Economic aid to developing countries is an important—and often controversial—part of foreign policy for many Western nations. But how effective is such aid in achieving the objectives of the giver and the recipient? In this important study, Paul Mosley offers a challenging reassessment of the role of economic aid for nations on both sides of the equation. Mosley examines in detail the foreign aid programs of the leading Western powers with particular regard to the role of aid in international politics, and then examines the effectiveness of aid as a subsidy to exports, as an instrument of development, and as a means of redistributing income and bargaining power to the very poor. Mosley also incorporates overseas aid into the general economic theory of public expenditure. He examines the various protagonists on the supply side of the market for aid expenditures and in particular those on the demand side. Supporting this analysis of ways in which the aid market adjusts over time are extensive data from the OECD countries for the past thirty years. With its searching assessment of the effectiveness of foreign aid as an instrument of dogmatic and economic policy, Mosley's new book will be essential reading for all students in the field of international relations.

The United States is the world's leading foreign aid donor. Yet there has been little inquiry into how such assistance affects the politics and societies of recipient nations. Drawing on four decades of data on U.S. economic and military aid, Aiding and Abetting explores whether foreign aid does more harm than good. Jessica Trisko Darden challenges long-standing ideas about aid and its consequences, and highlights key patterns in the relationship between assistance and violence. She persuasively demonstrates that many of the foreign aid policy challenges the U.S. faced in the Cold War era, such as the propping up of dictators friendly to U.S. interests, remain salient today. Historical case studies of Indonesia, El Salvador, and South Korea illustrate how aid can uphold human freedoms or propagate human rights abuses. Aiding and Abetting encourages both advocates and critics of foreign assistance to reconsider its political and social consequences by focusing international aid efforts on the expansion of human freedom.