Global Development: Views from the Center

It's wonderful to see CGD and others focus on this. Surely there's a place for it in all major candidates' campaign commitments.

In my view, one model and inspiration should be the formation of the EPA in 1970. We fixed our political plumbing and led the world to clean air and clean water.

We can do the same now for global development. There are remarkable parallels: as with the early EPA, forming a cabinet-level agency would help Congress focus on legislation instead of micromanagement, and would help the Executive build its technical expertise and accountability.

Difficult to argue with this. But do you think developing a cabinet-level department currently has enough appeal among the American public to include it as a platform issue in the 2008 presidential campaigns? If not, what are some ideas to increase its appeal? Moreover, how could candidates present the issue with adequate evidence (e.g., that "foreign assistance is a vital tool for strengthening U.S. foreign policy and restoring American global leadership")?

I totally agree. The UK's DFID is a clear example and if I'm not wrong is the only ministerial level agency among the First World nations dedicated to International Development.

Global Development sounds a Good Topic to focus. A lot of issues come to bear; one foreign aid, foreign policy, reciprocity assistance in kind and otherwise, alleviating poverty, wealth creation etc. But all these issues could become clearer if there is comprehensive listening from the giver to understand the real problems affecting the receiver. But listening is one of the most essential attributes of effective leadership. It may thus be prudent to suggest that Global Development would require effective (Listening) Leadership who would listen to Global Issues and understand them succinctly.

Munene Chaltone

Seems like an interesting way to provide a venue for the aid politicians and bureaucrats (bilateral, multilateral, NGO, etc.) to "dialogue" with each other. (And to mutually preen.)
But development takes place where the rubber meets the road. And so much of the assistance funding of the last twenty years has been wasted. (See Bill Easterly's work, for example.)
This is the malady which has befallen some of the bilaterals and -- since the late 80s and 90s -- the multilaterals like the World Bank.
DFID may be a good example to cite, but for every effective agency there may be at least a half a dozen bumbling ones. Assembling the bumbling ones together under one chief bumbler is not a guaranteed recipe for success.
The progress and achievements by more focussed entities such as the Aga Khan Foundation, the Gates Foundation, etc., may hold some lessons for the bureaucrats.

This is a great proposition by Americans to Americans but, as a foreigner who is convinced that by wishing America well he is actually wishing the whole world well, let me make a brief comment.

I think that the time when you could define what you intend to do in a Department of Global Development as foreign assistance is long gone. You share this shrinking world with all the other countries and so whatever happens to them or whatever you do to them will come right back to you. In this sense you will be at all times in fact really assisting yourself; and there is of course nothing wrong with that.

Environment, immigration, emigration, water, poverty, diseases, frauds, inter-connectivity, coupling and even de-coupling, energy, global warming, lack of jobs, genetics, bonds collateralized with subprime mortgages; and I could go on and on, all these are not any longer local issues they are all global issues. If the US understands this and acts accordingly, defending its real long term interests, I am sure we will all be much better off than if the US tries to internally work out the concept that it all has to do with some type of assistance to others.

Both Nancy Birdsall and Steve Radelet of course know this very well and so they say “Because development is about more than development assistance, the new Department would have a mandate for policy coherence on the full range of US policies” but then even they end up qualifying the issues “such as trade, environment, migration and debt” as “affecting poor countries” when they know those issues affects all, one way or another.

It is in this respect that I feel that a Department of Global Cooperation would send all a better and clearer signal about what it is all about and what to do. This entity should have its eyes squarely fixed on where you want that world to be, say sixty years from now, and what role does the US envisage for itself in that world.

American friends, do not help us, please do help yourself, well; and we’ll be glad to take it from there and do our part.

While variations of this have been floated before, it is really great to see a respected organization like CGD supporting this idea.

Two suggestions that might focus this Department's mandate and also help make it more politically appealing could be added.

1. Development has usually refered broadly to all developing country governments and gets measured by US aid program expenditure levels (inputs). It would be powerful to focus such a department mainly on the bottom billion, the people living in extreme poverty (under $1/day) with measurement of success counted in terms of people leaving extreme poverty (outputs/results for extremely poor people).

Tie this department's mandate into a goal of eradicating extreme poverty by a specific date such as 2025.

2. Tie this to a goal of eradicating domestic poverty in the US as well. Global development includes the US and our current US example does not lead the developed world on domestic poverty.

10-11 million people die of extreme poverty in the world each year. 11-12 million people live in serious relative poverty with hunger in the US.

Focus on measurable progress in eradicating both of these disasters.

The problem with our current approach is that humanitarian development competes weakly as a minor subsidiary part of an aid budget that primarily serves US political and military strategic interests. Leave these legitimate interests under the State Dept but separate the humanitarian development piece where it can be focused and credible on humanitarian development to end poverty (which of course is also very much in our US political and military strategic interest).

A focused independent advocacy voice in the US cabinet for the humanitarian case in discussing State Dept actions, trade actions, commerce actions, in environmental actions. This could be powerful.

Tom Coleman

How would this proposal differ from John Edwards' position on this? He didn't seem to get much traction. Some critics said, "Hey, look how great the Dept. of Homeland Security worked out. You really want to make a new department?"

And then there is DiFID.....