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Political-Development Doctrines in the American Foreign Aid Program

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Robert A. Packenham
Robert A. Packenham
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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It is becoming increasingly evident, if it is not clear already, that one of the most critical problems in the overall modernization of the developing countries is political development. In South Vietnam, in the Congo, in Brazil, in Indonesia—all over the underdeveloped world, the capacity of countries to cope with their own problems, and consequently the stance of the United States toward these nations, turns in varying degrees on the successes or failures of the political system.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , January 1966 , pp. 194 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1966

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References

1 Agency for International Development (AID), Program Guidance Manual (August 1, 1963), 1Google Scholar, quoted in Mason, Edward S., Foreign Aid and Foreign Policy (New York and Evanston 1964), 37.Google Scholar

2 Packenham, , “Approaches to the Study of Political Development,” World Politics, XVII (October 1964), 108–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 For example, the studies by Banfield on southern Italy, Scott on Mexico, Weiner on India, Apter on Uganda and Ghana, Pye on Malaya and Burma, and Leites on France cited in Packenham, 116n and 118n.

4 For example, studies by Almond and Verba, Lerner, Lipset, Deutsch, Coleman, and Hagen cited in Packenham.

6 See especially Ward, Robert E. and Rustow, Dankwart A., eds., The Political Modernization of Turkey and Japan (Princeton 1964).CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also the country studies in LaPalombara, Joseph, ed., Bureaucracy and Political Development (Princeton 1963).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 The phrase is used by Everett Hagen with reference to his own classification of political systems (“A Framework for Analyzing Economic and Political Change,” in Asher, Robert E. and others, Development of the Emerging Countries: An Agenda for Research [Washington 1962], 4Google Scholar), but it has wider applicability.

7 de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America, I (New York 1961)Google Scholar, lxxxi-lxxxii (emphasis added).

8 Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton 1963).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Lipset, Seymour Martin, The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective (New York 1963), chap. 7.Google Scholar

10 Almond, Gabriel A. and Coleman, James S., eds., The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton 1960), 533–35.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., 538.

12 Hagen, “A Framework”; and Lipset, , Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (Garden City 1960)Google Scholar, chap. 2.

13 In Cutright's study, “Points for any one year [in a 21-year period] were awarded in the following manner:

“1. Legislative Branch of Government. Two points for each year in which a parliament existed in which the lower or the only chamber contained representatives of two or more political parties and the minority party or parties had at least 30 percent of all seats. One point for each year in which a parliament existed whose members were the representatives of one or more political parties, but where the ‘30 percent rule’ was violated. No points for each year no parliament existed or for years when eidier of the above types of parliaments was abolished or discarded by executive power. Parliaments whose members are not members of political parties are given a zero. Parliaments that are not self-governing bodies (e.g., the mock parliaments of colonial governments) are given a zero.

“2. Executive Branch of Government. One point for each year the nation was ruled by a chief executive who was in office by virtue of direct vote in an open election where he faced competition or was selected by a political party in a multi-party system, as defined by the conditions necessary to get two points on the legislative branch indicator above. If the parliament ceased being a multi-party parliament because of executive action, the chief executive stopped getting points. One half point each year the chief executive was not selected by virtue of his hereditary status but was selected by criteria other than those necessary to attain one point as given above. Colonial governments receive one half point per year. No points if the nation was governed by a hereditary ruler.

“It is possible for a nation to acquire no points, one half or one point depending on the selection of the chief executive. The combined index has a range of zero to 3 points per year. Over the 21-year period of our study it would be possible for a nation to have a total raw score between zero and 63 points” (Cutright, Phillips, “National Political Development: Measurement and Analysis,” American Sociological Review, XXVIII [April 1964], 256Google Scholar).

14 Huntington, Samuel P. argues, “The most unstable systems and those most prone to military intervention are the multiparty systems and the no-party systems. The weak institutionalization of parties in the multiparty system makes that system extremely fragile. The step from many parties to no parties and from no parties to many parties is an easy one. In their institutional weakness, the no-party system and the multiparty system closely resemble each other” (“Political Development and Political Decay,” World Politics, XVII [April 1965], 427).Google Scholar

15 255, 255n.

16 “Is Level of Government Related to Capacity for Self-Government?” American Journal of Economics and Sociology, XVII (July 1958), 367–81.Google Scholar

17 “Toward Further Modernization of the Study of New Nations,” World Politics, XVII (October 1964), 157–81, at 179.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., 177.

