The Use of Anthropologists in the Foreign Aid Program

STRUGGLING FOR EFFECTIVENESS CID A and Canadian Foreign Aid Stephen Brown, ed. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queeris University Press, 2012. 384 pp, $32.95 (paper) ISBN 978-0-7735-4057-6Canadians - and scholars of Canada - have made a national pastime of assessing Canada's relative position in the world. Is Canada a power? Is Canada a major foreign policy (or development) actor? What is the future of Canada's place in the world? Struggling for Effectiveness: CIDA and Canadian Foreign Aid, edited by Stephen Brown, fits with this mode of questioning. Several of the volume's fifteen authors seek to understand Canada's relative ranking in the global foreign aid hierarchy through comparisons to donors such as Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Surprisingly absent from the volume are comparisons to the United States or other donors, such as Japan, who deviate from some of the standards of the international aid donor community that this volume stresses.A less-than-complete understanding of Canada as a foreign aid donor emerges from the comparative approach thatmarks the book's early chapters. While these chapters highlight the positive aspects of other countries' aid programs, the reader learns that on many indicators Canada is simply a middle of the pack country. In multiple rankings in areas ranging from donor size to generosity, Canada sits squarely in the of developed country aid donors, if not ranking slightly above the average for donor performance (53, 89, and Chapter 1). While this situation is clearly a concern for those who see foreign aid as an integral part of Canada's humanitarian ethos and believe that this ethos should define our foreign relations, it may not be a concern for most Canadians: the book provides evidence that prior to the 2000 elections only a minority of Canadians favoured increased foreign aid spending (251). This volume therefore reflects a perpetual tension between how Canadians see themselves and their country and the policies they and their government support. The domestic political context for the recent changes in Canadian foreign aid policy that form the key interest of the volume is laid out well in the chapters by David Black and Adam Chapnick.The overarching message of Struggling for Effectiveness is that Canada's foreign aid policy has lacked a clear and inspiring vision for quite some time. The result of this absence of vision has been policy incoherence, which implies that Canada will remain a middle of the pack country in the area of foreign aid for the foreseeable future. The objective of the book is twofold: to identify precisely where Canada's shortcomings lie and to offer advice and potential solutions for raising Canada from its status. While the authors largely succeed in the former task, their ability to make progress on the latter is limited by the overly critical focus of much of the volume. Indeed, the vast majority of contributors focus on policy failings since Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party came to (minority) power. Rare exceptions to this focus on Harper's failings are found in Stephen Brown's critique of the contraction of Canada's aid budget under Prime Minister Jean Chretien (95) and David Black's acknowledgement in a chapter titled Between Indifference and Idiosyncrasy: The Conservatives and Canadian Foreign Aid to Africa that the Liberals presided over the deepest cuts in the history of the Canadian aid program (248). While this book may not have been edited according to a political agenda, it certainly reflects the contentious domestic politics of Canada of the past decade.Tensions also exist between the consensus of the international aid donor community (which many of the authors in this volume use as a foil to Canada's policies) and some of the prescriptions offered in the volume. The Harper government's focus on Latin America actually reflects the current aid donor consensus that Canada should have greater geographic or sectoral concentration in its foreign aid program (53 and 90). …

Introduction More than a decade ago, the World Bank argued that “underlying the litany of Africa’s development problems is a crisis of governance.” Poor quality institutions, weak rule of law, an absence of accountability, tight controls over information, and high levels of corruption still characterize many African states today. Aid levels have been reduced in many parts of Africa during the past decade. Yet in many of the countries with poor governance records, aid continues to contribute a very high percentage of government budgets. This article explores the institutional impact of these high levels of aid and the way that large amounts of aid are delivered. There are many reasons why governance is poor in much of sub-Saharan Africa. Colonialism did little to develop strong, indigenously rooted institutions that could tackle the development demands of modern states. Economic crisis and unsustainable debt, civil wars, and political instability have all taken their toll over the past 2 decades and more. It is difficult to separate the impact of these problems from the possible impact of foreign aid, which is often high in countries that suffer from precisely these problems. Theory provides conflicting guidance here. On the one hand, aid can release governments from binding revenue constraints, enabling them to strengthen domestic institutions and pay higher salaries to civil servants. Aid can provide training and technical assistance to build legal systems and accounting offices. In many countries, aid personnel (sometimes expatriate) manage important government programs, and the infusion of resources and technical assistance can give an important boost to the efficiency and effectiveness of governance, if only in a partial sense. Yet despite these likely benefits, it is also possible that, continued over

China is emerging as a key state actor in international development – a sector that has been dominated by the United States for decades. US and Chinese foreign aid programs can be compared on the basis of several benchmarks: 1) official state definition and accounting of foreign aid programs; 2) historical foundations and origins; 3) sectoral distribution, particularly in terms of the professed goals and objectives of the aid program; 4) nature of targeted recipient actors; 5) institutional mechanisms for delivery in recipient countries. Notwithstanding particular differences, Chinese and US foreign aid portfolios demonstrate their respective strategic political and economic interests in two ways: they shape the domestic politics of recipient countries in ways that accommodate the donor government’s policy preferences, and they enhance the social reputation and legitimacy of the donor state in the international system.

