Interest or influence? an empirical study of U.S. foreign aid to Israel

ABSTRACT

Research on the determinants of U.S. foreign aid to Israel is commonly motivated by two contesting theoretical paradigms. Pioneered by Organski, the self-interest paradigm conceptualises aid as a mutually beneficial deal that helps the U.S. to advance its interest in the Middle East. The influence paradigm, best showcased by Mearsheimer and Waltz, views U.S. aid to Israel as a corollary of the overwhelming influence of pro-Israel interest groups on U.S. foreign policy decision-making. This article attempts to shed new light on the debate by using systematic data analysis. The results show consistent evidence in support of the self-interest paradigm.

KEYWORDS:

• Foreign aid
• Israel
• United States
• foreign policy
• time series

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Sharp, U.S. Aid to Israel, 1.

2. Organski, The 36 Billion Dollar, 153–179.

3. Rabie, The Politics of Aid, 61–64; Tivnan, The Lobby, 187–195; and Mearsheimer and Waltz, The Israel Lobby, 152–196.

4. Mearsheimer and Waltz, The Israel Lobby, 152–196.

5. Waxman, “The Pro-Israel Lobby,” 79–99.

6. Foxman, The Deadliest Lies, 39–93.

7. Organski, The 36 Billion Dollar, 180–199; Freedman, “George W. Bush,” 36–78; and Rodman, “Arms and Influence,” 26–41.

8. Mearsheimer and Waltz, The Israel Lobby, 163–7.

9. See note 7 above.

10. USAID, “Overseas Loans and Grants,” 1.

11. Jentleson, American Foreign Policy, 31.

12. Israel Defense Forces, “Wars and Operations,” 1.

13. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, “Constant GDP Per Capita,” 1.

14. Dickey and Fuller, “Distribution of the Estimators,” 427–31.

15. Phillips and Perron, “Testing for Unit Root,” 335–46.

16. Kwiatkowski et al., “Testing the Null Hypothesis,” 159–78.

17. Engle, “Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity,” 987–1007; and Bollerslev, “Generalised Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity,” 307–27.

18. Hyndman and Khandakar, “Automatic Time Series Forecasting,” 1–22.

19. Ghalanos, “Rugarch,” 41–5.

20. Bollerslev and Wooldridge, “Quasi-Maximum Likelihood Estimation,” 143–72.

21. For notable exceptions, see Leblang and Bernhard, “Politics and Foreign Exchange,” 69–92; and Mukherjee and Leblang, “Politics, Interest and Stock,” 69–92.

22. Mearsheimer and Waltz, The Israel Lobby, 24–48.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yu Wang

Yu Wang is Assistant Professor at the Department of International Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Jiangsu, China.