Foreign Policy and Development Structure, Process, Policy

Foreign Policy and Development Structure, Process, Policy

The Drip-by-Drip Erosion of USAID

Presentation:
Jerry Hyman, President, Hills Program on Governance, CSIS

Comments By:
Jim Kolbe, Senior Transatlantic Fellow, German Marshall Fund; Former Chair, House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs

Larry Garber, USAID Deputy Assistant Administrator for Africa

Introductions and Moderator:
Dan Runde, Director, Project on Prosperity and Development, CSIS

Ironically, while foreign assistance has grown in importance in U.S. foreign policy and, as of the Obama Administration’s National Security Strategy, is now “on par” with diplomacy and defense, it has deteriorated organizationally, substantively and procedurally.  It will not take long to see how great a difference the deterioration in structure and process will have on development content.  Already, the tangible erosion has had discernable, negative effects on the quality of analysis, internal discourse, and decision-making.  Hyman’s CSIS article of the same name explores these tensions and notes that its lessons apply more broadly across government: the impulse to create new bureaucratic structures or to reorganize existing ones often fails to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of the new organization and the costs and benefits of reorganizing, especially the unanticipated consequences.

The full article Foreign Policy and Development can be found on the CSIS website.