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Last month, a working group of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) -- the organization set up to regulate the global whaling industry recommended that the body condone a limited amount of commercial whaling. If the commission follows the panel's recommendation, it would be a major victory for the world's whaling nations -- Japan, Iceland and Norway -- and thanks in no small part to the years of work Japan has put into cultivating allies in the commission.
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Anti-whaling countries and NGOs have frequently accused Japan of using foreign aid to bribe generally disinterested countries such as Nauru and Togo to join the IWC and vote in accordance with Japan's interests. Meanwhile, anti-whaling states, Britain in particular, have also openly lobbied countries to join the IWC and vote against whaling.
It might seem somewhat counterintuitive at first that Japan would devote aid dollars to this purpose. After all, it could in principle just leave the IWC and be no longer bound by its rules. But there is evidence suggesting that the threat of economic sanctions, in particular limiting access to other countries' fishing waters, is sufficient for Japan to prefer remaining within the framework of international diplomacy. Vote-buying may then be the most cost-effective way for Japan to make its voice heard.
Concrete answers to these questions have remained elusive despite much attention from political scientists and economists. To date, the only clear-cut evidence of the use of foreign aid for vote-buying in international organizations is in the case of the U.N. Security Council. A 2006 study found strong effects of Security Council membership on bilateral foreign aid from the United States. Other researchers have found evidence that U.S. influence also leads to an increase of World Bank and IMF sponsored projects.
There are two features of the IWC that make it an even more clear-cut case for identifying vote buying through foreign aid. First, it is a single-issue organization -- all of its important proposals revolve around restrictions on commercial whale catching -- and it is characterized by an extreme ideological divide between the major aid donors. Japan and a host of small developing countries (plus Norway and Iceland) are on the "pro-whaling" side and the rest of the OECD and some of the emerging economies are on the "anti-whaling" side.
Second, though there has been lots of movement among aid-recipient countries, which have joined, exited, and switched voting blocs in the IWC throughout the last 20 years, the positions of the major players have remained entirely unchanged over the same period.
Here's what I've found: Those countries that have joined the IWC recently and voted with Japan have also been more likely to see increases in Japanese bilateral aid receipts. For instance, Antigua & Barbuda and St. Kitts & Nevis, both of which were on the panel behind last month's decision, have received around $40 more in per capita aid from Japan since joining the IWC.
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