Competing for foreign aid : the congressional roots of bureaucratic fragmentation / Shannon P. Carcelli.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Carcelli, Shannon P., author.

Series:

Oxford scholarship online.

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Economic assistance--Political aspects--United States.

Economic assistance.

Bureaucracy--United States.

Bureaucracy.

United States--Foreign relations.

United States.

United States--Politics and government.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (210 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2025]

Summary:

Every year, the US authorizes dozens of bureaucracies to craft & implement foreign policy. This fragmentation of authority can result in chaos & infighting when agencies fail to communicate or outright undermine each other. Conventional wisdom considers the president to be the primary actor in US foreign policy, overlooking the extent of this bureaucratic turmoil. Why does the US government create a foreign policy apparatus that is so fragmented as to undermine its own leadership? In 'Competing for Foreign Aid', Shannon P. Carcelli argues that bureaucratic fragmentation is an unintended byproduct of the foreign policy-making process. To unpack the black box of foreign policy, Carcelli traces Congress's role in policy incoherence, infighting, & fragmentation in the realm of foreign aid policy.

Contents:

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

Contents

Acknowledgements

1 Introduction

1.1 Congressional Compromise in Foreign Policy

1.2 Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy

1.3 Core Contributions

1.4 Organization of the Book

2 US Foreign Aid and Bureaucratic Fragmentation

2.1 Variation in Bureaucratic Fragmentation

2.2 A History of the Foreign Aid Bureaucracy

2.3 The Costs of Fragmentation

2.4 Foreign Aid Policymaking in the US Congress

2.5 Conclusion

3 Why Congress Fragments Foreign Aid

3.1 Congress and Foreign Aid

3.2 Theory Assumptions

3.3 Bureaucratic Allocations as a Vote-Buying Tool

3.4 Congressional Disunity and Vote-Buying

3.4.1 The Role of Moderate Legislators

3.5 Congressional Interest and Vote-Buying

3.6 Testable Implications

3.7 Empirical Framework

3.8 Conclusion: A Theory of Foreign Aid Fragmentation

4 Congressional Disunity and Bureaucratic Fragmentation

4.1 Theoretic Expectations

4.2 The Two Components of Bureaucratic Fragmentation

4.3 Measuring Foreign Aid Fragmentation

4.4 Congressional Voting on Foreign Policy

4.5 Hypothesis Tests

4.6 Statistical Results

4.6.1 Fragmentation

4.6.2 Legislative Voting

4.7 Discussion and Conclusion

4.8 Appendix

4.8.1 Alternative Model Specifications

4.8.2 Extreme Bounds Analysis

5 Congressional Interest and Bureaucratic Fragmentation

5.1 Measures of Congressional Interest

5.1.1 Inputs: Congressional Lobbying

5.1.2 Outputs: Congressional Oversight

5.2 Dependent Variable: Topic- and Country-Level Fragmentation

5.3 Statistical Results

5.3.1 Lobbying

5.3.2 Government Accountability Office (GAO) Reports

5.4 Conclusion

5.5 Appendix

6 Bureaucracy at War: Fragmentation in the Afghanistan Campaign

6.1 Theoretical Expectations

6.2 Bureaucratic Conflict in Afghanistan.

6.3 Bureaucracies in Counternarcotics

6.4 Congress and the Bureaucracy

6.4.1 Appropriations

6.4.2 Oversight

6.5 Conclusion

7 Bureaucracy at Peace: Fragmentation in the 1992 FREEDOM Support Act

7.1 Theoretical Expectations

7.2 Background on the FREEDOM Support Act

7.3 Empirical Strategy

7.4 The Three Votes of the FSA

7.5 Discussion and Conclusion

8 A Success Story: The President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief

8.1 Case Summary

8.2 Theoretical Expectations

8.3 The Leadership Act

8.4 Bureaucratic Fragmentation in PEPFAR

8.5 Conclusion: A Foreign Aid Success Story

9 Conclusion

9.1 Book Summary

9.2 Foreign Aid and Foreign Policy Literature

9.2.1 Bureaucracy as a Response to Global Shocks

9.3 Alternative Explanations

9.3.1 Congressional Delegation

9.3.2 Congressional Abdication

9.4 Generalizability

9.5 Policy Implications

9.5.1 Policy Trade-Offs

9.5.2 Substituting Foreign Policy

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on May 27, 2025).

ISBN:

0-19-779928-0

0-19-779926-4

0-19-779927-2

OCLC:

1521185277