Transforming Foreign Aid: United States Assistance in the 21st Century [Paperback]

Carol Lancaster (Author), C. Fred Bergsten (Preface)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2000

The phenomenon of foreign aid began at the end of World War II and has survived the Cold War. How should the United States now spend its foreign aid to support its interests and values in the new century? In this study, Carol Lancaster takes a fresh look at all US foreign aid programs and asks whether their purposes, organization and management are appropriate to US interests and values in the world of the 21st century.

Lancaster finds that US aid in the new century, if it is to be an effective tool of US foreign policy, needs to be transformed. Its purposes need to be refocused and its organization and management brought into line with those purposes. Those purposes include support for peace-making, addressing transnational issues, providing for humane concerns and responding to humanitarian emergencies. Traditional programs aimed at promoting development, democracy and economic and political transitions in former socialist countries will not disappear but they will have less priority than in the past. These new sets of purposes, promoting both US interests and values abroad, also offer a policy paradigm around which a new political consensus can be created that will support US aid in the 21st century.

United States Foreign Aid should be of particular interest to professors, students, and researchers of international affairs, foreign policy, political science, and political economy.

Product Details

• Paperback: 100 pages
• Publisher: Institute for International Economics (August 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0881322911
• ISBN-13: 978-0881322910
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,183,085 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Great Background Information on Foreign Aid that will be Useful to Individuals Going into Public Service, August 7, 2009

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This review is from: Transforming Foreign Aid: United States Assistance in the 21st Century (Paperback)

Carol Lancaster is a foremost authority on U.S. foreign aid policy and practice. I only wish I had read her book before going to work at an NGO (non-governmental organization) because, quite frankly, I would have understood the big picture. It's amazing how people can work with such dedication at NGOs and not know the U.S. government processes that formulate foreign aid policy and the various issues that are forever debated within government, and I was one of them.

I got this book in December 2001 while employed at an NGO. Our USAID-funded mission was to promote the rule of law in former socialist countries. Of course, 9/11 happened and it was apparent to everybody that major changes were afoot. This was when it would have been helpful to have a background in the politics of foreign aid, the various debates about how to reform the process and to know about all the responsible parties within the government.

If you know anybody at an NGO, or better yet if you know anybody thinking about going into public service on the federal side, it will do them a world of good if they can grasp how things really work in the area of foreign aid. Foreign aid touches mostly everything federal, and you're not going to get sufficient information through the media. The number of federal agencies with a foreign aid mission is much larger than most people would imagine. One has to read works by experts such as Carol Lancaster to understand the use of soft power in foreign policy.

This is not a dated book. Lancaster explains everything in historical context. You get to see how the various federal agencies under the Clinton administration developed their own foreign policy programs, sometimes in contradiction to each other. You get to see the fault lines of all the major issues and how the different players have responded. In addition to this book, I'd also give that special person other Carol Lancaster's books: George Bush's Foreign Aid: Transformation or Chaos?and Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development, Domestic Politics.

You might see my short review on the first of these two books linked above. Actually, I enjoyed this book, the subject of this review most. The book on "transformation or chaos" is thoughtful and not a critique per se of the former president as the title might suggest. I took it as a clarion call to attract the best and brightest to public service in the area of foreign aid. Clearly, the U.S. has a dire need to fill many, many newly created positions both with gifted and motivated young people right out of college as well as experienced career-changers with a variety of relevant experiences.