presidency, heightened public pressure on the Administration to act.22 State-sponsored terrorism was a growing issue prior to Reagan’s election. For Qaddafi, terrorism provided a means to undermine Western support for Israel, thereby enabling an Arab nationalist agenda.23 Libya was considered the worst state sponsor of terrorism in the 1970s and ‘80s, and provided substantial amounts of funding, training, and weaponry to organizations around the world. Additionally, Libya used its diplomatic presence abroad to house and smuggle weapons in foreign nations, as well as to disseminate orders, as in the La Belle Discotheque bombing.24 Some of the most notable ways that Libya sponsored terrorist activity included: murdering a U.S. Ambassador in Sudan; bombing attacks in the UK to assassinate Libyan dissidents; and training, arming, and funding the Palestinians who conducted the Munich Olympic massacre.25 Terrorist attacks against Americans had been increasing in number and severity since 1970. Between 1968 and 1981, three thousand attacks killed one hundred and eighty-nine American citizens. Three hundred of those attacks occurred in the five years between Reagan’s inauguration and


April 1986, the month of the raid.26 Two of the highest profile attacks during that time period were undoubtedly the April 1983 bombing of the American Embassy in Lebanon and the October 1983 bombing of the Marine Barracks building, both of which occurred in Beirut. Reagan had originally deployed U.S. military personnel to Lebanon in 1982 to serve as part of the United Nations Multinational Force and support the emergence of a Lebanese government in the country’s ongoing civil war.27 Given Reagan’s forceful declarations against terrorism in the 1980 election, as well as his policy positions as expressed in official documents, the fact that he did not order a retaliatory strike against those who had killed around two hundred and fifty Americans may seem surprising. However, a number of factors may have influenced Reagan’s decision not to strike. Most importantly, the Administration lacked information regarding the perpetrators of the Beirut bombings. When combined with potential losses that may be incurred as a result of a strike, the Administration exercised restrain in Lebanon.28 However, in the case of the Berlin bombing, the immediate catalyst for the raid on Libya, the Administration had concrete proof of Libyan culpability. Secretary Weinberger had compared the bombing in Beirut in 1983 to an act of warfare, thereby setting a precedent of militarizing counterterror policy, which allowed the administration to use military force against Libya in 1986.29

Bureaucracy of Reagan’s Counterterrorism Policy Reagan’s National Security Council produced a series of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDs) dealing with the Administration’s policies towards Libya and terrorism. These ultimately set the stage for a military response to terrorism by shifting the anti-terror bureaucracy away from law-enforcement. The 1982 NSDD-30, titled “Managing Terrorist Incidents,” established the bureaucratic procedures for handling terrorist incidents, designating the National Security Adviser (NSA) as the President’s primary consultant in regards to responses to terrorism. NSDD-30 also designated lead agencies for domestic, foreign, and airline attacks, and created several new organizations, including: the Special Situations Group (SSG) under the NSA, the Terrorist Incident Working Group (TWIG) with representatives from different agencies, and the Interdepartmental Group on Terrorism (IG/T) chaired by the U.S. Department of State.30 Terrorism became a specific responsibility of the NSA, demonstrating its importance to the Administration. In 1984, Reagan signed NSDD-138, titled “Combatting Terrorism.”31

NSDD-138 laid out the Reagan Administration’s counterterrorism approach, which advocated for strengthened intelligence collection and assistance to


other nations fighting terrorism.31 Most importantly, NSDD-138 stated, “we have a responsibility to take measure to protect our citizens, property, and interests” against state-sponsored terrorism.32 In essence, NSDD-138 “endorsed, in principle, the use of ‘proactive’ operations,” that is, preemptive raids and retaliatory strikes, laying the groundwork for Operation El Dorado Canyon.33 NSDD-205, “Acting Against Libyan Support of International Terrorism,” was part of the Reagan Administration’s initial response to Libyan-sponsored terrorism. Given that American citizens were working in Libyan oil fields, the Reagan Administration had to slowly and carefully strengthen its efforts against Libyan terrorism, lest Qaddafi act against Americans in Libya. Additionally, it was crucial to exhaust every possible method of retaliation against Libya prior to a military strike. This point is key when comparing Operation El Dorado Canyon to other uses of the military in response to terrorism. Before resorting to a military strike, the Reagan Administration used all tools available, including but not limited to diplomacy, economics, and allied pressure. NSDD-205 laid out a program of economic sanctions against Libya, as well as a more general plan to isolate Libya on the international stage. A Top Secret annex to this NSDD also directed “additional military measures and intelligence actions,” such as the deployment of an additional Carrier Battle Group to the Mediterranean, to demonstrate American resolve.34 However, efforts to garner European support for sanctions were mediocre at best, given that these nations had strong economic ties to Libya.35 Therefore, by exhausting all other options, NSDD-205 allowed the Administration to resort to military force. Finally, NSDD-207 outlined the National Program for Combatting Terrorism, which stated that “no nation will be allowed to [support terrorism] without consequence,” and allowed the U.S. government to “retaliate swiftly when we feel we can punish those who were directly responsible” for a terrorist attack.36 The series of principles laid out in these four National Security Decision Directives laid the necessary groundwork to justify a retaliatory strike against Libya for its role in the Berlin Discotheque bombing. Moreover, these documents also approached terrorism as an issue that required law enforcement to one that necessitated action conducted by military force.

Direct Lead-up to Operation El Dorado Canyon In 1973, Qaddafi nationalized the entire Gulf of Sidra, approximately 57,000 square km, in response to the Nixon Administration’s resupply of Israel during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The international community almost universally condemned the nationalization as a violation


of international law. The Carter Administration planned FONs to challenge the Libyan territorial claim, but never carried them out. As part of its Libya policy, the Reagan Administration decided to execute FONs, but under new rules of engagement (ROEs) that allowed on-site commanders to respond to enemy use of force.37 During one of these exercises, in what would become known as the “Gulf of Sidra Incident,” two U.S. Navy F-14s shot down two Libyan Air Force SU-22s. Qaddafi planned to avenge this defeat either by assassinating Reagan or a senior member of his Administration. In reality, Qaddafi responded by increasing his support of terrorism that targeted American interests throughout the world. This set the stage for attacks on both the Rome and Vienna Airport, as well as the ultimate catalyst for the raid: the La Belle Discotheque bombing. Reagan was briefed on the Gulf of Sidra Incident five hours after it had occurred, even though the Pentagon had been informed within ten minutes, showing how Reagan’s team operated under the president’s power to set guiding principles, rather than micromanage every event.38 Reagan’s FONs in the Gulf of Sidra actually sparked an increased number of terrorist attacks. Operation Prairie Fire, a FON within Qaddafi’s “Line of Death” in the Gulf of Sidra that resulted in the destruction of two Libyan missile boats and Libyan Surface to Air Missile (SAM) sites, served as the breaking point for Qaddafi. In retaliation, Tripoli ordered the Libyan Embassy in East Berlin “to conduct a terrorist attack against Americans to cause maximum and indiscriminate casualties.”39 These orders led to two incidents: first, a bomb on a TWA flight landing in Athens that killed four Americans, and the La Belle Discotheque bombing in West Berlin that killed two American soldiers and wounded over 200 people, including 78 Americans.40 While this attack may not have led to a direct retaliation on its own, communications within the Libyan government were also intercepted, providing the Reagan Administration with the necessary proof for an aggressive response against terrorism.41

Final Decision In the aftermath of the La Belle Discotheque bombing, Reagan met with Secretary Shultz, Admiral Poindexter, CIA Director William Casey, While House Chief of State Regan, and Deputy Secretary of Defense William Taft, filling in for Secretary Weinberger. Shultz expressed the general sentiment during this meeting, stating: “we have taken enough punishment and beating. We have to act.”42 Reagan subsequently approved a series of targets that would ultimately lead to Operation El Dorado Canyon. The final list was heavily debated, with important considerations made to minimize collateral damage and focus on Qaddafi and Libyan infrastructure that directly supported terrorism. Given the need to demonstrate the

29

Administration’s resolve and for a process by which to militarize responses to terrorism, Reagan authorized Operation El Dorado Canyon.

Aftermath of the Raid Ultimately, Operation El Dorado Canyon seems to have caused a decline in the incidence of terrorism globally, but only after several years. The theory behind this, as put forth by Henry Prunckun and Phillip B. Mohr, argues that the raid demonstrated that terrorism against the United States would invite punitive military operations that would be impossible to withstand.43 However, Operation El Dorado Canyon differs from later responses to terrorism because the Administration acted under a very specific set of circumstances and had enough proof to link the actors back to a specific state sponsor.44 The precedent for a military response to terrorism, set by the Reagan Administration in Operation El Dorado Canyon, is fundamentally distinct from other military responses to terrorism, especially the Global War on Terror, which represents a clearly less discerning counterterror strategy. Due to the internal debates between Secretaries Shultz and Weinberger, Reagan’s world-view and the Cold War mindset, increased frequency of terrorist activity, and the codified nature of the Administration’s counterterrorism strategy, Operation El Dorado Canyon established a precedent for the use of military force in response to acts of terrorism, but did so under a specific set of circumstances in which the response was limited to a few targets and did not involve a major commitment of resources. The unintended consequence of this raid though, was that it set the stage for less discerning military responses, particularly the Global War on Terror.

