From the Monroe Doctrine...

... to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)...

... "created by the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, along with the Alliance for Progress, one of the first programs under USAID's responsibility. Just two year after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, the Alliance was intended to foster the economic development in Latin-American countries, to reduce popular pressure for change through left-wing policies. According to Stephen Streeter, for example, in Guatemala the Agency's programs aimed to conquer peasants' and workers' "hearts and minds", moving them away from the guerrillas. [...] USAID's programs' primary motivations, clearly established in the Foreign Assistance Act, were to advance the foreign policy goals of the United States, above all national security."

 

The USAID's Fabrication of Democracy

by Rafaela Pannain

The position of United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in the American foreign policy field shapes its strategies for exporting democracy. Thus, in order to draw some conclusions about its efficacy, it is crucial to understand USAID’s democracy promotion programs within the context of how they are developed both inside and outside the agency. Beyond the complex relations among different bureaus and groups inside USAID, its work is also determined by the relation the agency has established with other important agents of the American Foreign Policy field, especially the State Department and the Congress. Since 1990, the bureaucratic structure of USAID has been submitted to several restructuring plans, which had as a consequence an important reduction of its personnel and missions. Despite USAID’s continuous loss of autonomy, the organization has managed to survive in a very hostile environment thanks to different strategies. Successfully advocating the importance of democracy promotion programs can be understood as one of them. Therefore, the analysis we propose of the development and implementation of these programs points first to the importance of the motivations of USAID as an organization in relation to others. Secondly, we highlight that, due to the limited autonomy of the agency, its programs also reflect the interests of the Congress, which is responsible for the allocation of most of the agency budget, as well as those of the State Department.