PDF Ebook Why Foreign Economic Assistance?
There is an interesting dichotomy in the dialogue about the use of foreign assistance in the pursuit of domestic economic and strategic interests. It is clear that self interest and security arguments have often represented little more than cynical efforts to generate support for the foreign assistance budget. There have been serious efforts to examine the theoretical foundations of the economic self-interest argument. There have also been increasingly serious attempts to evaluate the economic and social impacts of economic assistance in developing countries. In addition to a large professional literature, the U.S. Agency for International Development has conducted and published more than 100 Project Evaluations, Evaluation Special Studies, and Program Evaluation Reports. The World Bank has an Operations Evaluation Department that engages in a major program of project completion evaluation studies.
The security rationale has not, however, been subject to nearly as rigorous theoretical or empirical analysis. 1 8 The single background paper on the effectiveness of military assistance prepared for the Carlucci Commission asserted a positive linkage between U.S. security assistance expenditures and security interests while admitting that the evidence to support the assertion is "elusive."19 This is not to suggest that empirical support cannot be provided to support the political and strategic self-interest arguments. It is simply to argue that, in spite of Huntington's assertion that the results of security assistance have been at least as successful as efforts to promote economic development,20 little convincing evidence has appeared in the professional literature on development assistance.
There is an inherent contradiction in both the economic and the security self-interest arguments. There is a danger that donor countries may pursue their self-interest under the rubric of aid even if it harms the recipient country. If the donor self-interest argument is utilized as a primary rationale for development assistance it imposes on donors some obligation to demonstrate that its assistance does no harm to the recipient.
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