Overwhelmed by a proliferation of foreign aid programs, the U.S. government is attempting to reorganize itself in order to manage them more effectively. This raises several critical issues that will shape U.S. foreign aid policy for the 21st century: Should existing foreign aid agencies be combined into a cabinet-level agency, ensuring a voice for development concerns during policy discussions, or should they be placed in the State Department to strengthen their foreign policy focus? How should aid agencies manage the planning, implementation, and evaluation of their aid? Is "managing for results" as currently practiced appropriate for what is often a highly experimental task of bringing about beneficial changes in foreign countries? How should the U.S. government educate its citizens on the issues of foreign aid and development as expenditures rise and as the ambitious goals driving aid—including nation building—expand? In Organ izing Foreign Aid, Carol Lancaster and Ann Van Dusen call for a fundamental reorganization of U.S. aid programs. They recommend a major increase in efforts at development education. The authors also provide insights into how other donor governments have dealt with these challenges. With the future of U.S. foreign aid policy at stake, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in development, foreign aid, and the organization of government programs in these areas.

A twentieth-century innovation, foreign aid has become a familiar and even expected element in international relations. But scholars and government officials continue to debate why countries provide it: some claim that it is primarily a tool of diplomacy, some argue that it is largely intended to support development in poor countries, and still others point out its myriad newer uses. Carol Lancaster effectively puts this dispute to rest here by providing the most comprehensive answer yet to the question of why governments give foreign aid. She argues that because of domestic politics in aid-giving countries, it has always been—and will continue to be—used to achieve a mixture of different goals. Drawing on her expertise in both comparative politics and international relations and on her experience as a former public official, Lancaster provides five in-depth case studies—the United States, Japan, France, Germany, and Denmark—that demonstrate how domestic politics and international pressures combine to shape how and why donor governments give aid. In doing so, she explores the impact on foreign aid of political institutions, interest groups, and the ways governments organize their giving. Her findings provide essential insight for scholars of international relations and comparative politics, as well as anyone involved with foreign aid or foreign policy.

Over the past seven years, the Bush administration has launched a revolution in U.S. foreign aid. At no time since the administration of President Kennedy have there been more changes in the volume of aid, in aid's purposes and policies, in its organization, and in its overall status in U.S. foreign relations. George Bush's Foreign Aid: Transformation or Chaos? analyzes in detail the array of recent reforms of U.S. economic assistance and the difficult issues these reforms raise, while placing the changes and the manner of their implementation in a historical and political context. Lancaster draws out the challenges and opportunities this transformation of U.S. aid offer for the next administration to engage the emerging world of the 21st century.

In Jan. 2006, Sec. of State Rice announced the ¿transformational development¿ initiative to bring coordination and coherence to U.S. aid programs. She created a new Bureau, which developed a Strategic Framework for Foreign Assistance to align aid programs with strategic objectives. The Framework became a guiding force in the FY 2008 and FY 2009 budgets, as well as the FY 2010 budget request. Numerous studies have addressed various concerns and provided recommendations regarding U.S. foreign aid policy, funding, and structure. Of the 16 recommendations, only enhancing civilian agency resources has the support of all of the studies covered in this report. This report is a review of selected studies written between 2001 and 2008. Table.

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