This book has examined one of the significant but overlooked chapters in the history of foreign assistance: China’s foreign aid. While foreign policy specialists have explored the reasons China gives foreign aid and offered broad descriptions of China’s foreign aid program, detailed analyses of China’s actual assistance efforts, their outcomes, and the reasons for those outcomes are almost nonexistent. One aim of this book has been to close that gap, providing an historical account of one major aspect of China’s aid: the effort to export its green revolution to Africa. Another aim has been to generate insights into one of the central problems in the study of foreign aid: why is aid in Africa so often ineffective? What influences the outcome of foreign aid efforts?

In November 1959, India's Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, turned seventy. Having led his country since Britain's departure from South Asia in August 1947, Nehru's seventieth birthday stimulated debates, both inside and outside the Indian subcontinent, on India's future in a post-Nehruvian world. In the early 1960s, with the Indian premier's health deteriorating and Sino-Indian relations under strain, British and US policymakers evidenced increasing concern with whom, or perhaps more pertinently, with what, forces would govern the world's largest democracy after Nehru. This article, which draws upon recently released British and US archival records, provides the first assessment of Western involvement in the struggle to succeed Nehru which occurred within India's ruling Congress Party between 1960 and 1964. Moreover, it offers insights into Anglo-American concern that Nehru's health adversely affected Indian policymaking; the involvement of foreign intelligence services in India's domestic politics; and the misplaced expectations of British and US officials that the appointment of Lal Bahadur Shastri as India's second Prime Minister, in May 1964, would herald the beginning of a new and more productive relationship between India and the West.

Foreign aid allocations are generally explained in ternis of international politics or state-centric models of foreign policy.1 In fact, foreign aid allocations were recently used as an empirical measure of how the end of the Cold War may have changed the underlying determinants of U.S. foreign policy (Meernik et al., 1998). While the entirety of research findings related to the various foreign aid programs around the world are too extensive to be briefly summarized, analyses have repeatedly demonstrated that aid allocations do tend to reflect the international political roles and interests of individual aid donors.2

This article reviews Keith Spicer’s 1966 book on Canada’s foreign aid program, A Samaritan State? External Aid in Canada’s Foreign Policy. Spicer’s essentially realist perspective on the reasons why Canada did and should provide development assistance is not only inconsistent with more recent views that justify aid at least in part on humanitarian grounds; it is also difficult to support even from the evidence he presents. The article concludes by comparing Spicer’s views with recent developments in Canadian foreign aid policy, suggesting that Spicer might well approve of the self-interested nature of current policy—but that he would be unlikely to embrace the narrow, short-term perspectives that underpin it, which could hurt Canada’s standing internationally.

Anti-Presidential Bipartisanship in U.S. Foreign Policy Under Trump: The Case of the International Affairs Budget

A healthy lifestyle is fundamental for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease and other noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). Investment in primary prevention, including modification of health risk behaviors, could result in a 4-fold improvement in health outcomes compared with secondary prevention based on pharmacological treatment. The American Heart Association (AHA) emphasized the importance of lifestyle in its 2020 goals for cardiovascular health promotion and disease reduction. In addition to defining “cardiovascular health” based on criteria for blood pressure and biochemical markers (lipids and glycemia), the AHA Strategic Planning Committee further identified lifestyle characteristics of central importance: nutrition, physical activity, smoking, and maintenance of a healthy body weight.1 The World Health Organization estimated that ≈80% of NCDs could be prevented if 4 key lifestyle practices were followed: a healthy diet, being physically active, avoidance of tobacco, and alcohol intake in moderation.2 To support healthy lifestyle initiatives, major changes are necessary at the societal level to improve population health. Numerous strategies might help to create a culture that promotes and facilitates healthy behaviors, including creating laws and regulations, mounting large-scale public awareness and education campaigns, implementing local community programs, and providing individual counseling.3 Physicians are uniquely positioned to encourage individuals to adopt healthy lifestyle behaviors: Approximately 80% of Americans visit their primary care physician at least once a year. Physicians directly communicate with their patients during clinical encounters across numerous settings, and research indicates that patients highly value recommendations provided by their physicians.4,5 However, data further indicate that lifestyle counseling does not routinely occur in physicians’ offices, thereby representing a lost opportunity. Physicians report that they perform lifestyle counseling during ≈34% of clinic visits.4 Patients, in turn, report an even lower frequency of physician lifestyle counseling. For example, obese patients reported receiving physical activity and …