Operation El Dorado Canyon


Notes1 “The Election of 1980,” Public Broadcasting Service, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/ americanexperience/features/general-article/carter-election1980/. 2 David Rothkopf, Running the World (New York: PublicAffairs, 2005). 3 David Cohen and Chris Dolan, “Revisting El Dorado Canyon: Terrorism, The Reagan Administration, and The 1986 Bombing of Libya,” White House Studies Compendium 5 (2008), 126. 4 Ibid. 5 Rothkopf, Running the World, 228. 6 Cohen and Dolan, “Revisiting El Dorado Canyon,” 129. 7 Joseph Stannik, El Dorado Canyon: Reagan’s Undeclared War with Qaddafi (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2003), 95. 8 Ibid., 92. 9 Ibid., 97. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., 128. 12 Ibid., 129. 13 Mattia Toaldo, “The Reagan Administration and the Origins of the War on Terror: Lebanon and Libya as Case Studies,” New Middle Eastern Studies, 2 (2012), 2. 14 Ibid., 8. 15 Ibid., 8. 16 Ibid., 9. 17 Ibid., 12. 18 Ibid. 19 Stannik, El Dorado Canyon. 20 Ibid., 16-17. 21 Judy Endicott, “Raid on Libya: Operation El Dorado Canyon,” Air Force Historical Office, 145, http://www.afhso.af.mil/shared/media/ document/AFD-120823-032.pdf. 22 Major Gregory L. Trebon, “Libyan State Sponsored Terrorism: What Did Operation El Dorado Canyon Accomplish?” Air Command and Staff College, Report 88-2600, April 1988.


23 Ibid., 5. 24 Ibid., 6. 25 Ibid., 6-7. 26 Ibid.,11; Endicott, “Raid on Libya,” 145-146. 27 Dennis Piszkiewicz, Terrorism’s War with America: A History (Westport: Praeger, 2003), 49. 28 Stannik, El Dorado Canyon, 90-91. 29 Toaldo, “The Reagan Administration and the Origins of the War on Terror,” 10. 30 “Managing Terrorist Incidents,” (NSDD-30, National Security Council, April 10 1982). 31 Stannik, El Dorado Canyon, 93. 32 “Combatting Terrorism,” (NSDD-138, National Security Council, April 3, 1984). 33 Stannik, El Dorado Canyon, 93. 34 “Acting Against Libyan Support of International Terrorism,” (NSDD-205, National Security Council, January 8, 1986). 35 Trebon, “Libyan State Sponsored Terrorism,” 15. 36 “The National Program for Combatting Terrorism,” (NSDD-207, National Security Council, January 20, 1986). 37 Stannik, El Dorado Canyon, 46. 38 Ibid., 60. 39 Trebon, “Libyan State Sponsored Terrorism,” 17. 40 Ibid., 18. 41 Cohen and Dolan, “Revisiting El Dorado Canyon,” 137. 42 Stannik,El Dorado Canyon, 147. 43 Henry Prunckun Jr and Phillip B. Mohr, “Military Deterrence of International Terrorism: An Evaluation of Operation El Dorado Canyon,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 20, no. 3 (1997). 44 Stannik, El Dorado Canyon, 222.

Electoral System Shift and Political Representation in the Russian State

Duma (2003-2007)Alexandra Cole

ALEXANDRA COLE is a freshman at the College of William & Mary and plans to major in French and Business or International Relations. She would like to thank John Sherry, who first encouraged her interest in international affairs when she was in high school. Alexandra hopes to study abroad at Sciences Po Lille and later pursue graduate education.

Introduction Russia and its emerging democracy have always been topics of interest to political observers. Once Boris Yeltsin became the nation’s first popularly-elected leader in June 1991, Russia began a period of rapid democratization after the fall of the Soviet Union. This period culminated in the adoption of the Constitution of 1993, which established a presidential republic with a popularly-elected head of state and a representative bicameral Federal Assembly.1 Despite these changes, outside observers continue to question the democratic legitimacy of Russia’s political institutions, particularly the electoral process. The main criticism suggests that biased media coverage and electoral policies hinder minority political parties from gaining representation in the legislature. This assessment is cited as evidence that Russia is an authoritarian single-party system. However, reforms passed in 2004 and enacted in 2007 enabled political progress by changing the electoral process for the State Duma, the lower house of the Federal Assembly. The Russian government began implementing political and social reforms designed to unify the country and ease ethnic tensions following the 2004 ethnically-motivated shooting of children in Beslan. On September 13, 2004, President Putin announced a drafted law that would establish fully proportional representation for the State Duma.2 This measure was widely regarded by international observers as a step towards democratic legitimacy. Since democratization, Russian political parties have been weak, with little regional influence and unclear platforms of beliefs. Usually, political parties are “not viewed as a vital vehicle for elections;” elections are instead driven by interest in individual candidates rather than the political party that backs them.3 As such, many observers believed that the proposed electoral system could foster the development of legitimate, relevant political parties, a basic element needed for Russia to develop into an advanced democracy.3 On

33

the other hand, even analysts within Russia acknowledged that the bill might “create as many difficulties as possible for outsiders in their intention to join the supreme party league.”4 How did the shift to full proportional representation in the State Duma, which took effect in the election of 2007, affect the representation of political parties in Russia’s lower house of legislature between the 2003 and 2007 elections?

Electoral Systems: “First Past the Post” vs. Proportional Representation The electoral reforms shifted Russia from a hybrid First Past the Post system to Proportional Representation. First Past the Post (FPTP) is a plurality voting system, meaning that a candidate must get more votes than any other candidate, but not necessarily a majority, to win. In single-member districts (SMD), a country’s constituency is divided into districts which each elect one representative. A representative wins the district by collecting more votes than any other candidate, thus earning this system the nickname “winner takes all.”5 In a party list proportional representation (PR) system, constituents vote for a party, often from a list of approved parties, instead of a particular candidate. Voting districts may be used, or the entire nation may be considered a single district. The percentage of votes a party receives then translates to its proportion of seats in the legislature. A legal threshold, or cut-off percentage, may establish the minimum percentage a party needs to get seats in the legislature. For example, in Germany, a party must win at least five percent of the vote, while Turkey’s threshold is ten percent.6 Proponents of PR claim that the system supports long-term political stability as it promotes the formation of a majority, either through elections or multi-party coalitions, enabling the legislature to more efficiently pass laws. Small parties generally favor PR because it is more inclusive, whereas under FPTP, it is nearly impossible for them to gain representation.7 While minority parties may enjoy popularity and receive a respectable share of votes in some SMDs, they will never gain a seat unless their candidate receives the highest percentage of votes. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as a waste of votes. On the other hand, PR takes into account all votes so that any party may gain seats in the legislature. “There is...a general trend towards proportional representation” in modern democracies, largely because of the greater stability and inclusion that it can offer to political systems.8 Given the differences between FPTP and PR, there should have been a significant change in political party representation in the State Duma after switching to a PR system for the 2007 election.

Electoral System Shift


Electoral Systems of the Russian State Duma Under the Constitution of 1993, the State Duma had a hybrid electoral system. The lower house of the Federal Assembly had 450 seats or “deputies,” half awarded through single-member districts and half through party list PR.9 The State Duma’s duties include approving nominations for Prime Minister, the chairman of the Central bank, and the Commissioner on Human Rights, as well as granting amnesties and adopting federal legislation.10 With such duties, it is imperative to ensure representation of different political parties while also preventing gridlock. The rationale behind the original mixed system was sound. Russian leaders hoped to promote the development of defined political parties, particularly those that would bring reform to the new government, without causing inefficiency. It seemed that an electoral system “combining proportional representation…and single-member district elections best met these objectives.”11 However, the results were not as desired. After two parliamentary elections, the State Duma was highly factionalized as the FPTP portion of the electoral system failed to “consolidat[e] the party system as suspected.”12 Clearly, the mixed electoral scheme was not meeting the goals it had been designed to achieve. With the 2004 reforms, the State Duma shifted fully to party list PR. Under this new system, constituents vote for a particular party to represent them in the State Duma from a list of parties that have undergone approval by the Ministry of Justice. The law also established a seven percent legal threshold, below which parties would receive no representation in the State Duma. The motivation behind the shift to full PR was pure. Since many legitimate democracies, such as Denmark and Switzerland, operate under a similar system, it could be inferred that President Putin was trying to “encourage consolidation of the party system.”13 Given Russia’s ethnically-fractured climate in the early 2000s, the shift seemed likely to help heal social cleavages. Furthermore, Russian politics stood to gain from streamlining the party system. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, many Russians were overwhelmed by the idea that their opinions on governance could finally be voiced. As a result of the liberalization, hundreds of political parties sprang up. Even today, Russian political parties lack “well-developed organizational bases,” causing a number of parties to “constantly form and dissolve.”14 Moreover, parties wield little influence beyond the regional level and lack clear policy agendas.15 Using PR was the most logical choice for representing as many political parties as possible while keeping the legislature running efficiently by excluding fringe parties. In theory, the shift to full PR would encourage the inclusion of various parties such that Russia would be

35Electoral System Shift

classified as a modern multiparty system.