19 Ibid.

20 Almond, , “A Developmental Approach to Political Systems,” World Politics, XVII (January 1965), 183–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Political Systems and Political Change,” American Behavioral Scientist, VI (June 1963), 3–10.Google Scholar

21 For Deutsch's definitions of this concept, see “Social Mobilization and Political Development,” American Political Science Review, LX (September 1961), 493Google Scholar and passim, and “Toward an Inventory of Basic Trends and Patterns in Comparative and International Politics,” American Political Science Review, LIX (March 1960), 39.Google Scholar

22 Deutsch, “Toward an Inventory,” 39.

23 Ibid., 40 (emphasis added).

24 Lasswell, , “The Policy Sciences of Development,” World Politics, XVII (January 1965), 286–309CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Huntington, “Political Development and Political Decay,” 386–430.

25 Almond also makes this point in “A Developmental Approach,” 202–3.

26 Huntington, 393ff.

27 Ibid., 429.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid., 430 (emphasis added).

30 Lasswell, 301.

31 See Pye, Lucian W., ed., Communications and Political Development (Princeton 1963), 14–23, and LaPalombara, 9.Google Scholar

32 Pye, 16.

33 Ibid., 14.

34 Among the exceptions to these generalizations is the report of a Brookings Institution Study Group, “Political Development in the Emerging Countries: Challenge to United States Foreign Policy” (Washington, April 1961)Google Scholar, mimeographed. Many of the main conclusions of this study group appeared in Haviland, H. Field Jr., “Foreign Aid and Foreign Politics,” AID Digest (August 1962), 21–23.Google Scholar In the same issue of the AID Digest see Dankwart A. Rustow, “The Vanishing Dream of Stability,” 13–16, and W. Howard Wriggins, “Politics: Purpose and Program,” 17–20. All three of these papers are available as Reprint No. 65, Brookings Institution. See also Wriggins, “Foreign Assistance and Political Development,” in Asher, 181–214; and Packenham, , “Foreign Aid and Political Development,” unpubl. diss., Yale, 1964Google Scholar, chap. 2 and passim. To show how one aid instrument—technical-assistance programs in labor—might be used to foster political development, an excellent study is Millen, Bruce, The Political Role of Labor in Developing Countries (Washington 1963).Google Scholar Of the large number of studies of the process of political development and modernization in general, many of course make occasional observations about what their findings might mean for foreign policy. While unsystematic, many of these insights are well worth considering, as in the following volumes: Pye, Lucian W., Politics, Personality and Nation Building: Burma's Search for Identity (New Haven and London 1962)Google Scholar and Communications and Political Development; McClelland, David C., The Achieving Society (Princeton, Toronto, London, New York 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and many of the other books and articles cited in Packenham, “Approaches to the Study of Political Development.”

Almost all the items just cited attempt no more than speculations about what might be done. Reliable studies about how aid, or any foreign-policy instrument, has actually been used in relation to political development are practically nonexistent. This appears to be no less true in government research and evaluation organs than among nongovernment researchers, at least so far as unclassified material is concerned.

35 As Professor Edward S. Mason wrote recently, “It needs to be said that much too little is known about the process of economic development and the relation of economic and political development to permit firm pronouncements. … [It is] an area of great uncertainty. It must be recognized, however, that foreign economic assistance is not the only area in which action—or inaction—has to be undertaken on the basis of an inadequate knowledge of the consequences. One has only to mention ‘test-ban agreements,’ proposed weapon systems, or, indeed, almost any area of current security policy” (Foreign Aid and Foreign Policy, 37–38).

Since there are quite a large number of developing countries (many of which have been studied), but not many test-ban agreements and no nuclear wars, it can be argued that we have a better empirical base for making decisions about political-development policy than about many aspects of national-security policy. This thought brings one up short when it is realized how confidently high officials make—and must make— security policy decisions on the basis of very few empirical cases, and yet how they shy away from making political-development decisions for which there are relatively many cases.

On die adequacy of comparative political research as a basis for responsible inferences about foreign policy, Apter's, David concluding statement in a recent assessment of the field of comparative politics is relevant: “The next stage in comparative politics will produce, we venture to suggest, a new era of pragmatic theory and practical reform” (“Past Influences and Future Developments,” in Eckstein, Harry and Apter, David E., eds., Comparative Politics: A Reader [New York 1963], 738).Google Scholar

36 “Toward an Inventory,” 39.

