Reorganization of U.S. Foreign Assistance Deeply Flawed, Finds New Report
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s ambitious reorganization of U.S. foreign assistance efforts in 2007 was deeply, perhaps irredeemably flawed, but did produce some positive results.
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Published on Feb 19, 2008
WASHINGTON, Feb 13—Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s ambitious reorganization of U.S. foreign assistance efforts last year is deeply, perhaps irredeemably flawed, but did produce some positive results, says a new paper from the Carnegie Endowment.
Reforms aimed at making foreign assistance an instrument of the administration’s “transformational diplomacy,” and ensuring greater transparency and oversight instead created an overly centralized and complex system that was rushed into practice.
In Assessing Secretary of State Rice’s Reform of U.S. Foreign Assistance, former senior USAID official Gerald Hyman analyzes the objectives, implementation, and impact of the Secretary’s effort to create a cohesive foreign assistance program fully integrated with U.S. national security policy.
Key Conclusions:
The new system confuses strategic decisions, which should be made in Washington, with tactical ones better suited to context-knowledgeable field officers. Reforms also require that any change made to a foreign assistance project receive approval from the newly created Director of Foreign Assistance (DFA) position, creating huge potential for gridlock.
In the quest for greater strategic control, the reorganization actually diminishes Washington’s ability to evaluate the objectives and successes of foreign assistance projects. Detailed narratives which provided rationale for programs under the old system have been replaced by a complex, numbered grid system that lacks critical information, making a serious assessment of projects in Washington difficult.
The reorganization was led by “core country teams,” the members of which, in many instances, had only a passing knowledge of the country they were to plan for. The implementation process also failed to involve many key stakeholders, including ambassadors, USAID missions, and congressional leaders.
The reorganization was instituted due in large part to the Secretary’s inability to answer congressional inquiries regarding U.S. spending on democracy promotion. The new system places an exaggerated emphasis on the ultimately futile attempt to instantly report on U.S. foreign assistance expenditures and detail the outcomes of an $11 billion program.
“The old system was a fractured, nonstrategic, hodgepodge of bureaucratic satraps in need of a fundamental fix. Greater coherence was certainly necessary. But the Rice reform is deeply, perhaps irredeemably flawed. There were available corrections far short of, and far better than, this foreign assistance reform,” writes Hyman.
Gerald (Jerry) Hyman serves as both a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) senior adviser and as president of CSIS’s Hills Program on Governance. He also serves on the Advisory Council to the Center for International Media Assistance of the National Endowment for Democracy. Hyman served with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from 1990 to 2006, and was director of the Office of Democracy and Governance from 2002 to 2007.
The Carnegie Democracy and Rule of Law Program analyzes the state of attempted democratic transitions around the world, including in the Middle East, former Soviet Union, Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, and Africa. It also assesses efforts by the United States and other international actors to promote democracy and the rule of law abroad, with particular focus on the democracy promotion agenda of the Bush administration.
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
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