A World Without Aid?

Their wordsEven as GDP has grown tenfold, US aid budgets have remained basically flat in real terms—the result (one might guess) of a delicate balancing act between bipartisan consensus among elites and a wariness of attracting too much negative attention.

Their wordsThe longevity of that consensus is itself remarkable: in 79 years of data, Republican presidents spent an average of $34 billion a year on aid, while Democrats spent $40 billion.

Their wordsAll this to say: capable states with ambitious developmental plans, when hit with a bazooka of money, can seize the opportunity to transform themselves.

Their wordsAs scholars like Nicolas van de Walle have pointed out, aid can also foster an unhealthy dependency—in his coinage, many African states live in a state of “permanent crisis”, where aid is large enough to reshape (and warp) the political economy around it, but not large enough to be fundamentally transform countries’ economies.

Their wordsAmerican aid obligations in Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, have never exceeded $15 per person

Their wordsThe potential end of USAID is an unfolding public health and humanitarian disaster, but it does not permanently doom the task of growth—in large part because these aid flows were far too small to begin with.

Their wordsFor people like me working on global development in the West, the bitter pill to swallow is that aid is not development.