Global Issues. Kristen A. Hite

Global Issues - Kristen A. Hite


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in more detail in the Technology Chapter 9) can be seen in a situation of which I (Seitz) have some personal knowledge. When I was in Iran in the late 1950s with the US foreign aid program, one of our projects was to modernize the police force of the monarch, the Shah of Iran. We gave the national police new communications equipment so that police messages could be sent throughout the country quickly and efficiently. The United States gave this kind of assistance to the Shah to bolster his regime and help him to maintain public order in Iran while development programs were being initiated. All fine and good, except for the fact that the Shah used his efficient police – and especially his secret police, which the US Central Intelligence Agency helped train – not just to catch criminals and those who were trying to violently overthrow his government, but to suppress all opponents of his regime. His secret police, SAVAK, soon earned a worldwide reputation for being very efficient – and ruthless. Such ruthlessness, which often involved torturing suspected opponents of the Shah, was one of the reasons why the Shah became very unpopular in Iran and was eventually overthrown in 1979 by the Ayatollah Khomeini, a person who had deep anti‐American feelings.

      For a fuller discussion of the unanticipated consequences of American aid to the Shah, see John L. Seitz, “The Failure of US Technical Assistance in Public Administration: The Iranian Case,” in Eric Otenyo and Nancy Lind (eds), Comparative Public Administration: The Essential Readings (Oxford: Elsevier, 2006), pp. 321–34.

      Part of the way donor governments address concerns about effectiveness of funding is to cherry pick what they spend and where they spend it, and as a result some of the neediest causes remain unfunded. For a more global approach, donor governments channel money to development institutions with relatively strong policies governing how the money gets spent. Multilateral development banks maintain specific policies and procedures that not only require careful management and accounting of funding, but also which help avoid unacceptable social and environmental harms. What is interesting is that these institutions originally started out after World War II by lending money in support of the twentieth‐century development approach, but the results were so disastrous for communities and for the environment that they had to change their policies to constrain lending towards sustainability, refusing to fund projects with unacceptable social and environmental harms. These social and environmental safeguards have now become the norm for international finance, both public and private.

      The amount of foreign aid that wealthy nations have contributed in relation to the donors’ wealth fell rather dramatically in the second half of the twentieth century. There was a slight upturn at the end of the century, but the aid was still far below the United Nations’ target. From 2000–2014, official development assistance increased 66 percent; however, bilateral aid dropped considerably during this same time period. While the United States gives the largest amount of aid, in relation to its wealth as measured as a percentage of gross national income, it is near the bottom of aid donors.

      Plate 1.1 Street children in Nepal

      Source: Ab Abercrombie.

      For most of the twentieth century, “development” was associated with certain economic policies and associated consumption culture, particularly in the United States. The United States has been one of the largest producer of goods and services and its culture is closely associated with material wealth. Because of the worldwide popularity of US movies, music, fast food, and clothes, and of the English language, it is common to read that the American culture is replacing local cultures in many countries. But some recent studies indicate that only some rather superficial aspects of the American culture are being adopted, such as Coca‐Cola and Big Macs, while more important values are not.

      The Yanomami


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