Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development, Domestic Politics PDF
Preview Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development, Domestic Politics
foreign aid Foreign Aid Diplomacy, Development, Domestic Politics carol lancaster the university of chicago press Chicago and London carol lancaster is associate professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School ofForeign Service at Georgetown University and director of the Mortara Center for International Studies. She is the author of Aid to Africa, also published by the University of Chicago Press, a coauthor of Organizing U.S. Foreign Aid: Confronting the Challenges of the Twenty-first Century,and a former deputy administrator of USAID. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2007 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2007 Printed in the United States of America 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 1 2 3 4 5 isbn-10: 0-226-47043-1 (cloth) isbn-13: 978-0-226-47043-6 (cloth) isbn-10: 0-226-47045-8 (paper) isbn-13: 978-0-226-47045-0 (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data Lancaster, Carol. Foreign aid : diplomacy, development, domestic politics / Carol Lancaster. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn0-226-47043-1 (cloth : alk. paper)—isbn0-226-47045-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Economic assistance. 2. International relations. 3. Diplomacy. 4. Economic development—International cooperation. 5. Economic assistance—Political aspects. I. Title. hc60.l294 2007 327.1'11—dc22 2006020760 oThe paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansiz39.48–1992. To Brian Atwood, Jill Buckley, Michael Feldstein, and Jennifer Windsor, from whom I have learned so much And to Curt, to whom I owe so much contents Preface ix 1 Why Foreign Aid? Setting the Stage 1 2 Aid’s Purposes: A Brief History 25 3 The United States: Morgenthau’s Puzzle 62 4 Japan: The Rise and Decline of an “Aid Superpower” 110 5 France: Rank et Rayonnement 143 6 Germany: A “Middle of the Roader” 171 7 Denmark: The Humane Internationalist 190 8 Conclusions and Conjectures 212 Interviews 227 Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Foreign Terms 231 Notes 235 Index 267 preface The question this book asks is “Why is aid given?” The question may seem odd since, after a half century of aid-giving, aid is a familiar and expected element in relations between states. And yet, in the middle of the first dec- ade of the twenty-first century, foreign aid is much in the news. After major declines during the 1990s, aid levels are again rising. Aid’s purposes are still debated, but development aid—apparently headed for extinction in the 1990s—is making an impressive comeback. “Why is aid given?” is actually two questions. What purposes did gov- ernments pursue with their aid? And why did they choose those purposes and not others? The first question remains an important one, but it is not new. It has been asked since the origins of aid-giving in the middle of the twentieth century. Scholars and practitioners have debated whether it was or should be provided for primarily diplomatic purposes—advancing the national security and economic interests of the donor country—or whether it was or should be provided mainly to help better the human condition in countries receiving the aid. This book describes the evolution of aid’s pur- poses over the fifty years of aid-giving. But it goes beyond narrative to dig into the second question of why governments have pursued the mix of pur- poses they have with aid—whether diplomatic, developmental, relief, com- mercial, cultural, or others. International events, trends, and pressures are important in answering this question, but they are far from enough. To an- swer the question, we need to understand the often neglected domestic politics of aid in aid-giving countries—the widely shared ideas and norms shaping aid-giving, the political institutions in which aid decisions are made, the interests competing for influence over aid’s purposes, and the or- ganization of governments to manage their aid. This book compares these forces at work in five countries: the United States, Japan, France, Germany, and Denmark. Each has a separate and interesting tale to tell about the in-
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