The failure of U.S. foreign aid: An examination of causes and a call for reform

Global Governance

Volumn 2, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 401-415

  Sullivan, Denis J ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0030305426     PISSN: 10752846     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/19426720-002-03-90000007     Document Type: Review

References (32)

1. CRS Report for Congress, "The 104th Congress: Key Issues and Early Agenda," Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 5 December 1994, p. 35.
2. On the recent rise in corruption within Egypt, see Cassandra (pseudonym), "The Impending Crisis in Egypt," Middle East Journal 49, no. 1 (winter 1995): 9-27. In 1994, the Washington Post ran a series of articles highlighting governmental corruption in Egypt and questioning whether the United States should continue to give aid to such a regime. Egyptian scholars also are highly critical of their government's corruption. See interviews with Hussein Amin, career diplomat and scholar, who blasts his government for its failings, including its corruption; and Dr. Ismail Sabri Abdallah, leader of the opposition Tagammu' Party, who laments the choices that Egyptians have been given and states that they have been "reduced to a choice between a corrupt ruling party and a reactionary religious one." Interviews in "Politics Full of Uncertainty: Perceptions Turn Doubtful," Financial Times, 22 April 1993, sec. 4, p. 1ff. There are already reports, as yet unpublished, by academics doing field research in Gaza on the high level of corruption within the Palestinian National Authority, the Palestinian "government" overseeing autonomy. Personal correspondence with Sara Roy, 23 May 1995.
3. On the recent rise in corruption within Egypt, see Cassandra (pseudonym), "The Impending Crisis in Egypt," Middle East Journal 49, no. 1 (winter 1995): 9-27. In 1994, the Washington Post ran a series of articles highlighting governmental corruption in Egypt and questioning whether the United States should continue to give aid to such a regime. Egyptian scholars also are highly critical of their government's corruption. See interviews with Hussein Amin, career diplomat and scholar, who blasts his government for its failings, including its corruption; and Dr. Ismail Sabri Abdallah, leader of the opposition Tagammu' Party, who laments the choices that Egyptians have been given and states that they have been "reduced to a choice between a corrupt ruling party and a reactionary religious one." Interviews in "Politics Full of Uncertainty: Perceptions Turn Doubtful," Financial Times, 22 April 1993, sec. 4, p. 1ff. There are already reports, as yet unpublished, by academics doing field research in Gaza on the high level of corruption within the Palestinian National Authority, the Palestinian "government" overseeing autonomy. Personal correspondence with Sara Roy, 23 May 1995.
4. CRS Report for Congress, "The 104th Congress: Key Issues and Early Agenda," p. 36.
5. John Sharpless, "The United States Response to Global Population, Environmental and Natural Resource Problems: Suggestions for Reform of the Foreign Affairs Bureaucracy to Maximize Policy Effectiveness," Working Paper Series no. 14, Advanced Study Center, International Institute, University of Michigan, 1995.
6. Steven W. Hook, "Development Assistance and Foreign Policy in the 1980s," paper presented at International Studies Association, Acapulco, Mexico, 23-28 March 1993, p. 40. For an elaboration of his argument on development assistance programs of France, Japan, Sweden, and the United States, see his National Interest and Foreign Aid (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995).
7. Steven W. Hook, "Development Assistance and Foreign Policy in the 1980s," paper presented at International Studies Association, Acapulco, Mexico, 23-28 March 1993, p. 40. For an elaboration of his argument on development assistance programs of France, Japan, Sweden, and the United States, see his National Interest and Foreign Aid (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995).
8. Interview with CIDA official, Cairo, March 1991.
9. See, for example, Denis J. Sullivan, "Extra-State Actors and Privatization in Egypt," in Iliya Harik and Denis J. Sullivan, eds., Privatization and Liberalization in the Middle East (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992).
10. "US Senator Criticizes Party on Foreign Aid: Sees Surrender of US Leadership," Boston Globe, 12 May 1995, p. 2.
11. Alan Woods, in a briefing with reporters, as reported in Christian Science Monitor, 21 February 1989, p. 1.
