President Carter and Human Rights: Rhetoric and Reality in U.S. Foreign Aid
A. Maurits van der Veen
Assistant Professor
Department of Government
College of William & Mary
January 2012
Abstract
President Carter came to power hoping to use United States foreign policy to protect and
improve human rights worldwide, with foreign aid the key policy instrument in the
pursuit of this goal. However, U.S. foreign aid policy changed comparatively little during
Carter’s term in office. This paper argues that Carter’s inability to shift aid policy
resulted at least in part from a failure to change the beliefs of legislators about the
purpose of foreign aid. A study of successive major aid debates during the Ford, Carter,
and Reagan administrations shows that those beliefs about the goals served by aid
remained rather stable over time. Geopolitical and influence considerations dominated
throughout, and although Carter’s presidency at first brought a small increase in the
salience of humanitarian goals for aid among Democrats only, even this change did not
endure for the remainder of Carter’s term.
1
President Carter and Human Rights: Rhetoric and Reality in U.S. Foreign Aid
“other factors, especially U.S. national security interests, must at times,
regrettably override our human rights concerns.”
Ed Koch (D-NY), 19771
President Carter came to power hoping to use United States foreign policy to protect
and improve human rights worldwide, with foreign aid the key policy instrument in the
pursuit of this goal. However, empirical evidence indicates that U.S. foreign aid policy
changed little during Carter’s term in office. This apparent puzzle has been the subject of
a large body of research, variously suggesting that Carter’s commitment to human rights
was inconsistent and weak, that a recalcitrant bureaucracy resisted Carter at every point,
or that presidents simply do not have much control over foreign assistance legislation.
While each of these explanations has some value, none quite account for the differences
between the President and Congress on this point.
In this paper I argue Carter’s inability to change how legislators thought about foreign
assistance and its purposes contributed to his failure to shift U.S. foreign aid policy in his
desired direction. This argument contributes to the literature on presidential control over
foreign policy by offering a novel insight into the challenges presidents may face in
changing certain foreign policies; it contributes to the literature on the domestic political
economy of foreign aid by suggesting that information regarding beliefs about aid can
illuminate legislative decisions about aid programs; and it contributes to the literature on
Carter’s presidency by offering a new explanation for one of his policy disappointments.
1
Congressional Record — House. June 22, 1977, p. 20242. Throughout the remainder of the paper,
references to the Congressional Record of the House of Representatives will give just the page number.
2
I advance the argument through a study of successive major aid debates during the
Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations. The analysis shows that the goals Congress felt
could and should be served by aid remained relatively constant during this period, and
were dominated by geopolitics rather than humanitarianism. Some superficial rhetoric
changed during the Carter years, in the direction of a greater emphasis on human rights,
but Carter’s influence was both small and temporary. The paper proceeds in three
sections. I begin by discussing the Carter administration’s human rights rhetoric and its
aid policy. The second section considers explanations offered in the literature for Carter’s
inability to shift aid policy, and develops my alternative approach. The third section
presents the analysis, showing that arguments about the purpose of aid proffered by
legislators remained comparatively unaffected by Carter’s stated goals.
Aid policy under Carter: the rhetoric of human rights
During the early years after World War II, the United States took the lead in many
foreign aid initiatives, most famously through the Marshall Plan. However, by the time
Carter was elected president in 1976, U.S. official development assistance (ODA),
expressed as a fraction of GNP, had fallen from a peak near 0.6% to 0.25%, placing the
United States twelfth among OECD donors. In fact, foreign aid has never been
particularly popular in Congress or among the American public at large. Even the
Marshall Plan required a concerted effort on the part of the executive to convince the rest
of the country that it was a worthwhile effort. In order to do so, opinion leaders
emphasized that aid was in the national interest, both economically — European recovery
was essential for U.S. exports — and geopolitically — a weak Europe might fall to an
3
aggressive Soviet Union. On the other hand, key decision-makers almost never used
humanitarian considerations as an argument (Winham, 1970:50).
The precedent set in defending the Marshall Plan has arguably had long-term
consequences for the discourse on foreign aid in the United States. Even today, the most
common arguments regarding foreign assistance highlight geopolitical and national
interest considerations: a 2007 report by the “Brookings-CSIS Task Force on
Transforming Foreign Assistance in the 21st Century,” for instance, is titled Security by
Other Means (Brainard, 2007).2 When Carter came to power in 1977, many expected the
framing of foreign aid to change considerably, towards a greater emphasis on
humanitarianism and human rights. Moreover, observers expected actual aid policy to
change accordingly. Instead, over the next four years, U.S. ODA levels failed to move
upwards. Starting at 0.25% of GNP in 1976, the next four years brought levels of 0.24%,
0.26%, 0.19%, and 0.27%, respectively (OECD, 1985). Of course, aid levels are but one
measure of an aid program; however, other aid indicators remained stable too, as I
discuss below.