2003 Elections Results and Representation The 2003 State Duma election was the last election conducted under the original hybrid electoral system. The election featured a new party, United Russia, which was formed by the merging of the Unity and Fatherland All-Russia parties and featured Vladimir Putin as a party member. United Russia won approximately half of the seats, with 23.2% of the SMD vote earning 102 seats and 37.6% of the PR vote earning an additional 120 seats.16 By comparison, the Communist Party had the next-highest representation, which earned 10.8% of the SMD vote for 12 seats and 12.6% of the PR vote for another 40 seats.17 This was, by far, the largest margin between the majority party and the next-highest majority party in the State Duma’s history. United Russia outnumbered the Communist Party by over 4:1, giving Putin’s party a clear advantage in passing legislation. In addition, the Liberal Democratic Party got 36 additional seats from PR, the Motherland Party gained 37 through both SMD and PR, and a few regionally-popular minority parties picked up a handful of seats each, mostly through SMD.18 Overall trends in the number of seats earned through each type of electoral system support the idea that less popular, but still well-established parties, could gain more representation through PR than SMD. PR only excluded parties with limited regional appeal, such as the Agrarian Party of Russia and the Great Russian-Eurasian Union Party.19 These results reinforced the notion that a fully proportional electoral system would lead to more seats for moderately popular parties, like the Liberal Democrats Party and the Communist Party, while excluding parties with little relevance to national issues and interests. Critics balked at the landslide majority of the United Russia party in 2003, using it as proof that Russia was a single-party state with a puppet opposition in order to maintain the appearance of democracy.20 By implementing total PR, the Russian government could successfully encourage robust representation of political parties besides United Russia. Political plurality provides a legislature that more fully reflects the diverse concerns of Russian citizens, and also facilitates majority formation through coalition building. Based on political theory, the full PR system should have increased the number of seats awarded to moderately popular parties such as the Communist Party and eliminated seats for marginal parties such as the Agrarian Party of Russia, thereby strengthening existing parties that are able to gain representation.


2007 Election Results and Representation Outside observers anticipated that the 2007 State Duma elections would result in a shift in party dynamics. However, with eleven parties listed on the ballot, only four were able to gain seats in the State Duma.21 In terms of the number of parties in the legislature, political plurality stagnated under the new electoral law. Moreover, United Russia secured approximately 63% of the vote, which garnered 70 percent of the deputies, giving the party a higher proportion of seats than it held under the original electoral system.22

Worse still were the results for the Communist Party, usually a strong second to United Russia. With just 11.6% of the vote in 2007, the Communist Party saw its first decline in representation since 1999.23 The switch to full proportional representation did achieve some consolidation of political parties, but not as expected—it cemented United Russia’s dominance in the State Duma while other parties that traditionally did well saw a decrease in representation.

Electoral System Changes and Effective Number of Parties The streamlining effects of the electoral system shift can be quantified through examining the number of effective parties. In its simplest form, effective parties are defined as the number of parties that are meaningfully involved in a political institution—in this case, Russia’s State Duma. The number of effective parties is one tool used to measure political party plurality, and is often used to determine whether a country may be classified as a two-party or multiparty system, although it can be difficult to measure a party’s involvement objectively. Douglas Rae proposes that the effective number of parties can more specifically described as “an index of party system fractionalization based on both the number of parties and on their relative sizes.”24 The equation for effective parties, according to Laakso and Taagepera’s index, is represented by:

Here, N is equal to the number of parties with at least one vote or seat and pi

2 is equal to the square of each party’s proportion of votes or seats.25 Using this equation, political scientists can evaluate the number of political parties within a state that participate meaningfully within an institution. By this merit, one can effectively measure how the shift to a fully proportional voting system in the Russian State Duma affected the number of relevant parties included in the lower house of legislation.

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Prior to the electoral system shift enacted in 2004, the effective number of parties included in the State Duma fluctuated widely. With the initial introduction of democracy, Russia experienced “hyper-fragmentation in the mid-1990’s, when 43 parties competed for popular votes” during the elections of 1995.26 At the close of this election, the effective number of parties was 5.7. By 2001, fragmentation had increased even further, with an effective number of 7.8 parties participating in the legislative process.27 Aside from the upward trend in the number of effective parties, this variation in the number of parties able to participate in the State Duma might be viewed as a potential threat to political stability. Based on this information, one can hypothesize that the aim of introducing full PR would be to achieve a more moderate number of effective parties—PR would help strike a balance between representing a variety of interests and maintaining efficiency in the legislature. The new electoral system was arguably too effective in streamlining the party system. Following the introduction of full PR, the effective number of parties plummeted. According to Gel’man, “the effective number of legislative parties in the State Duma after 2003 dropped…to 1.92.”28 This low number stands in stark contrast to the high degree of fragmentation under the mixed electoral system. Further, the figure is just under two parties, suggesting that Russia is precariously close to being a single-party state. This idea is in concurrence with Gel’man’s observation that data on effective number of parties suggest, “all…parties other than [United Russia] acting together do not have enough potential to form a meaningful alternative to it.”29 This statement suggests that the Russian political system was over-consolidated by the switch to full PR, effectively preventing any party from gaining enough seats to oppose United Russia. While such a trend would certainly increase efficiency, it also leads to an undemocratic monopoly of power within a single party.

Analysis of 2007 Election Results and Representation Overall, these results puzzled many election observers, many of whom had expected different changes in State Duma representation. Why hadn’t minority parties been able to gain a greater majority of seats under the PR system? Some blamed the State Duma’s legal threshold of seven percent to gain seats in 2004. However, this number is average when compared to the cut-off percentages in more developed democracies. As such, Russia’s legal threshold should not have been a major obstacle to parties seeking representation in the State Duma. Furthermore, Arend Lijphart argues that even if there were no legal threshold, the same parties would likely still be excluded due to the nature of voting. Lijphart asserts that “even in the absence of an explicit



legal threshold, an actual threshold is implied by the other two dimensions of the electoral system, especially district magnitude.”30 The two dimensions referred to are: (1) the type of electoral system, which in this case is PR, and (2) district magnitude, which is the number of representatives elected per district. Because the number of seats in the Russian State Duma is 450, the percentage of a party’s votes cannot be directly translated into a whole number of seats. Instead, PR relies on the use of ratios to determine how votes translate into seats. Mathematically, there exists a small percentage of votes below which parties would be unable to gain seats. According to Lijphart, the legal threshold used in the State Duma’s elections does not adequately account for the inability of minority parties to gain a greater number of seats under a fully proportional electoral system. Such parties would have been excluded regardless of the threshold due to the nature and magnitude of the PR system put in place. Despite the puzzling results, there was marked progress made in State Duma representation that cannot be completely discredited. A Just Russia, not represented in the lower house of the legislature following the 2003 elections, managed to receive 7.7% of the vote in 2007.31 The inclusion of this new party into representation can be counted among the victories of the new PR system. In addition, Yabloko, a mostly urban party that was expected to make something of a comeback after mediocre results in the 2003 elections, was not able to gain representation.32 This supports the notion that the party list PR system could integrate relevant new parties while ensuring that regionally-based groups are not over-rewarded with seats as they often are in a FPTP electoral system. Thus, the new electoral system was able to encourage political party plurality while preventing over-representation of regional parties. To that point, there seems to have been some progress made towards a more advanced democracy in Russia. Overall, the party system has been streamlined to balance efficiency with fair representation. One of the biggest concerns with the original mixed system was the large number of parties involved in the State Duma, creating fractures and preventing efficient production of legislation. However, the trend indicates that the Russian political system may develop into a one-party system dominated by United Russia. Still, many political scientists remain hesitant to make assumptions about how Russian elections “should” turn out as no two democracies function in exactly the same way. As Robert Moser points out, the hypotheses in the realm of political science are “based for the most part on the experience of Western democracies.”33 As a state still dusting off the ashes of communism, Russia is home to a very unique political climate, unlike any seen in the

39

mostly Western democracies. It may be foolish to assume that existing political hypotheses about the types of results produced by certain electoral systems will hold true in “the very different social and political context of post-communist states.”34 This explanation best accounts for the confusing results of the State Duma’s electoral system shift.

Conclusion The shift to full PR in the Russian State Duma did not produce the results expected by political scientists. Most analysts predicted that while the overall number of political parties in the State Duma would drop, several minority parties would be able to gain meaningful representation. While the effective number of parties was streamlined from 7.8 to 1.92 parties, the shift in representation was rapid. This quick transition made the State Duma far more efficient but also excluded several minority parties, such as Yabloko, and solidified the majority held by President Putin’s United Russia party. Yet one new minority party did manage to gain representation—A Just Russia earned a respectable 38 seats in the State Duma—and gave some hope to the idea of political party plurality. Overall, the shift to a fully proportional electoral system made representation in the Russian State Duma much more exclusive. Russia contradicts the political theory used to speculate about the results of different electoral systems. Russia’s democracy is still in its infancy and its current electoral practices may be too underdeveloped for critical analysis at this point in time. Future election results for the State Duma will provide more evidence regarding the credibility of electoral hypotheses, specifically in the context of post-communist democracies. Democratic growth in Russia will only become more relevant as the nation takes an increasingly important position in world politics. Electoral results in the State Duma only provide a snapshot of Russia’s democratic health as the government experiments with different voting systems for the legislature. Overall, the shift from a mixed electoral system to full PR decreased the overall number of parties represented in the State Duma and enhanced the dominant majority of the United Russia party. While these results are unexpected, they may be credited to the fact that much of modern political philosophy is based on observations in Western democracies that may not apply to Russia’s unique democratic situation. Additionally, Russia’s 2013 shift back to a hybrid electoral system for the State Duma seems to point to a darker explanation.35 In a country where third party observers have cited observations of widespread election corruption, frequent changes in the legislative electoral system may be signs of government attempts to control which political parties are able to gain representation



Notes1 James R. Millar, Encyclopedia of Russian History (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004), 1200. 2 Joshua A. Tucker, “A Glimmer of Hope in Putin’s Power Grab,” International Herald Tribune, September 18, 2004. 3 Tucker, “A Glimmer of Hope in Putin’s Power Grab.” 4 Olga Sauko, “Putin to Cut the Russian Political System, Leaving Minimum Number of Parties,” Pravda, April 15, 2005, accessed February 13, 2014, http://english.pravda. ru/russia/politics/15-04-2005/8073-party-0/#. 5 William A. Darity, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2d ed. (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008), 560.