Although South Korea is one of the newest members to join the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development's Development Assistance Committee in 2010, it has a long history of official development assistance (ODA), first as a recipient of aid (1945–1995) and later as an emerging donor (with the establishment of aid‐implementing agencies for concessional loans in 1987, and for grant aid in 1991, respectively). And, global public health has been one of the three largest outreach areas of South Korea's foreign aid programmes. This article examines the global public health outreach activities of South Korea's leading aid‐implementing agencies, namely Korea International Cooperation Agency, Korea Foundation for International Healthcare and Economic Development and Cooperation Fund, using data for the latest period, 2008–2012. South Korea's innovative global public health ODA through the Global Poverty Eradication Contribution is also examined. The analysis of global public health outreach activities has shown that South Korea has concentrated its foreign aid to Asia and Africa, and that a large share of its aid has been focused on health care services; water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH); maternal and child health (MCH); and infectious diseases. A significant regional difference was found: South Korea's aid focused on health care services and MCH in Asia, while it focused on WASH and infectious diseases in Africa. Findings have also shown that South Korea's priority countries for development cooperation have received more aid compared with non‐priority countries. In conclusion, we have found that South Korea's global health outreach activities were in line with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but that they lack a clear focus and do not have globally recognised initiatives or projects compared with large and traditional donors such as the United States and Japan. Further research is needed to examine the impact of the rapidly rising aid activities of South Korea, especially in global public health.

Altruism and emotional contagion have a powerful capacity to mobilize financial and humanitarian aid to impoverished nations. Although external economic assistance has been helpful for many countries, a large number of nonstrategic, foreign aid programs over the past several decades have failed—worsening the very situations they were meant to help. Many other humanitarian programs have also been ineffective, at enormous cost. Altruistic efforts for social improvements must be guided, not purely by emotion, but with a well thought out objective strategy and endpoint. Neuroscience is allowing us to understand how default emotional approaches to helping others can backfire and cripple otherwise noble intentions. Public policies and interventions that have incorporated smart, strategic, and tempered altruism may be effective in alleviating poverty and stimulating economic development.

Health and human behavior: areas of interest common to the social and medical sciences.

This paper asks why it took ten years after a major famine in Indonesia in 1957 for Australia's food aid to increase in greater amounts, and why food aid was so significant in Australia's foreign aid to Indonesia during the late 1960s and 1970s. Indonesia's reluctance to apply for food aid under the Colombo Plan is the reason for the delay. A combination of humanitarian, commercial and international relations interests converged to shape Australia's rapidly growing food aid to Indonesia after 1966. Food aid contributed to alleviating food shortages and famines in Indonesia. It also supported Australian firms in regaining their share in the growing market for wheat‐based products in Indonesia, and in building market share for Australian rice exports, in competition with United States (US) producers and the US PL480 food aid program. Food aid also allowed Australia to expand its foreign aid program to Indonesia rapidly after 1966, in support of the government of new President Soeharto and improved bilateral relations.

Throughout his considerable body of work, William Easterly has identified several critical problems with foreign aid and economic development programmes. In particular, he argues that many working in areas of development act as ‘planners’, who believe they can implement effective policies but who in fact lack the necessary knowledge. Moreover, Easterly claims that these agents face perverse incentives that lead to suboptimal development outcomes. This article explores the theoretical roots of Easterly's critiques and relates them to the work of two Nobel prize‐winning economists, F.A. Hayek and James M. Buchanan. It explores the broader applicability of Easterly's criticisms by applying a similar framework to military activity.

R ESEARCH ON PUBLIC POLICIES in the United States has generally taken two directions. The first, and older tradition, may be called normative studies of public policy. These studies attempt to analyze, usually in a critical fashion, a particular public policy (agriculture, labor, education, unemployment, etc.) and most generally also suggest either reforms in the existing policy or a new type of policy altogether. For example, there are numerous studies of our foreign aid program which describe, in detail, how it has failed in one way or another to live up to certain standards. These reports are also accompanied with general or specific recommendations on how the program can be improved. The criteria of evaluation which these critiques of on-going programs employ are usually certain stated goals which the authors feel are, or ought to be, highly valued. Often authors will suggest that if certain steps are taken programs can be developed which will lead to solutions of the problems under examination. The major point of argumentation, however, is generally the extent to which on-going policies deviate from, important values or goals. Studies of this kind have now fallen somewhat into disrepute as being value-laden and lacking in scientific interest. Much of the dissatisfaction revolves around the point that such studies are argumentative and sometimes rhetorical, using data to score policy points rather than scientific ones. Almost anyone can think of values which current policies in almost any field are either slow in satisfying, or not satisfying at all, and hence criticize public policies on that basis. A newer effort in the direction of policy analysis has been the attempt to think futuristically about either the consequences of ongoing policies or what kinds of policies would be appropriate given a world x number of years hence. These studies have taken impetus from governmental interest in social science efforts to talk about the future in such fields as demography, disarmament, nuclear strategy,