Book Review: Foreign Aid: Theory and Practice in Southern Asia
| Author | Keith Spicer |
| Date | 01 June 1961 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206101600216 |
| Published date | 01 June 1961 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
196
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
hero,
created,
as
Paul
Reynaud
once
said,
by
all
of
them.
De
Gaulle
is
his
own
masterpiece, and
these
essays
tell
something
about
him.
University
of
Toronto
JOHN
C.
CAIRNS
FOREIGN
AmD:
THEORY
AND
PRACTICE
IN
SOUTHERN
AsIA.
By
Charles
Wolf,
Jr.
1960.
(Princeton:
Princeton
University
Press.
To-
ronto:
S.
J.
Reginald
Saunders.
xix,
442pp.
$8.65.)
It is
encouraging,
when
confronted
with the intimidating
inunda-
tion
of
a
new
"foreign
aid"
literature,
to
find
a
book
which
not
only
facilitates
the
digestion
of
past
experience,
but
offers
some
practical
guide
to
future
thinking
in
this
rapidly
widening
field.
Wolf's
avowed
aim
is
the
creation
of
a
theory
of
foreign
aid
based
on
the organisation
and
analysis
of
the
United
States
aid
record.
This
aspiration,
if
scarcely
original
in
concept,
is
here approached
from
a
novel,
and
unusually practical,
point
of
departure.
The
author's
tech-
nique
is
to
study
the
allocation
of
aid,
rather
than
the
mere
working
out
of
objectives
of
diplomatic
or
military
policy.
The
first
half
of
the
book
reviews
American
aid
operations
since
1945.
After
sketching
the current
international
context
and
domestic aid
legislation,
the
author
dissects each
annual
Mutual
Security
appropria-
tion
on
the
basis
of
programme, country
and project
allocations.
This
section
contains
much previously
scattered
and
inaccessible
material
surrounding
the
policy-making
processes behind
U.S.
aid
distribution.
It is
particularly
illuminating
in
its
revelations
of
the
diverse
"minister-
ial"
attitudes
that
project
themselves,
through
committee
compromises
and
Congressional
discussion,
into
the
decisive
actions
of
daily
adminis-
tration.
Both
as
a
systematic
historical
r6sum6
of
United
States
aid
in
Asia
and as
an
examination
of
the
real
motives-political,
economic
and
humitarian--of
Western
aid
in
general,
this
empirical
description
is
of
outstanding
value.
The
explicitly
theoretical
second
half
of
the
work
is
much
less
sat-
isfying.
Like
so
many
social
scientists
who
may
feel
an
obligation
to
justify
the autonomy
of
their
discipline
by
the
invention
of
apparently
esoteric
syntax
and
pseudoscientific
neologisms,
Wolf
frequently
resorts
to
a
falsely
abstruse jargon
that
contributes
little
to
the
clarity of
his
exposition
or,
therefore,
to
the
force
of
his
argumentation.
However,
if
the
language
barrier
can
be
overcome,
there
are
at
least
some
interesting
experiments
in
the
verification
of
long-accepted
ideas
concerning
the
results
of
foreign
aid.
The
relation
between
economic
change
and
political
behaviour,
for
instance,
is
for
once
treated
as
an
hypothesis
rather
than
as
a
dogma;
moreover,
a
very
serious
attempt
is
made to
find
measurable
criteria
of
aid effectiveness,
such
as
educa-
tional
expenditures,
electoral
data,
and
certain
elements
of
social
change, political
vulnerability
and
living
standards.
From
time
to
time,
specific
assumptions
of
causation
are
submitted
to
statistical
tests
an
inevitably
imperfect
method
because
of
the
always imponderable
human
factor,
but
one
which,
as
in
the
model
on
military
aid,
can discipline
thinking
on
problems
of
allocation.
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