Rhetoric on aid: a strong but non-specific commitment to human rights
In his inaugural address, Carter referred to human rights three times, saying “[o]ur
commitment to human rights must be absolute”. More broadly, he called for a reframing
of United States foreign policy, saying the United States would “fight our wars against
poverty, ignorance, and injustice”, and display “a clearcut preference for these societies
2
Even those deeply critical of the U.S. aid program adopt the same emphasis. For example, a 1987 book
produced by the Food First Institute received the title Betraying the National Interest (Lappé et al.,
1987).
4
which share with us an abiding respect for individual human rights” (Carter, 1977). Two
months later, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance offered a similar message in his first Senate
testimony on foreign assistance: “we hold strongly to the principles of basic human
rights.”3 On the other hand, it became clear that the administration had not fully worked
out how to translate the human rights concern into policy. As Vance explained: “we are
conducting further reviews of our entire foreign policy to seek ways to make it reflect and
advance our human rights goals” (Vance, 1977:285).
In fact, Vance’s actual emphasis was more on humanitarianism than human rights per
se. Presenting his testimony, Vance asked “What ends are served?” by the U.S. foreign
assistance program. In answer, he highlighted three themes: “To demonstrate America’s
compassion for the poor and dispossessed around the world”, “To make our fair
contribution to the enormous task of the social, economic, and technological development
of poor countries”, and “To contribute to the cause of peace” (Vance, 1977:236-37). The
traditional appeal to geopolitical and national interest considerations was strikingly
muted, emerging mostly in arguments about the enlightened self-interest of the United
States in making the world a better place: “Our own economic welfare is vitally affected
by what happens elsewhere in the world” (Vance, 1977:236-37).
Human rights — not just humanitarianism — continued to be a prominent rhetorical
pillar in Carter’s foreign assistance policy, as Vance’s subsequent Congressional
3
However, in a first sign that human rights might not trump other considerations, he immediately added
the caveat that “In each case we must balance a political concern for human rights against economic or
security goals” (Vance, 1977:237). In similar testimony to the House one week later, on March 2nd,
Vance repeated the same themes, with a similar caveat, noting aid’s contribution to supporting “the
security of our friends and allies” (Vance, 1977:284). Moreover, he emphasized that “Our assistance
program serves the national interest of the United States in several ways” (Vance, 1977:284). A similar
ambivalence and indecision are evident in Deputy Secretary Warren Christopher’s Senate testimony on
human rights on March 7th (Christopher, 1977).
5
testimonies show (Vance, 1979, Vance, 1980, Vance, 1978). In the 1979 testimony, for
example, “respect for individual human rights” was one of the six main stated objectives
of U.S. foreign assistance (Vance, 1979:37). On the other hand, Vance also noted that
“[t]he pressing need for budgetary restraint caused us to slow the expansion of these
programs,” while arguing somewhat forlornly that “we must make very modest progress
toward a goal of substantially increased aid in the coming years.” Tellingly, in supporting
the latter claim, he fell back once again on the traditional appeal to the national interest:
“we are speaking not only of the compelling plight of human beings in desperate need.
We have a compelling national interest in their progress” (Vance, 1979:38).
In sum, Carter’s emphasis on human rights was a central theme in his presidency, but
the translation into specific policy was not straightforward (cf. also Stuckey, 2008). It is
perhaps not surprising, then, that the policy-specific rhetoric was less focused on human
rights than one might have expected, as Vance’s statements to Congress make clear.
Nevertheless, it may have been the case that adapting the rhetoric to Congress’
expectations and emphasizing the national interest was crucial to changing actual policy,
a possibility I examine below. First, however, it is worth briefly contrasting Carter’s
rhetoric to that of the administration that succeeded him.
When Ronald Reagan came to power, the government’s stated rationale for foreign
assistance neatly reversed the order of the main objectives. Whereas Carter had
highlighted humanitarian goals, noting that they also satisfied the national interest,
Reagan instead emphasized the national interest, while arguing that humanitarian goals
might be met at the same time. As Alexander Haig explained in his first major remarks
on Foreign Assistance, on February 27, 1981: “We are going to be able… to preserve the
6
humanitarian and developmental objectives of our overall aid program. And most
importantly of all, we consider that we’ll be able to meet the strategic objectives of the
United States for which the aid program is itself conducted” (Haig, 1981:21). Similarly,
in presenting the administration’s proposal for fiscal year 1983, Haig requested “foreign
assistance to serve compelling national security, foreign policy, and economic needs”
(Haig, 1982:36). Suffice it to say, then, that little or nothing remained of Carter’s
emphasis on human rights at the administration level.
Reality: assessing the impact on aid policy of Carter’s human rights commitment
In a January 1981 news conference, Haig claimed that Carter’s emphasis on human
rights over national security had weakened the United States (cited in Stohl et al.,
1984:215). In doing so, Haig exaggerated the actual impact Carter had on the United
States foreign assistance program. Moreover, Haig erroneously implied that the Reagan
administration’s framing of foreign assistance as serving “compelling national security,
foreign policy, and economic needs” was a new approach. Instead, this had been the
primary justification for United States foreign aid since the beginning.