37 Some of the most original and stimulating suggestions about practical ways to engineer changes in the psychological characteristics of whole societies or groups within societies have come from David C. McClelland. In order to enhance the probabilities for economic development, he has suggested “increasing other-directedness and market morality,” “decreasing father dominance,” and “reorganizing fantasy life,” possibly through the conscious alteration of children's books. Or, if these measures were impractical, an alternative strategy he suggests is to use aid to help those individuals and groups in aid-recipient countries who have the desired personality characteristics already but either do not know how or lack the wherewithal to use them to advantage. The alternative strategy, in short, is to find the “right” persons or groups and then to channel aid through them. It is only a speculation designed to illustrate the point, but developing measures for finding such individuals might be another way— not a very expensive one—to link the political-culture approach to the instruments of foreign policy. See McClelland, chap. 10 and 430–37, and his contribution, “National Character and Economic Growth in Turkey and Iran,” to Pye, Communications and Political Development, 152–81.

38 As we noted earlier, our standard is necessarily a rough one. Given the small amount of attention to political development in the aid program, however, it is entirely adequate to our task. The measuring instrument need be only slightly more refined than the phenomenon to be measured. Just as it does not require an Artur Rubinstein to tell that the author of this article is not much of a piano player, so is a full-blown strategy of political development unnecessary to see the state of U.S. political-development doctrines.

39 The interviews were conducted between November 1962 and January 1963. We were primarily interested in their views about the role of aid in affecting the course of long-term, broad-scale political change in the recipient countries. We also asked them questions about the role of aid as an instrument of American foreign policy in general, about aid and involvement in the internal affairs of the recipients, and about their views on the utility of AID-published philosophies or doctrines.

Before beginning the formal interviews, we made a preliminary investigation of the policy-making process in AID. As sources we used congressional committee hearings, agency documents, and personal interviews with about twenty-five executive branch officials. The major conclusion that emerged from this preliminary investigation was that the major decision-making units in AID were the Administrator's Office, the Regional Bureaus, the Program Coordination Staff, and the Office of Human Resources and Social Development. Hence the interview respondents were selected from these units.

We paid heaviest attention to the four Regional Bureaus. In a total of thirty-six interviews mere, we talked with all the twenty office directors, the four planning officers, the four chief technical-assistance officers, the four chief capital-assistance officers, and four of the five deputy assistant administrators. This enabled us to cover the major policy-making positions in each region, and by covering each region, we were able to cover all the countries to which die Agency provides aid.

For still further details about the interview sample and procedures, see Packenham, “Foreign Aid and Political Development,” chap. 4.

40 For a survey of aid doctrines from 1947 to i960, see Packenham, “Foreign Aid and Political Development,” chap. 3. Studies of the military-assistance program suggest that there is considerable similarity between political-development doctrines in military, and in economic and technical, assistance programs. See for example Dunn, John Murray, “Military Aid and Military Elites: The Political Potential of American Training and Technical Assistance Programs,” unpubl. diss., Princeton, May 1961Google Scholar; Furniss, Edgar S., Some Perspectives on American Military Assistance, Policy Memorandum No. 13, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, June 18, 1957Google Scholar; and Windle, Charles and Vallance, T. R., “Optimizing Military Assistance Training,” World Politics, XV (October 1962), 91–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 See Curti, Merle, American Philanthropy Abroad: A History (New Brunswick 1963)Google Scholar; Curti, and Birr, Kendall, Prelude to Point Four: American Technical Missions Overseas, 1838–1938 (Madison 1954)Google Scholar; and Cleveland, HarlanMangone, Gerard J., and Adams, John Clarke, The Overseas Americans (New York, Toronto, and London 1960).Google Scholar

42 Rusk, Dean, “The Bases of United States Foreign Policy,” in The New Look in Foreign Aid, Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, XXVII (January 1962), 100.Google Scholar

43 Ibid., 108–9.

44 Ibid., 101.

45 Quoted in Mason, 49.

46 Especially Banfield, Edward C., American Foreign Aid Doctrines (Washington 1963)Google Scholar, passim, esp. 61–65.

47 See Legislative Reference Service, Library of Congress, U.S. Foreign Aid: Its Purposes, Scope, Administration, and Related Information, House Document No. 116, 86th Cong., 1st Sess. (Washington 1959)Google Scholar, esp. 48; and Packenham, “Foreign Aid and Political Development,” 102–16.

48 Rusk, passim.

49 Ibid., 110.

50 United States Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings on Foreign Assistance Act of 1962, 87th Cong., 2nd Sess. (Washington 1962), 45.Google Scholar

51 The failure to distinguish these two levels of doctrine is, in our view, the most serious shortcoming in Professor Banfield's critique of foreign aid.

