RUTH BEN-ARTZI, an associate professor of political science at Providence College, has received a grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation to write a book focused on foreign-development aid. The $25,000 prize will fund the project entitled “Foreign Development Aid: Governments, Ideas and Politics.”
Can you briefly describe the nature of your current research? When does foreign-development aid achieve its objective, contributing to real development outcomes? Can we improve a foreign-aid policy’s results to benefit both donor and recipient countries? Foreign aid has been at the center of policy and academic debates for a number of decades. There are many reasons for wealthy countries to provide foreign aid to developing or poor countries, but they rarely do so if it does not serve their own interests.
This project analyzes the role bilateral-aid agencies play in their governments’ foreign-policy apparatus; how these agencies fit in the larger foreign-aid (and development) global architecture; and how organizations that aim to coordinate aid provision or ad hoc regimes that set standards for aid permeate the policy frameworks of domestic-aid agencies and improve development outcomes. In analyzing these issues, I chart the complex network of development-aid agencies and explain the ways in which governments utilize various platforms to pursue their policy objectives.
How do you plan to apply your recent grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation? The Smith Richardson Foundation grant facilitates my research in a number of ways. First, it allows me to spend my sabbatical year in Paris, France, close to the OECD archives and diplomatic missions to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, where I can interview diplomats with extensive experience in foreign aid. Second, I will use part of the grant to travel to interview officials at the foreign-aid agencies of the countries I am studying. Third, the grant will help fund expert research assistance for facilitating data organization and analysis once I return to Providence.
What has been the greatest challenge so far in your research or book-writing process? The greatest challenge so far has been to sift through thousands of documents in the archives, mostly on microfilm. The decades of operations of these foreign-aid agencies have produced an enormous amount of information that is a result of coordination efforts by the OECD.
Do you have any predictions for the outcomes of your current research into foreign-development aid? I don’t like to predict outcomes of research-in-progress. What I can say with confidence, because it’s clear from the start (and my research will demonstrate it), is that foreign aid is never a purely altruistic endeavor: countries use foreign aid to fulfill their own interests. These can range from economic or financial interests to security interests, and less-tangible interests that include boosting one’s reputation. Because of that, I don’t foresee the elimination of foreign-development aid as a component of wealthy states’ foreign-policy toolbox. I hope my research will provide some answers to questions about foreign aid, to help policymakers make decisions that benefit not just aid-givers but also maximize the results of the beneficiaries of foreign aid.