The differences in rhetoric across these two successive administrations have
motivated numerous researchers to investigate the degree to which foreign aid policy
changed from Nixon/Ford to Carter, and again from Carter to Reagan. One of the first
papers investigating Carter’s impact concluded that “the Carter administration did not
implement a policy of human rights which actually guided the disposition of military and
economic assistance” (Stohl, et al., 1984:215). They did find some small effect, in that
under Nixon and Ford U.S. aid flowed disproportionately to human rights violators,
7
whereas under Carter this anti-human rights pattern disappeared. Numerous other authors
have drawn similar conclusions: security interests appear to have dominated throughout,
human rights were a secondary consideration at best, and the Carter administration
changed policy very little, if at all (Carleton and Stohl, 1985, Carleton and Stohl, 1987,
Cingranelli and Pasquarello, 1985, Poe, 1992, Poe, 1991, Schoultz, 1981). As Apodaca
and Stohl conclude, “the differences between Carter and Reagan’s human rights policies
were not as great as their critics, or champions, like to claim” (1999:194).
Identifying the obstacles to policy change
Assessments of foreign policy more broadly, looking beyond foreign aid, often
similarly downplay the impact of Carter’s human rights agenda. One extensive study of
his overall human rights policy, for example, grants Carter “some small overall beneficial
impact on the international atmosphere,” but spends far more space cataloguing the
failures, weaknesses, and inconsistencies of the policy (Muravchik, 1986). Another finds
Carter’s thinking “shallow and unsystematic”, which “left policy adrift, and stimulated a
cry for leadership and a return to the old foreign-policy verities” (Hunt, 1987:185-86).
The scholarly literature offers a number of candidate explanations for Carter’s
problems. First, it may be the case that Carter’s commitment to human rights was simply
not all that strong or sincere. Carleton and Stohl have argued that “the Carter
administration was never actually willing to wager a potential political or security risk in
favor of human rights” (Carleton and Stohl, 1985:224). In contrast, however, Schmitz and
Walker find that “the administration’s commitment to human rights was not merely
rhetorical or naïve,” and “succeeded in shifting the discourse on American foreign
8
policy” (Schmitz and Walker, 2004:114). Similarly, working from documents in the
Carter Library, Strong concludes that Carter’s commitment to human rights was strong
and enduring (Strong, 2000). On balance, most scholars have concluded that Carter’s
commitment was genuine, but both his rhetorical strategies and his policy proposals in
defense of human rights left much to be desired (Stuckey, 2008).
A second possible factor is recalcitrance on the part of government officials in charge
of implementing policy. For example, some scholars have argued that it is difficult to
change aid policy simply because most aid projects last for many years, introducing a
considerable amount of bureaucratic and budgetary inertia (e.g. Carey, 2007). Of course,
that can only explain problems with producing budget cuts; not the kinds of budget
increases Carter was interested in. More to the point, others have highlighted bureaucratic
hostility to “an active human rights policy which, if pursued vigorously, was bound to
threaten the traditional concerns of the influential regional bureaus at the State
Department (Hartmann, 2001:406). Indeed, Carter’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of State
for Human Rights and Security Assistance described his experiences as “bureaucratic
warfare of the most intense sort” (Cohen, 1982:249). There is no doubt the State
Department resisted pressures, from Carter and Congress alike, to implement human
rights regulations. However, Carter’s inability to convince Congress of his own prohuman rights agenda — and thus to form a united front against resistance from the State
Department — made such resistance all the more likely to succeed.
This brings us to a President’s ability to influence Congress. An enormous literature
examines the ability of the U.S. president to pursue particular policy priorities. In the area
of foreign policy, Wildavsky’s seminal thesis about “two presidencies” argued that: “in
9
the realm of foreign policy, there has not been a single major issue on which presidents,
when they were serious and determined, have failed” (1998 [1966]:23). Interestingly,
Wildavsky explicitly considered and then rejected foreign aid as a possible exception,
noting that “Presidents find ways of getting around” Congress’s attempts to impose
restrictions on or cuts to the foreign aid program (1998 [1966]:30). On the other hand,
this formulation does indicate that Presidents may not be able to convince Congress to
follow their priorities.
Wildavsky’s article inspired a wealth of research, much of which calls his hypothesis
in question (e.g. Shull, 1991). In fact, Wildavsky himself concluded by the late 1980s that
his original finding had been “time- and culture-bound” (Oldfield and Wildavsky,
1989:55). However, recent research resurrects his model. Canes-Wrone et al., for
example, show that Wildavsky’s hypothesis holds in budgetary decision-making, and that
federal agencies that govern foreign policy tend to be designed so that presidents have
more administrative influence than is the case for comparable domestic policy agencies
(2008, cf. also Lewis, 2003). Given the centrality of both budget decisions and the US
Agency for International Development (USAID) to overall US foreign aid policy, these
findings suggest that Carter could have enjoyed greater success in pushing his priorities.4
A final possibility is that Congressional decisions on aid are mostly independent of
administrative pressures, because legislators are highly constrained by interest group
pressures from their districts and similar standard political economy factors. In recent
years, numerous scholars have investigated the domestic politics of aid (e.g. Travis,
4
In fact, George W. Bush stands as an obvious example of a President who did change US foreign aid
policy considerably, starting in 2002. Significantly, this shift was not driven solely by 9/11, and much
of the added aid went to countries of little geostrategic importance, in Africa (Radelet, 2003).
