Foreign aid, soft power, and domestic government legitimacy: experimental evidence from South Korean aid to Indonesia

This research aims to examine how foreign aid affects the recipient public's view of donors and their own government. Foreign aid is believed to contribute to enhancing the public's image toward donors, but along with potential externalities regarding the legitimacy of the domestic government. To test this expectation, we conduct a nationwide survey experiment in Indonesia utilizing South Korea's aid projects in the domains of public health, education, and energy. We find that information about South Korea's aid significantly improves the attitudes of Indonesian citizens toward the donor, but the informative effect is statistically significant only regarding public health and education. We also find that aid information per se does not affect government legitimacy, although public education and energy aid appear to have positive effects compared to public health aid.