6 Daniel Treisman, The Return: Russia’s Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev (New York: Free, 2011), 351.

7 Ibid., 561.

8 Ibid., 562.

9 Millar, Encyclopedia of Russian History, 1203.

10 Ibid.

11 Robert G. Moser, “Electoral Systems and the Representation of Ethnic Minorities,” Comparitive Politics 40, no. 3 (2008): 273-292, 275.

12 Ibid.

13 Treisman, The Return: Russia’s Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev, 351.

14 Millar, Encyclopedia of Russian History, 1200.

15 Stoner-Weiss, “Central Governing Incapacity and the Weakness of Political Parties: Russian Democracy in Disarray,” 139.

16 “Results of Previous Elections to the Russian State Duma,” Russia Votes, ed. Richard Rose, Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde and the Levada Center, January 30, 2013, accessed February 13, 2014, http://www.russiavotes.org/duma/duma_ elections_93-03.php.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

41

19 Ibid.

20 Vladimir Gel’man, “Party Politics in Russia: From Competition to Hierarchy,” Power and Policy in Putin’s Russia, ed. Richard Sakwa, (Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 2008), 36.

21 DeBardeleben, Joan. 2008. “Russia’s Duma Elections and the Practice of Russian Democracy”. International Journal 63 (2). [Sage Publications, Ltd., Canadian International Council]: 275–90, 275

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

24 Laakso, Markku and Rein Taagepera. ““Effective” Number of Parties: A Measure with Application to West Europe.” Comparative Political Studies 12, no. 1 (April 01, 1979): 3-27, 4.

25 Ibid.

26 DeBardeleben, Joan. 2008. “Russia’s Duma Elections and the Practice of Russian Democracy”. International Journal 63 (2). [Sage Publications, Ltd., Canadian International Council]: 275–90, 275

27 Ibid., 282.

28 Vladimir Gel’man, “Party Politics in Russia: From Competition to Hierarchy,” Power and Policy in Putin’s Russia, ed. Richard Sakwa, (Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 2008), 36.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

32 Lijphart, Arend. Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-six Countries, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 155.

33 Debardeleben, “Russia’s Duma Elections”, 285.

34 Hans Oversloot and Ruben Verheul, “Managing Democracy: Political Parties and the State in Russia,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 22, no. 3 (2006): 383-405, 398. 35 Moser, Robert G. Unexpected Outcomes: Electoral Systems, Political Parties, and Representation in Russia, (University of Pittsburgh: 2001), 12.



36 Ibid.

37 “Putin Orders Return to Parallel Electoral System for Russian Duma - FairVote.” FairVote. January 7, 2013. http://www fairvote.org/putin-orders-return-to-parallel-electoral- system-for-russian-duma.

Chinese Foreign Aid and U.N. VotesDarice Xue

DARICE XUE studied International Relations as an undergraduate at William & Mary and is currently in her second year of the College's BA/MPP program. She would like to thank Professor T.J. Cheng for his supervision and support as well as the staff at AidData for their advice. In the future, Darice hopes to continue her research on the politics of development and pursue doctoral studies in political economy.

I. Introduction The People’s Republic of China increased its foreign assistance to Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia from approximately 1 billion USD in 2002 to 25 billion USD in 2007.1 This rapid increase has invited speculation about China’s intentions in the international order. Critics of Chinese aid characterize it as “rogue aid” that undermines existing development programs, supports nondemocratic regimes, and extracts resources from the recipient country for the donor’s own gain.2 Others argue that aid from emerging donors such as China offer an alternative for recipient countries that have seen limited success with traditional donors such as the United States and Western Europe.3 Overall, concerns regarding Chinese aid focus on its impact on development outcomes and, more broadly, China’s growing presence in many developing countries. This paper seeks to answer the question: why does China give aid, and what political and economic impact does it have? Scholars are just as divided regarding the motivations behind Chinese foreign aid. It is well established that the political interests of traditional donor countries have long influenced aid allocation, and this trend follows for emerging donors as well.4 Although qualitative studies on the patterns of Chinese aid have proliferated in the last decade, quantitative studies are rare because the Chinese government does not publish its foreign aid commitments. Consequently, it is difficult to obtain an accurate and comprehensive picture of Chinese foreign aid. Using purpose-coded aid data collected by the Tracking Underreported Financial Flows project at AidData, I investigate the effects of Chinese foreign aid on the voting behavior of African countries at the United Nations from 2000 to 2012. Specifically, I examine how changes in the quantity of Chinese foreign aid influence African countries to vote one of four ways: (1) with China and against the United States; (2) vote with the United States and against China; (3) vote in line with both countries, or; (4) vote against both countries. Within my analysis, I find that foreign aid has a statistically insignificant impact, while other factors such as year of first


diplomatic exchange significantly and substantively increase alignment with China at the United Nations. Although I am constrained by limitations in AidData’s database, these results provide opportunities for future research on the effects of Chinese aid on global political dynamics at a sub-national level. The paper proceeds as follows: Section II provides an overview of existing literature on the politics of foreign aid and the patterns in Chinese foreign aid; Section III proposes the hypotheses made in this paper; Section IV discusses the data and methodology used in this study; and Section V presents the results of the regressions. Section VI discusses the results, their implications, and the weaknesses of the model. Finally, Section VII suggests future questions for research and concludes.

II. Chinese Foreign Aid China’s economic rise has afforded it many new foreign policy tools, including an increased military presence and new diplomatic opportunities. While some view China’s integration into the global market positively, others see it as a threat, especially given China’s aggressive tendencies in Southeast Asia.5 Still others caution against an overreaction to recent economic growth simply because China has many domestic problems yet to solve, including a shrinking work force, growing wealth inequality, and democratization pains.6 As China’s economy slows, these problems will become more apparent, forcing the government to redirect its resources away from external expansion and towards building internal cohesion. Nevertheless, China has always regarded foreign aid as an important tool, even during tumultuous periods. In recent years, China has worked through several multilateral forums to become a “responsible power” leveraging its economic influence to assist developing countries while integrating with the global economy.7

History of Chinese Foreign Aid Motivations behind foreign aid provision have varied with the evolution of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since its formation in the mid-twentieth century:

Phase 1 (1956-1977). Following the Party’s conception, the goal of foreign aid was to increase China’s international prestige and broaden foreign networks. With the souring of Sino-Soviet relations in 1960 under Mao and Stalin, China searched elsewhere for allies to replace the vacuum left by the Soviet Union. Consequently, foreign aid at this time was highly politicized and ideological. Around 1964, Premier Zhou Enlai lay the foundations for Chinese foreign aid in his “Five Principles of Peace Coexistence” and “Eight

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Principles of Foreign Aid,” which remain influential in their promise of non-intervention and unconditionality. China found a foothold in the newly decolonized nations of Africa such as Tanzania, in which Maoist China invested heavily in railway transport and other large infrastructure projects, despite a weakened economy caused by several natural disasters in the early 1960s and Mao’s disastrous Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution policies. Mao’s cultivation of Sino-African ties, however, would play an important role in China’s reentry to the United Nations in 1971, providing further evidence of the political motivations behind Chinese development finance in this phase.8

Phase 2 (1978-2000). China, under its next leader Deng Xiaoping, began to focus on the economic return and long-term effects of its projects. With the death of Mao and the purging of the old elite, China launched its “opening up and reform” phase under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, who shifted China’s planned economy to a socialist market economy. During this time, the Chinese economy expanded and diversified, a trend that extended to foreign aid in Africa. Chinese projects became more locally involved as Beijing set up funds to support the expansion of Chinese small- and medium-enterprises in Africa, in addition to the large infrastructure projects it had supported in the past.9 In 1994, China created “policy banks” to encourage its four traditional banks (Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China) to participate in responsible lending at market rates to developing countries.10 China’s Export-Import (EXIM) Bank was established to facilitate the trade of Chinese products via export credits and concessional loans.11 Another bank, China Development Bank, was created to support the macroeconomic development of China in multiple sectors. Overall, the government solidified and organized its aid program as a function of its economic reforms, and aid became more a result of economic and pragmatic decision-making than the politically charged goals of the Phase 1.

