“Three Images” Explanations of Aid Giving and An Empirical Analysis

This study seeks to address a significant question in the realm of international development cooperation: Why do some donor countries allocate a higher percentage of their income to foreign aid than others? Despite the importance of this question in understanding donor countries' overall Official Development Assistance (ODA) policies, there has been limited academic research on this topic. This study aims to bridge the gap between the practical significance of the issue and existing academic research on different donor country policies. To explore the diverse ODA policies of donor countries, this study employs the framework of ‘Three Images’ explanations from the field of international relations. These three images encompass factors at the individual, state, and international systemic levels, shedding light on the decision-making processes and behaviors of countries when it comes to foreign policy. The empirical findings obtained through cross-national and time-series statistical methods reveal that all three categories of characteristics associated with the ‘Three Images’ framework explain the varying ODA policies of donor countries. Specifically, individual-level factors, encompassing the donating behavior of individuals, state-level characteristics, relating to government welfare policies, and system-level factors, such as regional peer pressure, all contribute to the disparities observed in the ODA policies of donor nations. These results suggest that future research in the field of international development cooperation may identify additional relevant variables within the framework of the ‘Three Images’.