Supplying or Denying? The Allocation of Humanitarian Aid After Coups D’état

During the past two decades, Africa experienced 25 coups d’état. Despite this prevalence, we know very little about the international communities’ reactions to these upheavals. This paper explores how bilateral and multilateral donors adjust humanitarian aid provisions after coups. It argues that coups provide an opportunity to overthink engagements in the region. Bilateral donors use this opportunity to align their funding with their strategic political and economic interests. Multilateral donors, in turn, stick to their rhetorical commitments and provide humanitarian aid in line with the level of need. To test this argument by overcoming endogeneity concerns, I make use of the exogenous variation in the success and failure of coups. The results reveal that between 2000 and 2022, the international community significantly altered the amount of humanitarian aid in response to successful coups d’état. While most complied with the key idea of the humanitarian principles, some bilateral donors utilized the coup-led regime change to signal their interests in African countries. These findings indicate substantial donor heterogeneity, which may reduce the overall effectiveness of humanitarian aid in the region.