Phase 3 (2001- Present). China has continued to expand its economic markets and has integrated within the global economy by joining multilateral organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and actively participating in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). China has also become a formidable world power, especially following the collapse of the Western economy after the Great Recession. Given its new status and relative economic power, China has pursued economic diplomacy to secure more markets and continue its export-driven growth.12 As a new global leader, China offers an alternative for developing countries that relied on Western

Chinese Foreign Aid


support over the course of the Cold War. Chinese foreign aid features many large infrastructure loans targeted for resource extraction (i.e. oil, minerals, gas, etc.) and also the construction of highways, ports, schools, hospitals, low income housing, and more. Beijing does not antagonize recipients for poor governance and has become the role model of “non-interference” and “self-reliance” development policies.13 China has a complicated relationship with both the developed and developing world. The developed world must accommodate China’s growing presence in its traditional areas of influence while the developing world must decide how to handle its growing options in foreign aid. Additionally, China must ascertain how to cooperate with established Western donors, who, despite having lost domestic support for aid after the recession, still have more experience in developing and managing aid programs.14 Political Motivations of Foreign Aid Over the past 30 years, aid has increasingly become a foreign policy tool to satisfy the political and economic interests of the donor country.15 The United States, in particular, has increasingly directed its aid to promote neoliberal ideas such as free markets and capitalism since the end of the Cold War.16 Other reasons that donors might give are related to colonial ties, desire for international reputation, and geopolitical interests.17 For example, several donors have used foreign aid to reward or punish countries that voted with or against, respectively, their voting blocs in international organizations.18 Because foreign aid and donor foreign policy interests have a strong relationship, analyzing the foreign aid patterns of emerging donors could provide additional insight to the foreign policy goals of developing economies such as China, India, and Saudi Arabia. For most of the twentieth century, developed countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Japan have dominated academic and policy discussions on foreign aid commitments. These countries are all members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an international organization composed of the richest countries in the world, and form the core of “established” or “traditional donors” that report to the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC). More recently, however, donors outside of OECD-DAC have risen to challenge existing models of development. For example, Arab aid is characterized by a preference toward Arab and particularly Islamic recipient countries.19 Southern aid, such as Indian and Chinese aid, focuses on building partnerships and sharing development experiences.20 Despite their differences, these non-Western models challenge the dominant aid paradigm by “transgressing the cultural categories and social hierarchies

47

that the [prevailing] aid system acts to symbolize and maintain.”21 Paired with China’s rapid economic growth over the past two decades, Chinese aid has sparked fears of global economic revisionism.22 Western countries fear that China is using its economic status to overturn the international economic order that currently favors the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. With regards to aid, both Western scholars and policymakers have voiced their fears that that Chinese aid undermines the development efforts of established donors, replacing them with aid programs that support non-democratic regimes and prevent sustainable growth.23 The Chinese government does not report all of its aid figures and does not comply with OECD-DAC standards of foreign aid. Most Chinese aid comes in the form of export credits, non-concessional state loans, or other forms of aid that support Chinese foreign direct investment in recipient countries; most of China’s projects have emphasized heavy infrastructure projects, such as the construction of roads and factories and the extraction of commodities.24 The aim of this paper is to further investigate the impact of China’s economic rise and its effect on changing global dynamics. So far, empirical study on the effects of Chinese foreign aid on voting behavior at multilateral institutions is lacking. This phenomenon is of particular interest because China desires recognition within international relations.25 To what extent does China’s foreign aid affect its behavior in international politics, and to what extent are they achieving that foreign policy objective?

III. Hypotheses The inspiration for this study comes from Dreher, Nunnekamp, and Thiele.26 Dreher et al. conduct several studies on the influence of foreign aid and voting patterns at multilateral institutions. Using panel data for 143 countries over the period 1973-2002 that includes aid data amalgamated from several sources from the 1980s, Dreher et al. find strong evidence that the United States bought voting compliance in the UN General Assembly through aid. Specifically, general budget support and untied grants had the most significant effect on voting alignment from recipients. Dreher et al. also distinguish between aid instruments. “Program aid,” effectively a blank check to the recipient government, won compliance the most. On the other hand, “project aid,” such as for construction, elicited less of a response because it is less fungible. This type of aid is seen as more economically, rather than politically, motivated by Dreher et al. Unlike program aid, project aid is earmarked in its use and conveys the donor’s interest in seeing a specific project come to fruition. This gives the recipient less control over the use of funds, and consequently the aid is less a political gift for winning UN votes and more an economic gift for spurring a certain type of growth.

Chinese Foreign Aid


Overall, Dreher et al.’s only found these patterns for the United States; no relationship was found between foreign aid from other major donors and UN voting alignment. Other studies have found a relationship between aid and voting. Dippel finds that donors in the International Whaling Commission (IWC) significantly altered their aid flows in response to changes in IWC voting-bloc affiliation. The four biggest aid donors—the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Japan—change their aid flows in response to changes in voting bloc, with the latter rewarding those who join the pro-whaling bloc and the former three punishing the same action with reductions in foreign aid.27 Although China claims to operate under a different aid model, it can be assumed to be a rational actor in the international community. As a result, its motivations for aid should not deviate from patterns observed in traditional donors. Accordingly, I test the following relationship: Increased total foreign aid is correlated with increased voting compliance at UN.

IV. Data and Methodology Data and methodology were chosen to replicate a modified version of Dreher et al.’s study. Estimation methods used are ordinary least squares, fixed effects, and first differences.

Dependent Variables There are four outcome variables of interest because four potential outcomes exist for any alignment at the United Nations. Assuming that a country votes at all, each nation has the possibility of voting in one of four ways: (1) agree only with China and not the United States, (2) agree only with the United States and not China, (3) agree with both China and the United States, (4) or agree with neither.

Table 1. Potential Alignment Outcomes

Yes China No China

Yes U.S. With World Powers Pro- U.S.

No U.S. Pro-China Against World Powers

49

The first outcome variable of interest is the percent of votes that the country casts every year that match those of China; in other words, both countries—China and the recipient—voted yes, voted no, abstained, or were absent. This is a key variable of interest because China would presumably need support at multilateral forums beyond its status as a permanent Security Council member to gain influence in a legitimate and peaceful way. Not only does this measure examine the effectiveness of China’s foreign aid in winning support, it also shows whether China’s foreign aid has strong political intention, at least at the United Nations. I also examine the effect of changes in Chinese foreign aid on the recipient’s percent alignment with the United States. Given that one of Washington’s greatest fears is that China’s rise reduces American influence abroad and pushes the United States out of its traditional areas of influence, examining this phenomenon may shed some light as to how China’s economic rise and increased foreign aid actually affect a recipient country’s behavior. Together, examining the “Aligned with the United States” and “Aligned with China” outcome variables reveal the extent to which recipient chooses sides and what influences a choice of one country over the other. To what extent is this a zero-sum game in which Chinese foreign aid increases or decreases voting alignment with the United States? The last two variables, agree with both and agree with neither, look at the recipient country’s relationship with larger, more powerful countries, as well as the degree of alignment between the United States and China. In particular, the situation in which the recipient country chooses to disagree with both the United States and China could have multiple meanings. On one hand, the recipient country could be disagreeing with the United States and China in an instance where both have agreed to the same vote. For example, both the United States and China may have voted for relaxed pollution dumping standards, while a recipient country from Africa chose to vote against it. On the other hand, the recipient country could be disagreeing with the United States and China, who are also opposed to each other. Given that there are four voting options (Yes, No, Abstain, Absent), it would be possible for the United States to vote for intervention in Syria, China against, and a recipient country could abstain or even be absent. Identifying the specific dynamics of voting behavior is outside of the scope of this paper, although future research could look at such differences between a recipient country and these two global super powers.

Independent Variables and Controls Consistent with the hypotheses listed above, the independent variables will comprise of three main categories: political history, foreign aid, and country capacity. The political history category comprises of

Chinese Foreign Aid


three dummy variable indicators: Phase 1, Phase 2, and Phase 3, which correspond with the phases of economic development described above. I chose these variables instead of the number of years of diplomatic relations to highlight the effect of timing. Phase 1 relationships are politically charged, Phase 2 relationships are economically charged, and Phase 3 is marked by large inflows of capital for natural resource extraction, but also construction and national capacity building; Phase 3 is less defined than its predecessors as it is relatively young. The foreign aid variables include total foreign aid, total project aid, total program aid, and variables for the quantity of aid donated to the energy, road and transport, education, health, industry, and agriculture sectors, as well as aid given to general budget support. All aid information came from the Tracking Underreported Financial Flows project at AidData, which uses open-source data collection methods to gather and aggregate information on Chinese foreign aid flows. Although the database is not perfect, it is still the largest collection of disaggregated aid data from China. Aid information was recorded from available news sources, government publications, and third party articles on reported aid projects or programs funded by China in Africa. Pursuant to Dreher et al’s model, I introduce control variables for each recipient’s “national capacity” and governance. I follow Dreher’s calculations for a democracy score by finding the average of each recipient’s Political Rights and Civil Rights score, as determined by Freedom House. For national capacity, I substitute indicator variables such as GDP, GDP growth, GDP per capita, and infant mortality to capture the quality of life and utility of each recipient’s social institutions. This last property renders a recipient less reliant on aid that would otherwise affect voting behavior at the UN. Finally, I introduce dummy variables for year in order to use the panel data models described below.