10
2010).5 After all, aid flows are frequently sufficiently large to warrant legislative
attention (Fleck and Kilby, 2006); moreover, specific aid contracts can be of considerable
interest to individual Congressional districts (Fleck and Kilby, 2001). Finally, the beliefs
or ideologies of legislators might drive an interest in aid even when there is little direct
economic interest (Thérien, 2002, Thérien and Noël, 2000). Each of these factors presents
Presidents with challenges in trying to shift aid policy.
Most findings in this literature are not administration-specific, although useful in
establishing expectations for the Carter presidency. Fleck and Kilby find that liberal
Congresses are more likely respond to development concerns, whereas conservative
Congresses are more likely to privilege commercial interests (Fleck and Kilby, 2006).
Somewhat surprisingly, Goldstein and Moss suggest that Republican Congresses are
more generous towards Africa, while the President’s party does not have an impact on aid
flows (Goldstein and Moss, 2005). In contrast, a more recent paper finds that both
conservative Presidents and conservative Congresses are associated with smaller aid
budgets (Fleck and Kilby, 2010). Two recent papers building on this growing literature
are more directly relevant to our concerns here.
Milner and Tingley look at individual members of Congress, using standard insights
from political economy to predict district-level gains and losses from foreign aid (2010).
Specifically, they hypothesize that owners of capital in donor countries will be more
likely to gain from aid, and that representatives from high-skill districts thus ought to be
more likely to vote for aid. If this model accounts for most legislative voting, then it
5
Some argue that aid politics is insufficiently salient to be a major concern of legislators, making aid
bureaucracies (as opposed to the State Department) the driving factor (Schraeder, 2001). In such cases,
the president ought to have considerable control over policy outcomes, since those bureaucracies tend
to allow for considerable presidential influence, as we saw above (Canes-Wrone, et al., 2008).
11
would follow that Presidents ought to have a hard time changing aid policy in any
meaningful way. However, although they find a significant effect, it far from decisive.
This suggests that there is ample room for other factors, including ideas and beliefs, to
affect legislative choices — indeed, the effect size of district-level ideology alone
(derived from presidential election votes) is greater than that of their key economic
interest variable (Milner and Tingley, 2010:220)
Finally, Powers, Leblang and Tierney consider the possibility that an interest in aid
contracts trumps other considerations. Interestingly, they find that aid contracts do little
more than mitigate the negative effects of voting for aid on a member of Congress’ reelection prospects (2010). Again, this implies that economic interests weigh less heavily
than overall attitudes towards aid. Overall, then, the literature identifies some factors that
may have contributed to Carter’s inability to shift aid policy substantially in a pro-human
rights direction, but his inability to get Congress on his side remains a puzzle; all the
more so since there was support in Congress for the basic notion that aid should be tied
somehow to human rights performance (Petro, 1983:10-13).
The framing of aid: rhetoric and beliefs
An extensive literature on frames has established that the way people think about an
issue — how they frame the issue in their minds — has a significant impact on their
policy attitudes and choices (Chong and Druckman, 2007, Druckman, 2010, Goffman,
1974). Moreover, it is also well-known that political entrepreneurs can strategically
choose particular frames to increase the likelihood of achieving their goals (Chong and
Druckman, 2007, Entman, 2004, Zald, 1996). In other words, outcomes will be shaped
12
both by a President’s choice of frames in pushing a policy initiative, and by legislators’
individual, internal framing of a policy — what Chong and Druckman call “frames in
communication” and “frames in thought,” respectively (see Druckman, 2010).
Much recent work on “the rhetorical presidency” (Tulis, 1988) has investigated the
first part of this equation, showing for example that while Presidential rhetoric may be of
questionable value in changing public opinion (Edwards, 2003), it does appear to have an
impact on legislators (Barrett, 2004, Eshbaugh-Soha, 2010). A related literature
emphasizes the need for Presidents to legitimate their policy proposals (e.g. George,
1980, Trout, 1975). In the area of foreign aid, Wildavsky’s original paper on the two
presidencies mentioned the Marshall Plan as an example of the successful legitimation by
the President of an initially unpopular policy (1998 [1966]:30). Similarly, Goldstein and
Moss explain their surprising finding about the generosity of Republican Congresses by
suggesting that “Republicans may in general be better able to articulate foreign policy
objectives and make the link to specific instruments, such as foreign aid” (2005:1297).
Looking specifically at Carter, Skidmore argues that his foreign policy problems
“stemmed principally from his inability to gain domestic legitimacy for the
administration’s early world view or the policies associated with it” (1994:700).
Skidmore also suggests that Carter may have simply miscalculated the congruence
between how he framed his initiatives and how the public thought about the associated
policies, arguing that Carter believed human rights appeals “would bolster his own
political fortunes and win support for his foreign policy reforms” (1994:702). Strong
similarly concludes that Carter erroneously felt his human rights beliefs matched those of
the US public and thus did not need strong and consistent pushing (Strong, 2000: 269).
13
Moreover, he also ascribes Carter’s lack of policy success to problems bringing the
American public around to his way of looking at the world (Strong, 2000).
While these studies focus on Carter’s apparent failure to frame his policy proposals
successfully, there has not been until now any research into how legislators framed these
issues themselves. Although a burgeoning literature examines the importance of framing
in Congress generally (e.g. Baumgartner and Jones, 2009), it almost exclusively focuses
on domestic politics. Evidence from other aid donors, however, indicates that framing
can dramatically shape aid policy outcomes (Van der Veen, 2011), so it is worth taking a
closer look at the framing of aid in Congress. I argue that Carter’s problems stemmed at
least in part from his failure to convince legislators that they needed to think of foreign
aid in different terms than they traditionally had. This failure, in turn, meant that he could
not reshape aid policy in his desired direction.
The best available indicator of the way legislators frame foreign aid in their own
minds is probably the way they discuss aid policy in Congress: their ‘frames in
communication’ when they talk to one another. Of course, we can never be entirely
certain that this will accurately reveal the reasons for their decisions. For example, it is
possible that the way they discuss aid policy changes without affecting their decisionmaking calculus (in other words, they engage in ‘cheap talk’). Conversely, it is also
possible that their rhetoric remains unchanged even when their decision-making calculus
is, in fact, changed by the President’s framing. This might be the case if they are
concerned about voters back home, for instance. In the present case, however, empirical
assessments of Carter’s failure to significantly shift U.S. aid policy eliminate this
14
possibility. If my argument is correct, legislative debates on aid policy under Carter
should be located in the bottom right quadrant in table 1.
Decision-making changes
Yes
No
Frames in comm. change
Yes
Legislators convinced
Cheap talk
No
Legislators convinced,
but don’t believe public is
Legislators not convinced
Table 1. Possible combinations of rhetorical and policy change in Congress.
Testing this hypothesis requires measuring whether legislators framed aid differently
during Carter’s presidency than before or after. In order to do so, it is necessary first to
outline the different ways aid can be framed. Earlier research has shown that we can
usefully distinguish seven broad frames supporting aid: geopolitics, influence, economic
self-interest, enlightened self-interest, reputation, obligation, and humanitarianism (Van
der Veen, 2011). Geopolitical arguments invoke the use of aid as an instrument for the
promotion of security and specific or general foreign policy goals. Arguments for aid as a
way to obtain influence focus more specifically on increasing the leverage of the donor
country in different contexts, without specifying what the leverage might be used for.
Economic motivations for aid highlight the value of foreign assistance to the donor
country’s own economy. Enlightened self-interest refers to broader goals such as
strengthening international organizations, promoting global peace and stability, and
recognizing the mutual dependence of rich and poor countries. The three remaining
categories, reputation, obligation, and humanitarianism, are self-explanatory. Arguments
15
about the use of aid to promote human rights fit into the final category, but for the
purposes of the analysis I tally them separately.
If my argument is correct, we should see little change from Ford to Carter in the
relative salience of the humanitarian frame for aid as expressed by legislators in debating
aid policy. Moreover, since the literature on aid allocation has found that, rhetoric
notwithstanding, the Reagan administration did not represent a dramatic change (or
correction) to aid policy, we would also expect to see comparatively little change from
Carter to Reagan.
Debating United States foreign aid, 1975-1981
During the period under consideration, the major recurring foreign assistance debate
in the United States Congress concerned the appropriations bill for “Foreign Assistance
and Related Programs.” This bill included a variety of different foreign assistance
initiatives, often divided into four categories: security assistance, bilateral development
assistance, multilateral development assistance, and humanitarian assistance. Although
we are less interested here in the first category, an analysis of the debates shows that
Representatives rarely see security assistance as serving goals that are intrinsically
different from those for any of the other categories.6
I follow other scholars in focusing on the House, whose membership is both larger
and more representative of the United States population overall (at least geographically)
6
It is important to note that no single debate covers all United States foreign assistance initiatives on an
annual basis. Among others, Public Law 480, the so-called “Food for Peace” program, is discussed
separately. As a result, it is not explicitly included in any of the debates analyzed here, though several
Representatives referred to it in the debates.
16
than is the case for the Senate (Milner and Tingley, 2010, Powers, et al., 2010). I analyze
four House debates: the last major aid debate under Gerald Ford (March 13, 1975); the
first such debate under Jimmy Carter (June 22-23, 1977); the main aid debate on Carter’s
watch, concerning the International Development Cooperation Act of 1979 (April 4-10,
1979); and the first significant aid debate under Ronald Reagan (December 10-11, 1981).
These debates were held at roughly 2-year intervals. Although some of the participants
remain constant from one debate to the next, each debate took place during a different
Congress (the 94th - 97th Congresses, to be specific), and the speakers accordingly do
change over time. In all four Congresses the Democratic Party had a majority of the seats
in the House; in the first three, the party had a majority in the Senate as well.
Each of the four debates featured broad participation on both sides of the aisle. Still, it
is clear from the records that, if nothing else, Carter was successful in increasing the
salience of foreign assistance as a policy. The number of speakers more than doubled
during his presidency: from 39 in 1975, to 92 and 82 in 1977 and 1979, respectively, and
back down to 38 in 1981. A similar pattern emerges in the Congressional Record page
count: from 28, to 98 and 110, and back down to 44 pages. However, even the smaller
debates provide a unique window into the way U.S. policy-makers thought and argued
about foreign assistance at the time.
Coding debates
Statements generically supporting or opposing foreign assistance may be interesting,
but do not help us much. Similarly, comments on specific aid initiatives or legislative
amendments can be important, but tend to shed little light on a Representative’s overall
17
views about foreign aid. Instead, since we are interested in how legislators frame aid —
in this case, how they talk about it — I coded statements about the purposes aid might
serve. In order to minimize subjective interpretation, the coding process involved simply
tallying each time a speaker mentioned a particular reason for providing aid. If a speaker
put forward one argument and then proceeded to make another, only to return once again
to the first argument, this argument was tallied twice.7
Different specific arguments can be made within each of the seven broad frames
introduced above. In the analysis presented here, I coded 30 different arguments, derived
from the existing literature on foreign aid. Table 2 shows the classification of these
different arguments into their parent frames. The coding process produced a total tally of
96 arguments in 1975, 195 in 1977, 217 in 1979, and 137 in 1981.8 Of course, not every
contribution by a speaker featured one or more arguments from table 1; speakers
sometimes turned to rather technical issues with no direct bearing on any of the
arguments of interest to us here. At the other extreme, five speakers offered 10 or more
arguments in their speeches. Finally, in order to get an overall measure of the debate
contents, the coding data were aggregated across speakers by weighting each speaking
turn by its length, and dividing that weight evenly over the individual arguments made.9
7
In order to minimize the impact of judgment calls in the coding process, each debate was coded twice,
making it easier to note the most ambiguous claims (which, fortunately, were few in number). Implicit
arguments, where a speaker appeared to hint at or imply a particular motivation for aid, were simply
not coded.
8
In the analysis I ignored any external text read into the Congressional Record by representatives, as
well as speeches inserted into the record after the fact (set off by bullet points in the record).
9
A simpler approach would be to add the tallies for all speakers. However, this risks giving excessive
weight to particular speakers who put forward many different claims in a short speech, while
underweighting those who make a long speech with just a single dominant argument. In the event,
there is little substantive difference between the different aggregation methods. For example, the
correlation between simply tallying and the method adopted here is 0.966.
18
Category
Geopolitics
Argument
Cold War
Foreign policy goals
Description
A tool in the Cold War
Pursue foreign policy goals
(e.g. peace in the Middle East)
Support friendly governments
Assistance is in the national interest
Increase international influence
Influence in international institutions
Fulfill / pursue leadership role
Set example for others to follow
Allies
Self-interest (1/4)
Influence
Influence
Influence in UN &c
Leadership (1/2)
Set an example (1/2)
Self-interest (1/4)
Economic
Prosperity
Economic growth, wealth
self-interest
Exports
Promote exports
Imports
Secure valuable imports
Jobs
Create jobs
Self-interest (1/4)
Enlightened
Strengthen UN &c
Support international organizations
Self-interest
Global stability
Prevent global instability, chaos, crisis
Mutual dependence
Mutual dependence between rich & poor
Int’l justice (1/2)
Promote international justice
Self-interest (1/4)
Reputation
Prestige / status
Improve reputation
Symbolic importance Symbolic significance of aid
National identity
Express national identity
Important task (1/2)
Fulfill important & noble task
Leadership (1/2)
Set an example (1/2)
Obligation
Role
Fulfill role in international system
Responsibility
Live up to int’l responsibility
Others do more
Lagging behind others
Burden-sharing
Fair sharing of aid burden
Int’l standards
Live up to int’l standards
Important task (1/2)
Humanitarianism Humanitarianism
Help the poorest & neediest
Wealth disparity
Gap between rich & poor nations
Christian charity
Live up to Christian ideals
Democratization
Promote democratization
Int’l justice (1/2)
Human rights
Promote protection of human rights
Table 2. Arguments coded for foreign assistance (30 total). A few arguments are divided
across several categories, because no obvious single categorization suggested itself.
19
The debates
In his first Congressional testimony, Secretary Vance highlighted three of the broad
frames we have identified: humanitarianism/human rights, obligation, and enlightened
self-interest (Vance, 1977:236-37). Several years later, Secretary Haig emphasized three
different frames: geopolitics, influence, and economic self-interest (Haig, 1982:36). As
we shall see, however, frames expressed by Representatives have been more stable than
these radically divergent stated priorities might suggest.
On March 13, 1975, the House debated the Foreign Assistance and Related Programs
Appropriation Bill for that year. The ranking Republican member of the House
subcommittee in charge, Shriver (R-KS), noted that “not one of the members of [our
subcommittee] is a strong foreign aid supporter” (p. 6550). Moreover, he applauded the
fact that “[o]ver the past two decades, almost $15 billion has been cut from foreign aid
budget requests. This represents a great savings to American taxpayers” (p. 6549).
Overall, the most prominent category of arguments was that of geopolitics, with broader
national interest considerations also figuring prominently. Shriver, for example, argued
that “we have attempted to concentrate these resources on programs which can have
some impact on our own national interests in the world” (p. 6550).
Interestingly, explicit human rights concerns made no appearance at all in the debate.
Moreover, humanitarian motivations were actually more salient among Republican
participants in the debate than they were among Democrats (cf. Goldstein and Moss,
2005). On the other hand, many Republicans felt that foreign aid served no useful
purpose at all. For example, Lagomarsino (R-CA) argued that “We cannot continue to
buy friends abroad at the expense of jobs at home” (p. 6553), while his colleague
20
Bauman (R-MD) stated that “Yes, we are humanitarian, but the American people have
done more than enough” (p. 6555). Nor were Republicans alone in opposing aid. Lloyd
(D-TN), for example, also opposed “the continuation of the foreign assistance program. I
cannot support the giveaway of nearly $3 1/2 billion to other countries while we face
severe economic problems at home” (p. 6559). The overall theme of the debate was one
of skepticism about the value of foreign assistance, combined with an emphasis on
making sure that such aid as flowed anyway would at least serve the national interest.
Two years later, on June 22 and 23, 1977, the House debated the Foreign Assistance
and Related Programs Appropriations Act for 1978. As mentioned earlier, both the
number of participants in the debate and its overall length increased considerably. The
overall tone also changed, with Representatives expressing more of an awareness of the
needs of the poorest. Nevertheless, they evinced a strong reluctance to go along with
Carter’s expanded aid goals. Their aversion to increased aid was fueled partially by the
(erroneous) perception that the United States was already doing more than its fair share,
and partially by the belief that U.S. aid was not going to those who needed it most. For
example, Rousselot (R-CA) argued that “the money has in many cases not gone to help
children or people but has gone to enrich dictators and to enhance bureaucracies in
governments that really have no concern for human rights” (p. 20261).
Rousselot’s statement demonstrates that human rights now formed part of the
discussion. However, Rousselot had always been strongly opposed to foreign aid, and his
basic arguments were no different in 1977 than they had been previously. Indeed, apart
from the introduction of human rights as a popular way to express humanitarian concerns,
little else had changed in the overall tenor of the debate. Geopolitics and foreign policy
21
goals remained the single largest category. Human rights did take up a newly prominent
place, although most of this gain came at the expense of the more general
humanitarianism category. Still, humanitarian consideration overall (including human
rights) did increase in salience, accounting for nearly 40% of the arguments for aid
(compared to a little more than 30% two years earlier). Not surprisingly, Democrats were
more likely to offer human rights as an argument for aid, following Carter’s lead.
Nevertheless, even the most pro-human rights Democratic representatives continued
to argue that national interests could and should override human rights considerations, as
Koch’s statement at the start of this paper illustrates. Simimlarly, De la Garza (D-TX)
was interested only in the fact that U.S. might be preventing Communism from taking
over in Nicaragua or Chile (p. 20594). Even parochial self-interest sufficed to trump
human rights in the eyes of many representatives. For instance, the Carter administration
had cut subsidies for some irrigation projects in the Midwestern and Western states
shortly before this debate. In turn, representatives from both sides of the aisle vehemently
criticized any foreign aid involving water. For example, Watkins (D-OK) opposed
funding for wells to provide drinking water in the drought-stricken Sahel, and asked “that
if we are going to place some money in water projects that we fund the needed water
projects of the United States before we spend the taxpayers’ dollars for projects in foreign
countries” (p. 20270), as though preventing death from drought were somehow morally
equivalent to subsidizing large-scale agriculture.10
Overall, then, while some Representatives echoed Carter’s human rights rhetoric, the
framing of aid had changed less than one might have expected, and the same applies to
10
Similar arguments on the Republican side were made, among others, by Young (R-FL), the ranking
Republican member on the House subcommittee dealing with foreign assistance. See p. 20267.
22
support for the US aid program. Even Carter’s own fellow Democrats were not
noticeably more pro-aid. For example, Allen (D-TN) complained that “this bill would
scatter across the face of the Earth over $7 billion of the taxpayers' money to many
countries which would not lift their little finger to help us if the situation were reversed”
(p. 20575). One of the last speakers in the debate, Frenzel (R-MN), noted by way of
summary: “While foreign aid has no constituency, I continue to believe that it provides
an important foreign policy tool for the President” (p. 20606). In an implicit rebuke to
President Carter’s priorities, the debate had also made it clear that the House did not see
aid primarily, or even prominently, as a tool for the promotion of human rights.
This was confirmed in April 1979, when the House debated the International
Development Cooperation Act, an attempt by the Carter administration to put U.S.
foreign assistance on a more solid footing, administratively and financially. Despite two
more years in which Carter might have convinced legislators of his views, human rights
were now only a minor consideration. As in the previous two debates, geopolitics was the
single largest category, accounting for about 40% of all arguments for aid. If one adds in
the closely related goal of increasing international influence, the total rises to fully half of
all arguments. Humanitarianism, meanwhile, had shrunk to about 20% of the total, with
human rights accounting for only a small fraction thereof. In a reflection of the economic
malaise afflicting the country, economic self-interest became the third most salient
category — at the expense, primarily, of humanitarianism — with more Representatives
discovering the potential value of foreign aid as a way to promote American exports (cf.
