HUMAN-RIGHTS AND THE ALLOCATION OF UNITED-STATES MILITARY ASSISTANCE

A relationship between US military aid and the human rights practices of potential recipient countries is mandated by law. Yet the preponderance of the results obtained in past quantitative studies seems to indicate that no such relationship exists in reality. This study focuses on the question of whether governments that abuse human rights are disqualified completely from US military aid programs. When some weaknesses of previous studies are rectified, human rights abuse is then found to have affected the allocation of military aid in two distinct samples of countries: Western hemisphere countries; and a random sample of the world's nations, micro-states excluded. Human rights abuse affected US military aid allocation during both the Carter and Reagan presidencies. The appearance of a relationship during the Reagan presidency indicates the effect endured even under an administration thought generally to have de-emphasized human rights in its foreign-policy decisions. © 1991, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved.