The Politics of American Foreign Aid by Michael Kent O'Leary

Author:Michael Kent O'Leary [O'Leary, Michael Kent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781351477123
Google: B8s3DwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 36811263
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2007-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

5

The Executive As Organizer

of Attitudes

The primary initiator and organizer of opinions about foreign aid is the executive branch of government. The history of foreign aid is principally the history of policy initiatives taken by the President and his advisers—postwar relief, the Marshall Plan, assisting underdeveloped countries, the emphasis on military programs after the Korean War, and a revived interest in economic development in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

The sources of executive branch power in foreign policy-making are the same as those which have led to the growth of executive power in other areas of national policy: the need for problem-solving and decision-making based on a high degree of specialized knowledge, extensive resources for collecting, evaluating and storing information, and over-all coordination of this knowledge. As the technical need for the management of information has increased, so has the size and activity of the federal bureaucracy. The need to make quick policy decisions has meant a growth of activity and discretion in the upper levels of the executive. As Richard Neustadt has pointed out, even Dwight Eisenhower, with his relatively passive conception of the Presidency, carried out the kinds of policies and took the kinds of decisions which in earlier days would have classified him as an exceedingly strong and active chief executive.1

Such changes have been even more marked in foreign than in domestic policy; and in the realm of foreign policy they have been especially important in respect to foreign aid. The planning and execution of a successful aid program requires information about the political, social, and economic situations in the nearly one hundred nations which receive aid. This has presented American diplomats with increasing demands. In addition, foreign aid draws upon a range of knowledge and skills at least as broad as that needed in all the rest of the government. From public health to public works, from the successful exploitation of agricultural resources to advice on the creation and maintenance of a commercial airline, the variety of projects which constitute the aid program represent a near-microcosm of the activities of the private and public sectors of American society.

It is also important for the executive branch to instigate action in foreign aid. Many elements of the opinions and attitudes among the public and Congress have provided at best a mixed, and in some respects a negative, impulse to government activity in the field of foreign economic development. If there is to be a foreign aid program at all, the executive branch must work actively for its acceptance and continued support.

It is generally assumed that the practitioners of foreign policy perceive and respond to problems in their domain quite differently from the public and Congress. Having more frequent and intimate contact with international events, and deriving their livelihood from managing these events successfully, foreign policy officials frequently develop styles of thought and reach conclusions which are rarely shared, let alone understood, by nonprofessionals. The fact that there is a foreign aid program at all in the face of hesitancies and doubts of the public is a major evidence of some differences.

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