52 It was explained that what was referred to was long-term, broad-scale political change. But this explanation usually did not prohibit the respondents from giving their own understandings of the term.

53 An example of the dichotomization, and some indication of why it developed, is the following piece of testimony by then Under Secretary of State Douglas Dillon regarding the establishment of the Development Loan Fund: “The purpose of the [economic] criteria is to make clear that all these loans will be made only where we think that they contribute to economic development of the less-developed countries, and will not be used for political purposes or short-term political objectives. That has been one of the troubles in the past, as your committee found—the intermingling of purposes. The reason for these criteria is to single out very sharply this Fund as only a development fund that would be based on economic development” (quoted in 14th Report of House Committee on Government Operations, “Operations of the Development Loan Fund,” House Report No. 1526, 86th Cong., 2nd Sess. [Washington 1960], 11).Google Scholar

54 AID, Program Guidance Manual (Washington 1962), 1022.2, 3.Google Scholar

55 Ibid., Annex B.

56 Ibid., Annex C.

57 Memorandum from Richard Neustadt to Roger Hilsman, INR, Department of State (October 12, 1962), mimeographed, 9 (emphasis in original).

58 AID, Program Coordination Staff, Principles of Foreign Economic Assistance (Washington 1963).Google Scholar The quotation is at i.

59 AID, PCS, “Types of AID Strategy: Outline” (May 1, 1963), mimeographed.

60 Senate Hearings, 22.

61 Ibid., 404.

62 These students were in Europe when they were invited to come to the U.S. Coombs simplified the task of selecting potential leaders by taking these students, who were already exposed to the modern world, instead of others who had not left Africa.

63 Conversation with Mr. Coombs.

64 For information and analysis about the Institute, see the New York Times, October 15, 1961, L4; the Washington Post, March 28, 1963; and Haygood, KennethRonning, C. Neale, and Roche, John P., “Report on the Institute of Political Education, Costa Rica,” The Brookings Institution (Washington 1961)Google Scholar, restricted mimeographed statement.

65 Interview with Randolph, V. P., Costa Rican Desk Officer, Department of State, October 1, 1962.Google Scholar

66 U.S. Department of State Press Release No. 467 (July 18, 1962), 6.

67 U.S. Department of State Press Release No. 746 (December 28, 1962), 6.

68 The phrase quoted comes from Brookings Institution Study Group, 2.

69 Banfield, 59–60.

70 Brown, David S., “The Key to Self-Help: Improving the Administrative Capabilities of the Aid-Receiving Countries,” Public Administration Review, XXIV (June 1964), 67–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

71 Incidentally, our interviews revealed this policy of concentration to be firmly accepted doctrine. Nearly everyone agreed it was a good idea. Yet in March 1963, the Clay Committee concluded: “We believe that we are indeed attempting too much for too many and that a higher quality and reduced quantity of our diffuse aid effort in certain countries could accomplish more. We cannot believe that our national interest is served by indefinitely continuing commitments at the present rate to the 95 countries and territories which are now receiving our economic and/or military assistance” (Committee to Strengthen the Security of the Free World, “The Scope and Distribution of United States Military and Economic Assistance Programs” [Washington, Department of State, March 20, 1963], 4). So far as AID was concerned, the Clay Committee was bringing coals to Newcastle. The policy was further emphasized by the Administration on April 2, 1963, when the President said in his Foreign Aid Message to the Congress, “eighty percent of all economic assistance now goes to only 20 countries; and military assistance is even more concentrated.”

72 U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Appropriations, Hearings, Mutual Security Appropriations, FY 1961, 86th Cong., 2nd Sess., 1960 (Washington 1960), 35–36Google Scholar, cited in Jordan, Amos A. Jr., Foreign Aid and the Defense of Southeast Asia (New York 1962), 100–101 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

73 For another version of an aid strategy of concentration, see Etzioni, Amitai, The Hard Way to Peace (New York 1962)Google Scholar, chap. 10.

74 “The Need for More Specific Criteria in Programming Economic Assistance,” State Department Memorandum (August 14, 1962), mimeographed. This memorandum was not widely distributed to the public; for good summaries in the press, see die New York Times, October 8, 1962, and the Wall Street Journal, October 4, 1962.

75 See especially the testimony on aid to Africa by Assistant Secretary Williams and Assistant Administrator Hutchinson in Senate Hearings, 1962, 135, 154–55, 162–64. Their categories parallel rather closely those developed by Administrator Bell in February 1963, as described in the Washington Post, February 9, 1963, A6.

