| This dissertation analyzes the Carter Administration's food aid policy toward Southeast Asia, based on interviews with participants in the policy-making process. The emphasis is on the interplay of bureaucratic, Congressional, and non-governmental organizations in that process. The analysis assigns the groups which influence food aid policy to three categories, derived from the multiple objectives of the Public Law 480 (Food for Peace) program: "humanitarian/development," "economic," and "politico-military." The dissertation examines two hypotheses: that politico-military policy preferences tend to prevail in food aid policy, and that American capitalism requires a foreign policy based on politico-military considerations.; The Carter Administration attempted to make humanitarian/developmental goals the chief priority of food aid. However, the deteriorating U.S. economy, bureaucratic behavior, poor Congressional oversight, and the continued demands of foreign policy and commodity organizations on the program all constrained this effort.; Concessional food aid sales to Indonesia and the Philippines generated controversy under Carter. Conflicts arose among Administration objectives, such as encouraging wheat sales, curbing the dumping of surplus rice, promoting human rights, using food aid to support economic development in poor countries, emphasizing private resource flows to middle income countries, and maintaining access to bases and strategic sea lanes.; In addition, the Administration denied emergency food aid to Vietnam, fed Democratic Kampuchea's troops, and conducted surplus disposal through emergency programs. Due to budget constraints, policy-makers transferred resources from development oriented food donation programs to meet emergency needs.; The data presented in the dissertation, including a brief discussion of food aid policy during the first year of the Reagan Administration, tend to confirm the hypotheses. Among theories of the policy-making process, neither variants of pluralism, e.g., bureaucratic politics and incrementalism, not conventional class analysis suggest the structural predominance of politico-military objectives in food aid policy which the dissertation finds. However, recent theoretical work on the relative autonomy of the capitalist state (Miliband, Poulantzas, Schurmann, Barnet) does provide a useful explanation for this finding. |
