Comparison Of The United States's And Japanese Foreign Aid Policy

Foreign aid is a new phenomenon in international relations which appeared only after World War II. There had been, of course, flows of aid-type financial resources, such as assistance to war allies, charitable relief, or war reparation, from one country to the other before the War. The kind of aid which developed after World War II, however, is a totally different one from all previous practices. The post-war foreign aid has been distinctive in respects of its institutionalization, universalization, and developmental purpose. Above all, the most distinctive feature of the post-war foreign aid is its institutionalization. Most of donor countries have implemented foreign aid through organized institutions which are established solely for the purpose of furnishing aid, such as United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). International efforts to the cooperation in and coordination of foreign aid policy among donor countries have also been made through multilateral development organizations such as World Bank, United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Foreign aid is financed and administered through official channels in large-scale on a regular and continuous base. Universalization is another characteristic of the post-war foreign aid. All the countries in the world are participants of foreign aid, either as a donor or a recipient. The aid resources flow from the developed countries to the less developed Third World countries for the purpose of, at least nominally, assisting the socio-economic development of the latter countries. Since its inception, foreign aid has been one of the most significant aspects in contemporary international relations, in particular in the North-South relations.Concerning this new phenomenon of foreign aid, there have been ceaseless controversies among scholars of international relations, economic theorists, and practitioners of foreign policy. Many have questioned about the purposes and reasons of foreign aid, while others have criticized the result of foreign aid. Why foreign aid? That why the developed countries provide such huge amount of foreign aid, sacrificing their own economic resources, has been a lingering question in the phenomenon of foreign aid. This study is an effort to give a theoretical answer to thequestion of foreign aid by looking into the foreign aid policy of the United States and Japan which are the two largest foreign aid donors in the world. In answering the questions concerning foreign aid phenomenon, this study applies the methodology of comparative case study. The significance of comparative study lies in the fact that, I believe, it leads us to a better understanding of the range of social, environmental, political and economic variables that might account for a policy output-foreign aid- by comparing it in different national settings. Moreover, the fact that few comparative studies have been done in the field of foreign aid makes this study more worthwhile. Even though there have been enormous works on foreign aid, most of the studies have focused on foreign aid phenomenon in general or foreign aid policy of a single country. Considering that the United States and Japan are the world's largest foreign aid donors which have developed their foreign aid policy under different settings and in different ways, the comparative study of these two countries foreign aid may make a significant contribution to a wider generalization and richer understanding of foreign aid phenomenon. This comparative study of the two countries's foreign aid policy has been based on the two assumptions: foreign aid is an important foreign policy instruments of donor countries; and United States's foreign aid policy has been affected by its political/security foreign policy objectives, while that of the Japan by its economic/commercial foreign policy objectives. The comparison on the development of foreign aid policy, allocation of aid resources b...