Partisan Generosity in American Politics

This paper sets out to determine if there exists any relationship between dominant partisan ideologies and foreign aid policy preferences within the United States' political sphere. The research herein has been designed to test the working hypothesis that liberal party ideology leads to increased multilateral foreign aid practices, and conservative party ideology leads to increased bilateral foreign aid practices. Party ideology is quantified by recording the political party of the president and the party ratio in Congress over time, and is then analyzed in conjunction with foreign aid budget data over the same time period. The data indicate that this paper's hypothesis is valid in some respects, but fails to fully describe American foreign aid practices, as evidenced by some unexpected and intriguing results