International Financial Institutions and the Promotion of Autocratic Resilience

Abstract Despite their significant influence on the development trajectories of recipient nations, we know little about the lending strategies of international financial institutions (IFIs) dominated by authoritarian regimes. In this paper, we provide new evidence that autocratic IFIs are not merely neutral economic actors. Our findings suggest that these institutions provide financial support to authoritarian governments facing acute threats to their survival. We introduce an original data set tracking the lending behavior of eighteen autocratic IFIs across 143 recipient countries from 1967 to 2021. Our findings uncover that aid flows from autocratic IFIs increase precisely when authoritarian regimes are most vulnerable. By situating these insights within the broader aid allocation literature, we provide a fresh perspective on the political calculus of international development lending, with profound implications for understanding global power dynamics.