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| >> Foreign Aid in the National Interest >> Chapter 1 |
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Jump to Chapter 1 Sections: A strategy for assisting democratic governanceThus the prospects for development, and for effective development assistance, depend on the quality of governance the way in which public power is exercised and public resources are managed and expended. Poorly performing states those mired in poverty and illiteracy for decades will not achieve sustainable development unless they dramatically improve governance. Only when the rule of law ensures property rights and low transaction costs will domestic capital be invested productively and international capital flow in. But corruption and weak rule of law will persist until voters have the power to remove governments that fail to perform politically as well as economically. So, for the world’s poor people, democracy is not a luxury. It is an indispensable instrument for securing accountable government and for ensuring that aid is used effectively. Governance has to be made more responsible, competent, efficient, participatory, open, accountable, lawful, and legitimate. Unless that happens, poorly performing states will not experience the kind of vigorous, sustained development that transforms human development, achieves economic growth, and permanently lifts large segments of the population out of poverty. And badly governed states will produce diffuse threats to global order and the U.S. national interest. With time, and with thoughtful evaluation and assessment, USAID is learning more about what it takes to develop democracy and good governance. USAID’s democracy and governance programs have evolved in important ways since they became a big part of U.S. development assistance efforts in the early 1990s. Early on, it became clear that the freedom, fairness, and meaningfulness of elections are shaped months in advance by the quality and integrity of electoral administration, the design of the electoral system, the rules on campaign and party finance, the capacity and openness of political parties, the political awareness of voters, and the level of freedom and security. Consequently, support for elections matured from a narrow focus on the voting and vote counting to a broader engagement with the political system and electoral environment, including extensive assistance for voter education, electoral administration, and earlier monitoring of electoral preparations and campaigning. In the mid-1990s an evaluation found that technical assistance to judicial systems could not build a rule of law without political will for reform and a civil society that is aware and engaged.17 USAID decided to generate the political demand for reform, and the capacity to use the justice system, through wider programs of assistance to civil society organizations working for human rights, legal assistance, justice reform, and the like. Similarly, USAID and every other major international donor have become much more aware of the harmful consequences of corruption for democracy and development. Thus the priority given to addressing this problem has increased substantially, along with analytic insight into the conditions for genuine reform. page 2 |
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