Matthew S. Winters - Research

My research focuses on the political economy of development and globalization. I am interested in the ways in which international institutions--such as the World Bank--interact with national governments in the pursuit of development objectives and the way in which this interaction between the international political sphere and the domestic political sphere leads to particular development outcomes. Under what conditions does foreign aid contribute to poverty alleviation and economic development? How does aid become politicized within countries? And how do international politics affect the distribution of aid across countries?

In my research, I use formal theory and both quantitative and qualitative empirical methods. I have conducted field work in Indonesia, and I also study the international politics of Northeast Asia with a particular focus on Korea.

Dissertation

• “The Impact of Domestic Political Constraints on World Bank Project Lending”

In international development programs, money sometimes does not reach its intended destination due to corruption or redirection by the government. My dissertation uses a formal model to examine how differing capacities for collective action among impoverished groups in aid-receiving countries affect the implementation of internationally-sponsored aid programs. Given the difficulties of credibly enforcing aid conditionalities at the international level, domestic mechanisms provide an alternative route for restricting a government's ability to redirect or otherwise capture aid. I test the empirical implications of the model using data from two World Bank projects in Indonesia and then in a cross-country context using an original dataset on corruption compiled from World Bank project documents.

Dissertation Advisers: David Epstein, Macartan Humphreys, Pablo Pinto

Dissertation Abstract

Publications

• “An Obsolescing Bargain in Chad: Explaining Shifts in Leverage between the Government and the World Bank.” With John Gould. 2007. Business and Politics 9.2.

This paper applies the insights of obsolescing bargaining theory to a situation in which a host country interacted with both multinational corporations and an international organization, the World Bank. Drawing on resource curse literature and the Rubinstein bargaining model, we demonstrate the continued usefulness of obsolescing bargaining theory by explaining why the World Bank had to renegotiate its initial bargain with Chad in the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline Project. The paper demonstrates how specific bargaining parameters changed over time in this case and suggests how resource curse dynamics and their impact on domestic politics might be particularly relevant for bargaining between host countries and international actors. The case study serves as a warning to international financial institutions and corporations alike with regard to the ways in which obsolescing bargains can arise in the contemporary global political-economy.

• “Market Access or Efficient Production: Why Did South Korean Outward Direct Investment Persist After the Crisis?” 2007. Asian Business and Management 6.3 (September).

After the 1997-98 Asian Financial Crisis, South Korean outward direct investment (ODI) remained at approximately the same level as before the crisis. What explains this remarkable persistence of outward investment concurrent with a seven-point drop in GDP? After considering contemporary theories of foreign direct investment, this article posits that there are multiple explanations, which are contingent on the size of the firm involved in ODI. For the largest South Korean conglomerates — the five biggest chaebol — foreign investment was a way of opening markets to compensate for declining sales at home, whereas other firms used foreign investment to take advantage of production efficiencies made possible by the financial crisis’s impact in other countries. In relation to South Korea, China represented an investment destination that could absorb both types of investment. The empirical evidence is suggestive, but not conclusive.

• “Inter-Korean Economic Relations.” With Samuel S. Kim. 2004. In Inter-Korean Relations: Problems and Prospects. Samuel S. Kim, ed. New York: Palgrave.

Working Papers

• “Ties That Do Not Bind: Why Treaty Ratification Might Imply Treaty Non-Compliance” (with Thania Sanchez)

There is a general expectation that states will comply with the provisions set forth in treaties that they ratify. However, we know that a compliance gap exists and that countries sometimes do not fully incorporate or implement international treaties to which they ostensibly are party. We look inside the state to suggest a domestic politics explanation for these outcomes. Using a formal model, we find equilibria in which states will sign and ratify treaties but then either not incorporate them into domestic legal codes or else implement them in a sub-standard fashion. The model suggests three behaviors that can limit treaty implementation: buck-passing, hand-showing and the fear of compliance failure. We illustrate these behaviors with reference to case studies.

• “Explaining Selection into Indonesia’s Kecamatan Development Program: Is There Political Manipulation in the Targeting of a Community-Driven Development Project?”

The process by which the Indonesian government chose sub-districts to participate in the World Bank-funded Kecamatan Development Program left some room for political manipulation of targeting. This paper finds that economic variables cannot fully explain the selection of sub-districts into the program. However, political variables suggested by theoretical concerns do not significantly improve our ability to predict selection into the program, although there is some evidence that ethnically diverse sub-districts and sub-districts located farther away from the district capital were less likely to participate in the program. There also is some evidence that targeting was spread across provinces so that no provinces were left out of the program. The paper concludes with some thoughts as to how we might better identify political influence in targeting selection.

• “When the Means Become the Ends: Two Novel Pathways to Foreign Policy Failure” (with David Stevens)

This paper starts from the assumption that there is an ideal model of foreign policy making in which decision makers are guided by the principle that ends/commitments must be kept in line with available means/resources. When means and ends become unbalanced, foreign policy is likely to fail. The paper then lays out two novel ways in which policy makers may stray from this means-ends balance, leading to either a quantitative or a qualitative disjuncture between means and ends. In one case, means are treated as ends, and in the other case, ends are treated as means. We note the observable indications of these behaviors. The paper illustrates these pathways to foreign policy failure with reference to recent and historical foreign policy decisions.

• "The International Politics of World Bank Lending to the Post-Communist Transition Countries"

Previous studies of multilateral aid suggest that there is often a political motive behind lending—-that influential donor countries are able to influence the amount of aid provided to recipient countries by international financial institutions. Given the special circumstances of the transition from communism, how true was this for World Bank lending to the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union? In the post-Soviet space, international political factors mattered mostly in an indirect fashion, influencing World Bank lending through the auspices of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The World Bank’s lending decisions are heavily influenced by the IMF and less so by domestic economic, domestic political or international political factors. This relationship between World Bank loans and IMF programs has not been incorporated into previous explanations of World Bank lending. Nonetheless, some debatable evidence of political influence in the tradition of the political movement hypothesis can be identified.

Papers without links may be made available upon request. Please feel free to contact me at msw22@columbia.edu.

Return to Matt Winters' home page.