Japanese foreign disaster assistance: the ad hoc period in international politics and the illusion of a CNN effect

Abstract

Policy uncertainty is often cited as a cause of the CNN effect. In fact, many argue that an uncertain policy environment is a necessary condition for media-driven foreign policy. While the logic appears compelling, rigorous empirical analyses of the influence of the news media on Japanese foreign disaster aid allocations indicates that, as the global policy environment became more uncertain with the end of the Cold War, media influence went from being a prominent factor in foreign disaster aid allocations to being statistically insignificant. This finding is contrary to the logic of the policy uncertainty argument for media-driven foreign policy as a generalization but it is consistent with the earlier findings for the US disaster assistance program. This lends additional evidence for the argument that the most significant aspect of the CNN effect, the presumed rise of a media-driven foreign policy environment in the 1990s, may have been illusory.