Estimation Model I use three models to estimate the effect of each independent variable: ordinary least squares (OLS), fixed effects, and first differences: %Align= β0 + β1Aid + β2Phase1+β3Phase2 + x1β1 + ε

%Alignit= β0 + β1Aidit + β2Phase1 + β3Phase2 + αi+ ut + εit

∆%Alignit= β0 + ∆β1Aidit + ∆εit xi βi represents a vector for the controls within the country and the variable

51

Aid is a catch-all term for all the variations of aid (e.g. project and program, sector aid, intent aid) described in the previous section. I use OLS to observe the effects of each independent variable without the effect of time. The panel data models are more precise in that they account for the time effect; they also remove some of the omitted variable bias from the OLS. OLS was only used to estimate the effects of the independent variables on percentage of votes in alignment with China; all other dependent variables were regressed using only the panel data models (fixed effects and first differencing). OLS serves as a useful measurement to compare the estimates of the other results.

Results The most significant variable was the Phase 2 dummy, followed by the year dummies, suggesting the importance of timing and events in recipients’ voting patterns.

Total Aid and Voting Alignment Regressing the effect of total aid committed on voting behavior using OLS saw significant effects from the quantity of aid committed as well as from the Phase 2 indicator, the Democracy Score, and infant mortality. According to the OLS estimators, an increase of one percent of total aid committed each year can increase alignment with China by 0.822 percent; establishing relations during Phase 2 increases alignment by 10.47 percent across all years relative to countries that established relations during Phase 3, the base group; a one point increase in democracy score increases alignment with China by 0.247 percent, and a decrease in infant mortality by one child per 1000 live births increases alignment with China by 0.0769 percent. This pattern does not hold for the fixed effects and first difference models. The former found Phase 2 significant at only the ten percent confidence interval, while the other three variables are insignificant. Instead, both of these models predict a significant effect on the year dummies, although their magnitudes and directions are different. Results are similarly opposite for the Pro-U.S. estimates. Phase 2 was the only significant variable predicted by the fixed effects model, with the establishment of Chinese foreign relations during Phase 2 leading to a 0.972 percent decrease in alignment. First differences found Phase 2 to be insignificant, but found significant and negative coefficients for all year dummies, indicating that many African countries did not often vote with the United States and against China. For the both and neither variables, the test found that a percent increase in GDP growth resulted in a slight decrease in voting compliance; as with Pro-China, many of the dummy variables

Chinese Foreign Aid


for year were significant for the both variable, although varied in size and magnitude. See Table 2 for full results.

Program Aid v. Project Aid Program aid was only found to have a significant effect at the 10 percent level for the fixed effects model; a percent increase in total program aid resulted in a 0.151 percent increase in alignment with both the U.S. and China. Project aid was significant at the 10 percent level for the Pro-China and the neither outcomes. A one percent increase in the total project aid committed lead to a 0.503 percent increase in alignment with China as well as a 0.541 percent decrease in alignment with neither. For fixed effects, Phase 2 increased pro-China alignment by 19.12percent and decreased alignment with neither by 18.43 percent. More notably, under first differences, a 1 percent in GDP resulted in a 10.55 percent decrease in alignment with the United States and a decrease of 7.50 percent in alignment with both. See Table 3 for full results.

Discussion Although a control, Phase 2 stood out as the most influential variable throughout all the regressions, indicating that countries that established ties with China following the Opening Up and Reform policy have the strongest voting affinity with China. This challenges the previous assumption that Phase 1 would have the strongest effect given the political nature of relationships made during that era. However, given China’s status an emerging economic power that was considered as “developing” not too long ago, the voting alignment may come as a result of other countries arriving to similar points as China in their economic development. Consequently, these recipients are more likely to agree with China, but not the United States, because they emulate China’s development strategy. In other words, this could serve as evidence of other countries modeling themselves after China. Another dynamic that became apparent throughout these analyses were the factors that influenced a country to increase or decrease its alignment with the both and neither outcomes. In particular, evidence of an income-based voting pattern emerged. For the total aid regressions, fixed effects found that positive GDP growth was negatively correlated with voting for both and positively correlated with voting for neither. This suggests that the policies supported by poorer countries, such as those in Africa, could be diametrically opposed to policies supported by larger, wealthier countries such as the United States and increasingly, China. This pattern continued in the regressions for program aid and project aid. In these regressions, GDP growth was shown to have a negative effect on voting with the United States as well as voting for both. For first differences, it was found that a one percent

53

increase in GDP resulted in up to a ten percent decrease in voting alignment with the United States and a decrease of 7.5 percent for alignment with both. Again, these two variables may be responding to the United States purely, but it is also evidence of a divide between rich, large countries and poor, small countries. Both wealth indicators had no effect on voting alignment with China, suggesting that the United States may be the key determinant. Many of the other control variables yielded significant results as well, suggesting that voting patterns in the United Nations may have been predetermined by existing differences in attributes between China, the United States, and African countries. Curiously, democracy was shown to increase voting affinity for both as well. The implications of this are unclear, although a possibility could be that the democracy value is responding to the U.S. factor of the both variable. More significantly, many of the dummy variables were found to be significant, indicating that voting behavior is also dependent on conditions in a given year for all parties involved; there are no deep ideological divides based on preferences for China or the United States. In fact, it is well known that the United States is usually in the minority when passing resolutions at the United Nations. This study contributes to the literature by showing that Chinese foreign investments have had little effect on the status quo, which already featured antagonism towards the United States in the United Nations. These differences, as indicated by wealth disparities, are more likely based on the needs demanded by each country based on their stage of economic development.

Limits in the Research Despite these findings, the study still suffers from many weaknesses and as such, its results should be taken with a grain of salt. AidData’s dataset for Chinese financial flows to Africa remains incomplete, leading to cases such as the intent regression, which could not be completed due to insufficient observations. The main problem is the lack of diversification in loans within a country—there simply were not enough incidences in which a country received both exclusively commercial aid and exclusively development aid in a single year. Often, these are likely coded as “mixed,” which would only increase the lack of overlap. Because these commitments are sparse, it is not possible to conduct first difference or fixed effects analysis on the data because there are not enough consecutive data points to pull from. This problem also extends to other aspects of the aid data—there were too many years in which a country only received aid in one sector but not in any other, making it difficult to extract a sufficient number of data points. Note that for both total aid and program/project aid regression, only half, at most, of the dataset was included in the regression, indicating the presence of

Chinese Foreign Aid


many holes in the data, or years in which the country either received no aid commitments from China or no information could be found about aid during those years. This study also does not fully address the issue of endogeneity. However, there is a strong likelihood that aid flows from previous years have a stronger influence on voting behavior than present-day aid flows. This study essentially looked at the correlation between aid and voting behavior, but with another technique, such as the General Method of Moments, it may be possible to infer a causal relationship between foreign aid and voting behavior. Finally, other variables could have been added to this analysis, but were not included due to time and data access constraints. For example, the study would benefit with more data on the trade relationship between China and the recipient country, such as the percent of net exports to China from the recipient country, the percent China contributes to GDP in terms of trade, the share of aid that China provides to the recipient, and natural resource endowment. These variables may also affect China’s importance to the economies of its recipient countries and may consequently affect their voting behavior at multilateral organizations.

Conclusion China’s rise has attracted significant international attention. For the United States, China is a threat to be confronted. For the developing world, China offers an alternative model of development that rivals that of the West. However, China’s economic success has had mixed effects on global politics. This study suggests that China’s apparent economic influence in the developing world should not be as great of a concern as it has been to members of the developed world; Chinese foreign aid has not significantly increased voting alignment with China for UN resolutions nor has it stolen votes away from the United States. The greatest limitation of this study may be the lack of quality data regarding Chinese foreign financial flows, which makes it difficult to conduct comprehensive analyses of the impact of Chinese foreign aid in the world. In future research, it may be worthwhile to revisit the effect of foreign aid on voting behavior in the United Nations, especially given Dreher et al’s (2006) findings. Additionally, more research should be done on voting behavior at other multilateral institutions, such as the WTO and the IMF. Analysis could also be conducted on the specific relationship between Chinese foreign aid and members of the UN Security Council. All in all, as data for China becomes more readily available, both within and outside of the country, empirical evidence can illuminate the true nature of China’s rise.

