The Foreign Service Journal, September 2008

ity for country ownership through anti-corruption aid and democracy promotion; and • Change the relationship between parties to acknowledge an emerging donor landscape with new entrants, such as private donors and corpora- tions, in which concepts such as par- ticipatory engagement and country ownership, featuring an emphasis on grass-roots, community-driven solu- tions, blur the line between donor and beneficiary. The call for reform originates mainly from three sources: 1) advo- cates urging the U.S. to abide by its international commitments to foster development, including the Paris De- claration and the Millennium Devel- opment Goals; 2) stakeholders such as host-country governments and civil society insisting upon a more active role for beneficiaries in setting priori- ties; and 3) lawmakers charged with congressional oversight who view coordination with other donors (mul- tilateral, bilateral, private) as fiscally responsible. What’s different about this latest initiative is its broad base of support. This includes members of the biparti- san HELP Commission; staff of Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., on the For- eign Relations Committee; develop- ment experts such as the Center for Global Development, the Brookings Institution and the CSIS Smart Power Commission; and InterAction, a coalition of over 150 private volun- tary organizations. Even more distinctive, these grow- ing calls for greater aid effectiveness are not grounded in skepticism about the value of foreign assistance. Indeed, polling conducted by groups such as the German Marshall Fund, Inter- Action and the Alliance to End Hun- ger consistently finds that a vast major- ity of the American public supports foreign assistance — provided they can be assured that assistance is tar- geted to addressing poverty, disease and illiteracy. The drive to improve aid respon- siveness arises from the urgency of addressing a set of chronic needs: the health-care worker shortage, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, food security and the dramatic increase in global food prices, climate change and the competition for scarce resources. Increasingly, donors are working against time or operating under a nar- row window of opportunity to deliver services to at-risk populations. While the global community has rallied to combat HIV/AIDS and has pledged its support for the Millen- nium Development Goals, persistent challenges remain. Post-conflict envi- ronments offer only a brief respite to jump-start development efforts. Glo- bal climate change represents a real threat to low-lying coastal regions, such as the heavily populated Ganges/ Brahamaputra Delta and the drylands region of sub-Saharan Africa. Faced with such threats, the status quo, reflected in an antiquated for- eign assistance structure geared toward a static world of haves and have-nots entangled in a Cold War era model of competition for influ- ence, is no longer useful. The world of centralized planning has been turned on its head, with economic development assisted by, but no longer solely dependent upon, foreign aid policies. Moreover, economic growth does not necessarily result in poverty reduc- tion, while the needs of the poor are often met by a range of policy choices and other drivers, not just “handouts” in the form of foreign aid. As William Easterly observes, technology has empowered a new generation of social entrepreneurs and “searchers” who might benefit from initiatives that serve to incubate and propel innova- tion at the grass-roots level. F’s Obvious Shortcomings Upon reflection, the F process was never intended to be the sweeping overhaul of foreign assistance long sought by stakeholders in the devel- opment community. As Adams acknowledges in his arti- cle, the Bush administration did not really attempt the kind of comprehen- sive reform now being widely dis- cussed on the Hill and within the de- velopment community. At its root, the F process was simply a planning and budgeting exercise that categorized spending across a range of strategic objectives, so that staff could respond whenever the Secretary of State asked: “How much are we spending in coun- try X or in program area Y?” The process did not seek to improve aid effectiveness, or to clarify how the U.S. would support its com- mitments. Instead, it seems ground- ed in its own reality of trying to do more with less. However, to some extent, it did seek to promote accountability through more detailed tracking of development spending and reducing beneficiary dependence through an “up and out” policy of encouraging countries to move along a graduation trajectory. For this reason, the administration should not be faulted for all the short- comings of the F process, including its: • Focus on “country-based” plan- ning without adequately accounting for country priorities through consul- tation with host-country government and key stakeholders; • Reliance on a top-down planning model that substitutes the knowledge, 52 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 8 The new system seems grounded in its own reality of trying to do more with less.