Paper short abstract:

This paper studies the impact of OECD aid on democracy and governance in the recipient countries.

Paper long abstract:

Australia has been providing scholarships to foreign countries' citizens to study in Australia for several decades. Despite its long history, little is known about who gets them and what influences these scholarships have on the recipient countries' citizens. This paper attempts to answer the following two questions: Who are selected? and What impact do Australian scholarship programs have on Cambodian students' political attitudes? Methodologically, I employed online and face-to-face surveys to understand who is selected and a before and after, quasi-experiment without pre-measurement and an in-depth, semi-structured interview research design to identify causal one-year effects of the programs. Overall, contrary to common assumptions about Australian aid, first, I found no evidence that Australian scholarship programs excessively benefited the elites and that the programs had been exploited for political ends by Cambodia's ruling elites. Second, however, the programs have either reinforced or slightly increased Cambodian scholars' support for democracy, the free-market economy and the elimination of corruption. Finally, Cambodian scholars became more positive about Australia as a consequence of the programs; however, the programs have insignificant influences on their support for Australian development model. This paper helps fill gaps in our understanding of the impact of OECD aid on democracy and governance in the recipient countries.

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