12. Former U.S. ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner designates the approximate date of this ideological evolution as 1978.
13. Robert Springborg claims that this new orthodoxy came in with the "Reagan Revolution" and the president's ability to clean out the bureaucracy and replace it with like-minded conservatives ("liberals"?): "The Politics of Agricultural Development in Egypt," American Research Center in Egypt lecture, Cairo, 4 November 1986. Most State Department and USAID officials with whom I spoke disagree with this view. They say instead that Reagan could not have achieved such a thorough cleaning-out of AID and that the new orthodoxy is much more an evolutionary development, resulting from twenty-five years of AID's dealings with Third World governments.
14. This frustration was not only related to me by the overwhelming majority of AID officials that I interviewed in Cairo and Washington; this same sentiment, in remarkably similar phrasing, was expressed to Scott Gates during his research on AID in Pakistan.
15. See Denis J. Sullivan, "Bureaucracy and Foreign Aid in Egypt: The Primacy of Politics," in Ibrahim Oweiss, ed., Political Economy of Contemporary Egypt (Washington, D.C.: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, 1990).
16. Transcribed from Aid Initiatives, 30 January 1991, videocassette.
17. C. Stuart Callison and John G. Stovall, "AID's Identity Crisis," Foreign Service Journal (January 1992): 34.
18. David Steinberg, in Christian Science Monitor, cited in ibid., p. 32.
19. USAID, Strategies for Sustainable Development, March 1994, p. 1.
20. For the donor (the United States), foreign aid is a political tool. That is, its terms of disbursement are not determined solely or even principally on economic rate of return on investment; rather, they are determined by political return. For the recipient, foreign aid is accepted primarily for its economic aspect. It is used for a variety of purposes - including purchasing of military equipment, importing of foodstuffs, financing of balance of payments deficits, promotion of industrial and agricultural growth, infrastructure development, water and waste treatment, population planning and other health care projects, human resource development, and so on.
21. See, for instance, Nicholas Eberstadt, Foreign Aid and American Purpose (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1988); Stephen Hellinger, Douglas Hellinger, and Fred M. O'Regan, Aid for Just Development (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1988).
22. See, for instance, Nicholas Eberstadt, Foreign Aid and American Purpose (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1988); Stephen Hellinger, Douglas Hellinger, and Fred M. O'Regan, Aid for Just Development (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1988).
23. For a discussion of the Economic Support Funds, which account for more than half of all U.S. bilateral economic assistance, the category under which Israel and Egypt receive U.S. aid, see Robert F. Zimmerman, Dollars, Diplomacy, and Dependency: Dilemmas of U.S. Economic Aid (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1993).
24. Two other relevant classics include Robert Packenham, Liberal America and the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973);
25. John D. Montgomery, The Politics of Foreign Aid: American Experience in Southeast Asia (New York: Praeger, 1962).
26. Robert E. Wood, From Marshall Plan to Debt Crisis: Foreign Aid and Development Choices in the World Economy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).
27. For further discussion of the negative impact of PL 480 food aid on some countries - such as Egypt, Indonesia, and Senegal - see Zimmerman, Dollars, Diplomacy, and Dependency, pp. 178-180.
28. See Denis J. Sullivan, "The Political Economy of Reform in Egypt," International Journal of Middle East Studies 22 (August 1990): 317-334.
29. Sara Roy, "Development Under Occupation? The Political Economy of U.S. Aid to the West Bank and Gaza Strip," Arab Studies Quarterly 13, nos. 3, 4 (summer-fall 1991): 65-89.
30. Audit for 1994/95 by the Associated Press of AID contracts in Egypt in 1993. See Miami Herald (International Edition), 26 March 1995, p. 25.
31. "GOP Backs Merging Foreign Policy Agencies," New York Times, 15 February 1995, p. A5.
32. See Hellinger, Hellinger, and O'Regan, Aid for Just Development, for detailed suggestions on how a new aid agency could be designed and implemented. Several chapters provide specific suggestions, and details are given in chap. 8.