55

-1 -2 -3 -4 -5VARIABLES Pro-China Pro-China Pro-US Both Neither

Log of Total Aid Committed

0.822** 0.101 0.0164 0.0901* -0.192

-0.368 -0.288 -0.0404 -0.0508 -0.34Phase 1 (1956-1977)

2.814 6.345 -0.705 -0.172 -5.44

-3.427 -7.529 -0.442 -0.337 -7.537Phase 2 (1978-2000)

10.47*** 14.42* -0.976** 0.393 -14.08*

-3.407 -7.529 -0.468 -0.341 -7.523Log GDP 0.559 1.27 -0.121 0.0671 -1.154

-0.674 -1.594 -0.0833 -0.139 -1.72GDP Growth -0.178 -0.111 -0.013 -0.0391*** 0.169**

-0.155 -0.0783 -0.00909 -0.012 -0.0814Democracy Score

0.247*** 0.264 0.0106 0.0342** -0.354

-0.0794 -0.249 -0.013 -0.0163 -0.28Infant Mortality (per 1000)

-0.0769** -0.00668 -0.00948* -0.00479 0.0314

-0.0298 -0.0514 -0.00523 -0.00764 -0.0585Year = 2004 5.154** -1.030*** -2.270*** -1.852

-2.498 -0.362 -0.39 -2.837Year = 2005 -2.617 1.317** -1.969*** 2.553

-4.555 -0.572 -0.688 -5.196Year = 2006 1.761 -2.020*** -1.902*** 1.489

-4.658 -0.566 -0.594 -5.294Year = 2007 4.082 -2.290*** -3.013*** 0.523

-4.618 -0.552 -0.653 -5.35Year = 2008 -1.569 -1.538*** -1.216* 3.664

-4.363 -0.543 -0.704 -5.096Year = 2009 1.552 0.468 0.931 -3.596

-4.485 -0.623 -0.725 -5.351Year = 2010 1.35 0.439 -0.111 -2.39

-4.313 -0.609 -0.602 -5.083Year = 2011 -8.565** 1.806*** 3.943*** 2.197

Table 2. Total Chinese Aid Committed Chinese Foreign Aid


-4.351 -0.602 -0.742 -4.979Year = 2012 -5.285 4.514*** -0.147 0.35

-4.319 -0.64 -0.67 -4.99Constant 33.26** 22.69 6.869*** 3.998 65.88*

-15.3 -34.17 -1.876 -2.959 -37.12Observations 379 379 379 379 379R-squared 0.093Method OLS FE FE FE FECountry FE NO YES YES YES YESYear FE NO YES YES YES YESNumber of countryid

48 48 48 48

-6 -7 -8 -9VARIABLES Pro-China Pro-US Both Neither

Log of Total Aid Committed

-0.0699 -0.000501 0.00966 0.0572

-0.229 -0.0264 -0.0343 -0.262Phase 1 (1956-1977)

-12.62 -1.098 -4.611*** 18.31**

-8.675 -0.835 -1.231 -8.842Phase 2 (1978-2000)

0.16 0.0122 0.0356** -0.207*

-0.112 -0.015 -0.0159 -0.116Log GDPGDP GrowthDemocracy ScoreInfant Mortality (per 1000)Year = 2004 10.09*** -5.291*** -2.211*** -2.736

-2.479 -0.446 -0.44 -2.852Year = 2005 2.724 -3.634*** -2.021*** 2.861

-2.715 -0.5 -0.398 -3.07Year = 2006 7.344*** -7.049*** -1.886*** 1.491

-2.536 -0.433 -0.429 -2.802Year = 2007 9.315*** -6.912*** -2.889*** 0.411

-2.33 -0.489 -0.375 -2.559

57

Year = 2008 3.565* -6.153*** -1.041** 3.534-1.996 -0.403 -0.414 -2.275

Year = 2009 6.992*** -4.208*** 1.095** -3.945-2.147 -0.425 -0.543 -2.688

Year = 2010 6.753*** -4.213*** -0.157 -2.446-1.975 -0.408 -0.502 -2.372

Year = 2011 -2.625 -2.926*** 4.166*** 1.361-2.137 -0.466 -0.608 -2.543

Year = 2012 - - - -- - - -

Constant 62.12*** 7.999*** 7.730*** 22.22***-2.315 -0.419 -0.389 -2.484

Observations 370 370 370 370R-squaredMethod FD FD FD FDCountry FE NO NO NO NOYear FE YES YES YES YESNumber of countryid

48 48 48 48

Robust standard errors in parentheses*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

-1 -2 -3 -4 -5VARIABLES Pro-China Pro-China Pro-US Both Neither

Log of Total Program Aid

0.476 0.279 0.00795 0.151* -0.484

-0.627 -0.548 -0.0693 -0.09 -0.63Log of Total Project Aid

0.428 -0.339 -0.035 0.0699 0.29

-0.361 -0.29 -0.0619 -0.0464 -0.335Phase 1 (1956-1977)

9.639 11.17 -0.275 -0.16 -10.61

-6.337 -8.71 -0.813 -0.626 -8.605Phase 2 (1978-2000)

14.81** 19.12** -0.916 0.299 -18.43**

-6.294 -8.81 -0.743 -0.627 -8.687

Table 3. Program Aid and Project Aid

Chinese Foreign Aid


Log GDP 0.381 1.168 -0.0807 0.00722 -1.095-1.162 -1.857 -0.164 -0.141 -1.954

GDP Growth -0.737*** -0.301 -0.0499** -0.0791*** 0.445**-0.217 -0.186 -0.0218 -0.0201 -0.199

Democracy Score

0.356*** 0.508* 0.0314 0.0445** -0.604*

-0.121 -0.281 -0.026 -0.0217 -0.32Infant Mortali-ty (per 1000)

-0.00799 -0.0375 -0.0139 -0.00697 0.0636

-0.0505 -0.116 -0.00986 -0.0126 -0.131Year = 2004 13.29** -1.552** -1.461** -10.32

-5.754 -0.769 -0.676 -6.788Year = 2005 4.255 2.155* -1.489 -5.312

-9.485 -1.119 -1.046 -10.84Year = 2006 10.94 -2.275** -1.45 -7.493

-8.979 -0.958 -0.957 -10.2Year = 2007 7.464 -2.000* -3.016*** -2.657

-9.613 -1.11 -1.035 -11.15Year = 2008 5.519 -1.233 -0.4 -4.308

-9.861 -1.128 -1.073 -11.43Year = 2009 8.598 0.455 1.026 -10.31

-8.853 -1.045 -0.963 -10.23Year = 2010 9.129 1.264 0.444 -11

-9.724 -1.062 -0.973 -11.18Year = 2011 0.515 1.516 4.393*** -6.658

-8.599 -1.168 -1.048 -9.946Year = 2012 1.077 4.435*** 0.656 -6.478

-9.383 -1.26 -1.051 -10.85Constant 29.17 14.6 6.365* 3.25 77.01*

-26.22 -41.24 -3.667 -3.814 -43.49

Observations 169 169 169 169 169R-squared 0.148Method OLS FE FE FE FECountry FE NO YES YES YES YESYear FE NO YES YES YES YESNumber of countryid

42 42 42 42

59

-6 -7 -8 -9VARIABLES Pro-China Pro-US Both Neither

Log of Total Program Aid

0.0593 0.0352 0.0323 -0.135

-0.326 -0.052 -0.0641 -0.356Log of Total Project Aid

0.503* 0.0106 0.0141 -0.541*

-0.297 -0.0342 -0.0319 -0.298Phase 1 (1956-1977)Phase 2 (1978-2000)Log GDP 12.64 -10.55*** -7.502*** 6.703

-23.34 -2.713 -2.148 -23.73GDP Growth -0.0475 0.046 0.0722** -0.0716

-0.176 -0.0633 -0.0344 -0.179Democracy ScoreInfant Mortali-ty (per 1000)Year = 2004 7.048* -5.088*** -3.022*** 1.431

-3.724 -0.978 -0.732 -4.998Year = 2005 3.297 -3.275*** -3.009*** 2.944

-3.595 -0.938 -0.965 -4.194Year = 2006 7.317*** -6.230*** -3.105*** 1.832

-2.556 -0.636 -0.796 -3.13Year = 2007 4.55 -6.549*** -3.996*** 6.161**

-3.031 -0.712 -0.658 -2.67Year = 2008 2.633 -4.799*** -2.027*** 4.09

-2.677 -0.685 -0.545 -2.806Year = 2009 7.313*** -3.073*** 0.666 -5.097**

-2.377 -0.791 -0.625 -2.454Year = 2010 4.375 -2.560*** -1.209 -0.56

-3.238 -0.939 -0.767 -2.794Year = 2011 -2.326 -2.223** 4.663*** 0.061

-2.548 -1 -0.721 -2.847Year = 2012 - - - -

Chinese Foreign Aid


- - - -Constant 63.11*** 7.836*** 9.147*** 19.75***

-2.926 -0.907 -0.6 -3.19

Observations 80 80 80 80R-squaredMethod FD FD FD FDCountry FE NO NO NO NOYear FE YES YES YES YESNumber of countryid

26 26 26 26

Robust standard errors in parentheses*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

61Notes

1 Thomas Lum, Hannah Fischer, Julissa Gomez-Granger, and Anne Leland, China’s Foreign Aid Activities in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, CRS Report R40361, (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress Congressional Research Service, 2009). 2 James Traub, “China’s African Adventure,” New York Times, November 19, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/magazine/19china. html?ref=business&_r=0; Moises Naim, “Rogue Aid,” Foreign Policy, February 14, 2007, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2007/02/14/ rogue_aid; Gernot Pehnelt, “The Political Economy of China’s Aid Policy in Africa,” Jena Economic Research Papers # 051, Jena, Germany: University of Jena, 2007, http://papers.ssrn.com/ sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1022868; Nkunde Mwase and Yongzheng Yang, BRIC’S philosophies for development financing and their implications for LICs, International Monetary Fund, 2012, https:// www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2012/wp1274.pdf; Phillippa Brant, “Charity begins at Home: Why China’s Aid Wont’ Replace the West’s,” Foreign Affairs, October 13, 2013, https://www.foreignaffairs. com/articles/china/2013-10-13/charity-begins-home. 3 Emerging donors, also known as non-traditional donors, refer to the group of non-Western countries that have started giving large quantities of foreign aid over the past twenty years. These donors industrialized in the last fifty years and are seen as “emerging” because of their growing economies. Ngaire Woods, “Whose Aid? China, Emerging Donors, and the Silent Revolution in Development Assistance,” International Affairs 84, no. 6 (2008): 12 1221, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468 2346.2008.00765.x/abstract; Clemens Six, “The Rise of Postcolonial States as Donors: A Challenge to the Development Paradigm?,” Third World Quarterly 30, no. 6 (2009): 1103-1121, http://courses.arch. vt.edu/courses/wdunaway/gia5524/six09.pdf; Emma Mawdsley, “The Changing Geographies of Foreign Aid and Development Cooperation: Contriubtion from Gift Theory,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 37, no. 2 (2012): 256-272, http:// onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2011.00467.x/ abstract.

