Bio
Hillary Corwin received her Ph.D. from the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin in 2023. Her research focuses on development economics, human rights, and international political economy, with a particular emphasis on how foreign aid is used to address severe human rights violations. She examines the strategic choices donors make between coercive approaches—using aid as leverage to punish or incentivize compliance—and catalytic strategies, which aim to foster domestic political and institutional reforms.
In her dissertation, Coercive and Catalytic Strategies for Promoting Human Rights, Hillary investigated the factors shaping donor decision-making, including the extent to which their interests are exposed to human rights violations, the costs of strategic responses, and the role of alternative development finance sources such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Her findings reveal that while OECD donors often prioritize catalytic strategies, they shift to coercive approaches when political liberalization is unfeasible or undesirable. However, the growing availability of south-south financing has diminished the feasibility of coercive strategies, prompting donors to increasingly rely on catalytic approaches—even in contexts where these strategies may be ineffective or harmful. A case study of Burma illustrates how tensions between Chinese and western donor strategies can exacerbate instability, with Chinese aid undermining OECD donors’ leverage over repressive regimes while western democracy aid intensifies political contestation, prolonging and deepening conflicts.
Hillary’s research combines advanced quantitative methods, such as econometrics and causal inference, with qualitative case studies to provide a nuanced understanding of the evolving relationship between foreign aid and human rights. Her work has been published in World Development and contributes to broader discussions on governance, foreign aid, and human rights in an increasingly multipolar world. Prior to her Ph.D., she worked with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), supporting initiatives for vulnerable populations and private-sector partnerships. During her doctoral studies, she led teams at the Innovations for Peace and Development Lab, contributing to development economics research in collaboration with the United Nations and the World Bank.