Lindsay R. Dolan

Book Project

Deciding Development: How International Organizations Classify and Create Developing Countries

International organizations change the world not only through money or laws but also through seemingly trivial activities. Using both observational and experimental approaches, this book shows that how international bureaucrats formally classify “developing countries” profoundly shapes how those countries are perceived and treated by influential actors in the global economy. Country classifications shape the aid, credit ratings, and democracy ratings countries receive. Increasingly, these consequences are felt even by domestic actors, who regularly interact directly with international elites. Focusing on the World Bank’s income classification system and the UN’s Least Developed Country category, this book explains why elite global actors rely on these classifications and who wins and loses as a result. Deliberately or inadvertently, for better or for worse, bureaucrats in international organizations exert considerable influence through their day-to-day activities. These findings will be of interest to development practitioners and students of international organizations in an age of measurement and metrics.

Under Review

A Field Experiment on Business Opposition to the U.S.-China Trade War with Robert M. Kubinec, Daniel L. Nielson, and Jiakun J. Zhang [paper] [Monkey Cage] (under review)

Despite the harmful consequences of the U.S-China trade war, only a handful of firms took collective action to oppose it. To understand why, we implemented a field experiment in which we randomly provided detailed estimates of the costs of the trade war to U.S. company managers and measured their willingness to take actions either opposing or supporting the trade war. While overall our treatment counter-intuitively reduced opposition to the trade war, these effects were highly conditional on respondents’ prior beliefs and the number of tariffs in their industry. The treatment increased opposition the most among subjects in industries with substantial tariffs who also thought the trade war was harmful. However, it decreased opposition among subjects who held neutral beliefs about the trade war. Finally, we find that a company’s political culture strongly predicts their political activity, suggesting political ideology and not just a company’s business interests shape corporate behavior.

Accountable to Whom? Public Opinion of Aid Conditionality in Recipient Countries with Richard Clark and Alexandra O. Zeitz [paper] (under review)

When donors extend foreign aid, they often attach requirements. While requirements are intended to generate desirable policy reforms, they make recipient governments accountable to donors in addition to their citizens. How does the public in recipient countries view these requirements attached to development finance? We argue that individuals’ assessment of aid requirements is a function of their trust in their own government and the foreign donor. When citizens trust their government, aid requirements activate sovereignty concerns, and individuals view them negatively. But when individuals distrust their government, they see requirements as a source of external accountability. Citizens also consider the donor; foreign accountability is welcome only if the donor is trusted. We test our argument using Afrobarometer data on public attitudes toward aid conditionality and an original survey fielded in Kenya, finding evidence that supports our contentions. Our study contributes to an understanding of accountability in global governance.

In Progress