GOVT 84.14 Foreign Aid
Foreign assistance programs are politically contentious. Advocates defend foreign aid as ethically imperative, effective, and as an essential foreign policy tool. Detractors dismiss foreign aid as wasteful at best, and possibly counterproductive, impoverishing recipient countries, corrupting their governments, and fostering violence. This course examines the cases for and against aid programs and weighs the evidence for their effectiveness. We consider three main forms of government-sponsored assistance — humanitarian aid, development aid, and democracy promotion. Students will assess the arguments and evidence from existing scholarship on aid, and will pursue independent research on foreign aid projects in consultation with Professor Carey.
Instructor
Carey, Johnson