76 AID, “Types of AID Strategy: Outline.” See also AID, Principles of Foreign Economic Assistance, 1–7.

77 United States House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Hearings on Foreign Assistance Act of 1062 (Washington 1962), 579.Google Scholar

78 Ibid., 410.

79 E.g., testimony on Africa, Senate Hearings, 1962, 150–65.

80 See AID, Principles of Foreign Economic Assistance, 1–7, and “Types of AID Strategy: Outline.”

81 “Toward a Communication Theory of Modernization,” in Pye, Communications and Political Development, 350.

82 Banfield, 59–60.

83 Ibid., 56, 61, 65.

84 There are a number of works that take this position, including Lippmann, Walter, U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic (Boston 1943)Google Scholar; Kennan, George F., American Foreign Policy: 1900–1950 (Chicago 1951)Google Scholar; Morgenthau, Hans J., In Defense of the National Interest (New York 1951)Google Scholar; and Banfield.

85 “The United States and World Progress,” Address at Pomona College (June 11, 1961), processed, 14.

86 In July 1960, Mr. John Ohly concluded, after a careful assessment of aid agency research needs, “The Executive Branch in general, and this agency in particular, have been seriously derelict in failing long since to initiate a large and systematic research and development program. This failure is tragic, and may prove exorbitantly costly as we progressively reap the consequences of our own negligence …” ("Research and Development in the Field of Foreign Economic and Technical Assistance,” International Cooperation Administration Executive Secretariat Note 3 [July 22, i960], mimeographed, 10). In 1961, for the first time, a research unit with a separate identity and its own budget was established in the aid agency. But it did not achieve much in the first two years. It could not find personnel. It became lost in the total AID reorganization of that period. Worst of all, questionable contracting practices got it into serious hot water with the Congress. By 1963 it had made little organizational progress, and had few if any research results in hand. Its morale was poor, and its prospects were not bright. See Walsh, John, “AID: Almost Everyone Favors Research on Development Problems But Going Has Not Been Smooth,” Science, CXL (May 17, 1963), 792–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

87 The paradigm is drawn from Packenham, “Foreign Aid and Political Development,” chap. 7.

88 For a useful discussion of aid and the doctrine of nonintervention in contemporary foreign relations, see Montgomery, John D., The Politics of Foreign Aid: American Experience in Southeast Asia (New York 1962), 246–54.Google Scholar

89 Hartz, , The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution (New York 1955)Google Scholar, passim; Pye, , “The Developing Areas: Problems for Research,” in Ward, Robert E., ed., Studying Politics Abroad: Field Research in the Developing Areas (Boston and Toronto 1964), 8–9.Google Scholar

90 Galbraith, John Kenneth, Economic Development in Perspective (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), 28.Google Scholar

91 Potter, David M., People of Plenty (Chicago 1954).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

92 One outstanding example may be democratic political socialization in American public schools. See Dahl, Robert A., Who Governs? (New Haven 1962), 317–18.Google Scholar

93 Lipset, The First New Nation. 11, 13–98.

94 Ibid., 11.

95 Our evidence confirms McClelland's observation that “Often travelers, technical advisers, or ‘old-hands’ from a given country return with tales of how disorganized, dishonest, or untrustworthy the people are; but once the tales have been told, everyone settles down to a theoretical description of, or plan for, the economy of that country which does not take into account in any formal way the psychological characteristics of the people just described. Experts are informally convinced that people differ and that these differences should be taken into account somehow, but they have as yet discovered no way to include such variables in their formal models of economic and social development” ("National Character and Economic Growth in Turkey and Iran,” 152).

96 See Dahl, , “The Behavioral Approach in Political Science: Epitaph for a Monument to a Successful Protest,” American Political Science Review, LV (December 1961), 763–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Packenham, “Approaches to the Study of Political Development.”

97 Somit, Albert and Tanenhaus, Joseph, “Trends in American Political Science: Some Analytical Notes,” American Political Science Review, LVII (December 1963), 933–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

98 See n. 34.

99 Professor McClelland recently dared to suggest, “Nowadays many nations as a matter of public policy, and both national and international organizations, are trying to help underdeveloped countries to achieve either rapid economic development or political stability. Why would it not be possible to persuade one of these organizations to choose two countries that are matched in every way possible and to try, for example, to raise the achievement level in one, while the other is treated in more traditional ways, to see which of the two countries develops more rapidly economically? … With so many countries in the world currently seeking rapid modernization, and with so many different agencies trying to help them, it should not be impossible to find a way to carry out such an experiment over a five- or ten-year period” (“National Character and Economic Growth in Turkey and Iran,” 181).