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The paper introduces and examines the narratives and specifics of Gulf bilateral donors—namely the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. It confronts established narratives with current data and trends and includes the perspective of both Western and Arab scholars. The research points to some new trends among Gulf donors, notably the diversification of their aid sectors and the strengthening of the distinctiveness of Gulf donors from other southern donors. The research also focuses on the narratives about bilateral aid allocation factors of Gulf donors. The results confirm the continuing preference of Arab countries in Middle East and North Africa with predominately Muslim populations. However, aid is not evenly allocated among recipients in the MENA region, and the different and sometimes conflicting (geo)political and security interests of Gulf donors play an important role in the territorial distribution of aid. In addition to these strategic considerations behind the allocation of aid from Gulf donors, the study reveals certain importance of social needs' factors in distribution of Emirati and Kuwaiti official aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to bring new insights into the foreign aid allocation behaviour and patterns of two donors from the group of post-communist EU member countries, namely Poland and the Czech Republic. We use quantitative regression analysis to address Polish and Czech foreign aid objectives with a specific emphasis on geopolitical considerations and promotion of democracy. The results reveal a considerable level of similarity between Polish and Czech foreign aid allocation. Both donor countries use foreign aid to safeguard their own geopolitical self-interests—the Czech Republic and especially Poland prioritise post-Soviet countries in their aid allocations. They also prefer recipients in a relative geographic proximity. On the other hand, economic objectives are not significant drivers of Polish and Czech foreign aid. Given the recipients' needs, the middle-income effects are evident in both countries' aid allocations. Although support of democracy is an official objective of both donors, the level of democracy and freedom played a statistically significant role only in the allocation of overall Czech aid. A separated analysis on Polish and Czech democracy aid reveals even stronger biases of democracy aid towards former post-Soviet countries. Our research has also acknowledged the need for a more precise definition of democratic assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]