4 Howard White and Mark McGillivray, “How Well is Aid Allocated? Descriptive Measures of Aid Allocation: A Survey of Methodology and Results,” Development and Change 26, no. 1 (1995): 163-183: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-7660.1995. tb00547.x/abstract; Peter J. Schraeder, Steven W. Hook, and Bruce Taylor, “Clarifying the Foreign Aid Puzzle: A Comparison of American, Japanese, French, and Swedish Aid Flows,” World Politics 50, no. 2 (1998): 294-323, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25054039; Alberto Alesina and David Dollar, “Who gives foreign aid to whom and why?,” Journal of Economic Growth 5, no. 1 (2000): 33-63, http://www.nber. org/papers/w6612.pdf; Jean-Claude Berthelemy, “Bilateral Donors’ Interest vs. Recipients’ Development Motives in Aid Allocation: Do All

Chinese Foreign Aid


Donors Behave the Same?,” Review of Development Economics 10 no. 2 (2006): 179-194, ftp://www-bsg.univ-paris1.fr/pub/mse/cahiers2005/ Bla05001.pdf; A. Maurits Van der Veen, Ideas, Interests, and Foreign Aid, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Axel Dreher and Andreas Fuchs, “Rogue Aid? The Determinants of China’s Aid Allocation,” CESifo Working Paper Series 3581, (Munich, Germany: Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute Group Munich, 2011), http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1932086; Kerry Smith, Non-DAC Donors and Humanitarian Aid: Shifting Structures, Changing Trends, Global Humanitarian Assistance Briefing Paper, (Somerset, UK: Global Humanitarian Assistance, 2011), http:// www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/ GHA-non-DAC-donors-humanitarian-aid1.pdf; Mawdsley, 2011. 5 Thomas Christensen, “Fostering Stability of Creating a Monster? The Rise of China and U.S. Policy toward East Asia.” International Security 31, no. 1 (2006): 81-126, https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ins/summary/ v031/31.1christensen.html; Robert Kaplan, “Center Stage for the 21st Century: Power Plays in the Indian Ocean,” Foreign Affairs, (March/ April 2009), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/east- asia/2009-03-01/center-stage-21st-century; Andrew Erickson, “China’s Near-Seas Challenge,” The National Interest, no. 129 (January/February 2014): 60-66, http://nationalinterest.org/article/chinas-near-seas- challenges-9645. 6 Ian Bremmer, “Superpower or Superbust?” The National Interest, No. 128 (November/December 2013): 9-17, http://nationalinterest.org/article/ china-superpower-or-superbust-9269. 7 See Rosemary Foot, “Chinese Power and the Idea of a Responsible State,” The China Journal 45 (January 2001): 1-19, http://www.jstor.org/ stable/3182363. 8 Domingos Jardo Muekalia, "Africa and China's strategic partnership," African Security Studies 13, no. 1 (2004): 5-11, https://www.issafrica.org/pubs/ ASR/13No1/F1.pdf. 9 Wang, Jian-Ye, What Drives China's Growing Role in Africa?(EPub). No. 7-211. International Monetary Fund, 2007, https://www.imf.org/external/ pubs/ft/wp/2007/wp07211.pdf. 10 Kevin P. Gallagher and Amos Irvin, “China’s Economic Statecraft in Latin America: Evidence from China’s Policy Banks,” Pacific Affairs 88, no.1 (March 2015): 99-121, DOI: 10.5509/201588199. 11 Export credits are a type of financial instrument in which the donor loans money, or “credit”, to the recipient so that the recipient can buy goods from the donor and repay them later, usually at a discounted rate. Concessional loans are loans provided at a below-market interest rate.

6312 Simplice Asongu, Jacinta Nwachukwu, and Gilbert Aminkeng, “China’s Strategies in Economic Diplomacy: A Survey of Updated Lessons for Africa, the West and China,” 2014 African Governance and Development Institute, WP/14/036, December 11 2014, http://papers. ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2571788. 13 Ian Taylor, "China's foreign policy towards Africa in the 1990s," The Journal of Modern African Studies 36, no. 3 (1998): 443-460, http://www. jstor.org/stable/161792; Yanbing Zhang, Jing Gu, and Yunnan Chen, “China’s Engagement in International Development Cooperation: The State of the Debate,” Evidence Report 116, Institute of Development Studies & Tsinghua University, February 2015, http://r4d.dfid.gov.uk/ Output/200505/. 14 Zhang, Gu, and Chen, 2015; see also Pauline Kerr, Stuart Harris, and Qin Yaqin, China’s “New Diplomacy”: Tactical or Fundamental Change?, Ed. Pauline Kerr, Stuart Harris, and Qin Yaqing, (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008). 15 White and McGillivray, 1995. 16 James Meernik, Eric L. Krueger, and Steven C. Poe, “Testing Models of U.S. Foreign Policy: Foreign Aid during and after the Cold War,” The Journal of Politics 60, no. 1 (1998): 63-85, http://www.jstor.org/ stable/2648001; Schraeder, Hook, and Taylor, 1998; Alesina and Dollar, 2000; Berthelemy, 2006. 17 Van der Veen, 2011. 18 Axel Dreher, Vera Eichenauer, and Kai Gehring, “Geopolitics, Aid, and Growth,” CESifo Working Paper No. 4299, (Munich, Germany: Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute, 2013), http://papers.ssrn.com/ sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2290915; Christian Dippel, “Foreign Aid and Voting in International Organizations: Evidence from the IWC,” Journal of Public Economics, Forthcoming. University of California Los Angeles, 2014, http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/christian.dippel/ IWC_paper.pdf. 19 Eric Neumayer, “What factors determine the allocation of Aid by Arab countries and multilateral agencies?,”. Journal of Development Studies 39 no. 4 (2003): 134-147, http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/615/; Eric Neumayer, “Arab-Related Bilateral and Multilateral Sources of Development Finance: Issues, Trends, and the Way Forward,” World Economy 27, no. 2 (2004): 281-300, http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/629/1/World_Economy_ (Arab_finance).pdf; Espen Villanger, Arab Foreign Aid: Disbursement Patterns, Aid Policies and Motives, Chr. Michelsen Institute Report, 2007 (2), http://www.cmi.no/publications/2615-arab-foreign-aid- disbursement-patterns; Julie Walz and Vijaya Ramachandran, Brave New World: A Literature Review of Emerging Donors and the Changing Nature of Foreign Assistance, CGD Working Paper 273, (Washington,

Chinese Foreign Aid


DC: Center for Global Development, 2011), http://www.cgdev.org/

20 Mawdsley, 2011; Andreas Fuchs and Krishna Chaitanya Vadlamannati, “The Needy Donor: An Empirical Analysis of India’s Aid Motives,” World Development 44 no. 1 (2013): 110-128, http://www.sciencedirect.com/ science/article/pii/S0305750X12003063; Subhash Agrawal, Emerging Donors in International Development Assistance: The India Case, International Development Research Centre, Partnership and Business Development Division, 2007, http://www.idrc.ca/EN/Documents/Case- of-India.pdf; Kristian Kjollestal and Anne Welle-Strand, “Foreign Aid Strategies: China Taking Over?,” Asian Social Science 6, no. 10 (2010): 3-13, http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ass/article/view/6491. 21 Six, 2009. 22 See Huiyun Feng, “Is China a Revisionist Power?”, Chinese Journal of International Politics 2 (2009): 313-334, http://cjip.oxfordjournals.org/ content/2/3/313.extract. 23 Naim, 2007. 24 Deborah Brautigam, “Aid ‘With Chinese Characteristics’: Chinese Foreign Aid and Development Finance Meet the OECD Aid Regime,” Journal of International Development 23, no. 5 (2011): 752-764, http:// onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jid.1798/abstract. 25 Kerr, Harris, and Qin, 2008. 26 Axel Dreher, Peter Nunnenkamp, and Rainier Thiele, “Does US Aid Buy UN General Assembly Votes? A Disaggregated Analysis,” Public Choice 136, no. 1 (2008): 139-164, https://www.ifw-members.ifw-kiel.de/ publications/does-us-aid-buy-un-general-assembly-votes-a-disaggregated- analysis-1/kap1275.pdf. 27 Dippel, 2014.

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