US MILITARY AID IN THE 1980S - A GLOBAL ANALYSIS

Although researchers have recently made some progress in explaining th e outputs of the US economic aid decision-making process, their effort s to explain the allocation of US military aid have been rather disapp ointing. In this article, we follow previous studies that have assumed a two-stage process leading up to the allocation of military aid, whi le making three significant improvements over those efforts. First we employ a better model, including a variety of political, strategic, ec onomic, and humanitarian variables we hypothesize to be related to the allocation of military aid. Second, we solve the 'low n' difficulty t hat plagued previous research, by employing an extensive dataset that covers a global sample of countries covering the 1983-8 period. And th ird, unlike previous research where a two-stage process has been assum ed, we employ a methodology that solves the difficulties associated wi th selection bias, which arises when two interrelated decisions are mo deled separately. As a result of these improvements our results are mu ch stronger than those of previous studies. We find that strategic, po litical, and economic interests, as well as human rights concerns and economic development, have been considered in the US military aid deci sion-making process.