Steven W. Hook

Clarifying the Foreign Aid Puzzle: A Comparison of American, Japanese, French, and Swedish Aid Flows

This study explores the donor side of debates revolving around the proper role of foreign assistance as a foreign policy tool, by empirically testing for the aid determinants of four industrial democracies: France, Japan, Sweden, and the United States. A pooled cross-sectional time-series design is employed to assess the impacts of six sets of variables on aid flows to thirty-six African states during the 1980s. Three sets of these variables--humanitarian need, strategic importance, and economic potential--are constructed using data traditionally employed in empirical foreign aid studies. Three additional sets of variables--cultural similarity, ideological stance, and region--are constructed from data that regional specialists consider to be important in the foreign aid equation. Although no two cases are alike, one can nevertheless draw some tentative conclusions about the nature of the foreign aid regime of the final cold war decade of the 1980s on the basis of several cross-national patterns. In short, the results (1) contradict rhetorical statements of northern policymakers who claim that foreign aid serves as an altruistic foreign policy tool designed to relieve humanitarian suffering; (2) confirm the expected importance of strategic and ideological factors in a foreign aid regime heavily influenced by the cold war; and (3) underscore the importance of economic, particularly trade, interests in northern aid calculations.

‘Building democracy’ through foreign aid: The limitations of United States political conditionalities, 1992–96

This article examines the record of the United States government in promoting democratic reform through the manipulation of development aid flows between 1992 and 1996. The first section reviews the origins of the policy of political conditionality and the subsequent changes in the US Agency for International Development. The next section evaluates the policys execution by considering trends in the volume and distribution of US official development assistance, statistical linkages between that aid and recipient democratization, and the relationship with other potential foreign policy goals. The study finds that, contrary to the governments pledges, democratic and democratizing states have not received a greater share of aid. Instead, the distribution has been closely linked with security concerns ‐ a pattern consistent with the cold war record ‐ and US economic self‐interests have also been evident. Finally, three obstacles to the policy of ‘building democracy’ are considered: domestic ambivalence over ...

Greasing the squeaky wheel: News media coverage and us development aid, 1977–1992

This study explores the role that news media coverage plays in influencing US foreign policy in general, and foreign aid policy in particular. It is expected that foreign policy officials will be responsive to the content of the domestic news media and will attempt to align their actions with what they expect is the publics perception of the importance of a particular issue. In this study, it is hypothesized that that higher levels of news coverage of a potential recipient country will lead to higher aid commitments. The analysis examines the levels of US aid commitments to those it provided aid during the period 1977–1992. Even with an admittedly simple measure of news media coverage, the empirical findings are clear. The level of news coverage is a statistically significant factor in the levels of aid offered by the US. Thus a domestic political motive may be considered to be operative along with more widely studied determinants of aid based upon humanitarian motives and national self‐interests.

Domestic Obstacles to International Affairs: The State Department Under Fire at Home

One of the most peculiar aspects of the U.S. foreign-policy process is the low regard in which the non-military institutions of foreign affairs are held by the rest of the federal government. The author would like to acknowledge the research assistance of James Bralski and David Rothstein in preparing this article. Distrust of the State Department and its diplomatic milieu is deeply embedded in U.S. political culture, never far beneath the surface in Congress, the White House, and other agencies of the executive branch. As a result, the State Department is routinely neglected in each of its primary areas of responsibility: the development and articulation of foreign policy; the conduct of private and public diplomacy; and the transfer of foreign assistance. The State Departments marginalized status, codified and institutionalized with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947, persists in the administration of President George W. Bush. The costs of this bureaucratic neglect are difficult to gauge. They can be detected, however, in the mixed signals coming from the myriad government agencies regarding U.S. foreign policy, in the problems experienced by the foreign service in recruiting and retaining personnel, and in the failure of many aid programs to achieve their stated goals. Widely publicized accounts of the State Departments interagency disputes and lack of clout undermine the credibility of foreign service officers (FSOs) as they engage daily with foreign governments and private citizens.

Explaining Foreign Policy: U.S. Decision-Making and the Persian Gulf War

Explaining Foreign Policy: U.S. Decision-Making and the Persian Gulf War. By Steven A. Yetiv. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. 296p.

Regional collective security in Europe: Past patterns and future prospects

49.95 cloth,

American Foreign Policy Since World War II

19.95 paper. Steven A. Yetiv faces a daunting task in this case study of the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War: applying and reconciling multiple approaches to foreign policy analysis in a single volume. He also hopes to clarify the historical record regarding President George H. W. Bushs performance in the diplomatic and military clash. While this ambitious study advances our understanding in both respects, it demonstrates how much further the field of foreign policy analysis must still progress to see clearly within the “black box” of state decision making.

National interest and foreign aid

NATOs entry into the Balkan war raised salient questions about the alliances broader mission and, more generally, about Europes security architecture. This article confronts these questions by revisiting the debate about collective defense versus collective security as organizing principles for alliances. NATO is viewed as serving a hybrid role of promoting collective defense and regional collective security. This latter, under‐valued function relates to NATOs role in promoting internal cohesion among its members and is crucial to understanding the alliances evolution and its persistance long after the Cold War.