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News Media Coverage Influence on Japan's Foreign Aid Allocations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2004

DAVID M. POTTER  and
DOUGLAS VAN BELLE
DAVID M. POTTER
Affiliation:
Nanzan University
DOUGLAS VAN BELLE
Affiliation:
Victoria University of Wellington
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Abstract

This study explores the role that news coverage plays in the allocation of Japanese development aid. Conceptually, it is expected that democratic foreign policy officials, including those working in bureaucratic governmental structures will try to match the magnitude of their actions with what they expect is the public's perception of the importance of the recipient. News media salience serves an easily accessible indicator of that domestic political importance and, in the case of foreign aid, this suggests that higher levels of news coverage of a less-developed country will lead to higher aid commitments. The statistical analysis demonstrates that the level of news coverage is a statistically significant factor in Japanese aid distributions. More significantly, the analysis demonstrates that separating grant aid from other forms of aid is critical for the empirical examination of the determinants of Japanese aid.

Type
Research Article
Information
Japanese Journal of Political Science , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , May 2004 , pp. 113 - 135
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The authors wish to thank Justine Bornstein, Hashimoto Hideo, Robyn Lim, Sakamoto Takayuki, Sudo Sueo, and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on the manuscript. Earlier versions of this manuscript were presented before the International Studies Association and the Nanzan University Regional Studies and International Relations Research Group.