Powers, et al., 2010). As Representative Zablocki (D-WI) put it near the start of the
23
debate: “By the aid that we are giving the developing countries we are helping to develop
markets for our export goods” (p. 7230).
Most representatives felt that economic circumstances in the United States made a
generous aid program undesirable. Moreover, some vindictiveness was evident when the
members discussed an amendment prohibiting foreign assistance to any OPEC member.
Representative Peyser (D-NY) felt that “we ought to make it very clear that we are voting
to do something that will have an impact in some way to hurt these OPEC countries that
have raised such havoc in our own country” (p. 7246). Economic self-interest also was
evident when an amendment proposing to disallow the use of government funds to
provide tobacco to Guyana under the “Food for Peace” program elicited vehement
protests from members of tobacco-growing states: Representative Fountain (D-NC)
forthrightly stated that “Tobacco under Public Law 480 is export promotion on behalf of
American farmers. It is not aid for economic development of Guyana” (p. 7365).11
Support for aid initiatives that did not directly promote U.S. interests remained as tenuous
as it always had been, and was trumped by local concerns:
“I feel a moral obligation to help people who are starving in other lands, but I feel
a greater commitment to the senior citizens of the United States who cannot pay
the high cost of their electric bills and to the working people whose income
cannot keep pace with the rapidly escalating cost of gasoline and groceries”
(Boner, D-TN, p. 8039).
Although the House did adopt an amendment calling upon the government to provide
human rights reports on a wider range of countries, enthusiasm for aid flows aimed at
11
Other Representatives from farming states were similarly open about the purpose served by PL 480
foreign assistance. Findley (D-IL) noted that “Public Law 480 … was inaugurated frankly and mainly
as a means of finding overseas markets, and overseas uses for surplus farm products. Despite the very
attractive and appealing label of the food for peace program, it has remained in that category for the
most part all through the years” (p. 7367).
24
improving human rights was decidedly lukewarm. As usual, there was rather more
enthusiasm for geopolitical considerations: “There is always the possibility that situations
may arise where we may be able to ‘buy’ Syria's cooperation in the Middle East peace
process by providing economic aid” (Holtzman, D-NY, p. 7749). Overall, this last major
aid debate during Carter’s presidency offers no indication that his years in office had
made legislators view the purpose of foreign aid in more humanitarian terms.
Strikingly, the first major aid debate under Reagan more closely resembled the 1979
debate under Carter than the two Carter debates resembled one another. The Foreign
Assistance Appropriations and Related Programs Appropriation Bill for 1982 was
debated in the House on December 10 and 11, 1981. Democratic participation in the
debate was rather passive, with Republicans accounting for the vast majority of speaking
turns. Democrats came to life only near the end, to defend the Export-Import Bank
(Eximbank). At this point, eight Democrats who had not previously participated in the
debate rose in quick succession to praise the bank. This support for economic self-interest
as a key goal for aid corroborates the finding in the literature that economic downturns
can inspire legislators to focus more on the potential economic payoffs of aid (Powers, et
al., 2010).
Introducing the 1981 debate, Kemp (R-NY) emphasized the importance of promoting
economic growth at home (p. 30693) and announced “a conscious and deliberate
reordering of foreign assistance priorities to address the national security exigencies of
today” (p. 30692). Other Republicans similarly emphasized geopolitical considerations.
Thus Crane (R-IL) noted that “we have as a party historically and consistently argued
25
against foreign giveaway programs. Now, the assistance to Israel is not a foreign
giveaway. The assistance to Egypt is not a foreign giveaway” (p. 30789).
Nor did democrats disagree: “No President can adequately address the many and
complex international challenges facing our country without being able to extend some
economic and security assistance to our friends and allies” (Studds, D-MA, p. 30699). As
always, numerous voices opposed aid altogether on the grounds that needs in the United
States were greater: “there may be some beneficial purposes to foreign nations and
foreign people. They may need some help. But we need help also in this country”
(Volkmer, D-MO, p. 30782). In sum, rather less had changed than the Reagan
administration’s rhetoric might lead one to expect, and deteriorating economic conditions
affected the legislative framing of aid more than either President’s rhetoric and goals.
Analysis
Presenting President Reagan’s first foreign appropriations bill, Representative Kemp
(R-NY) noted that
“Over the past several years, this Congress has been virtually deadlocked over the
issue of foreign economic assistance. I believe that much of the difficulty which
we have had has stemmed from conflicting interpretations of our goals.”12
In fact, striking differences in the rhetoric of the Carter and Reagan administrations did
not translate into similarly clear patterns within Congress. Kemp’s claim notwithstanding,
“conflicting interpretations of” the purposes of foreign aid were not an artifact of the
Carter Administration’s priorities. This becomes obvious when we look at the breakdown
of the different debates by frame, as shown in figure 1. The preceding discussion has
12
CRH, December 10, 1981, p. 30694
26
been somewhat impressionistic, which made it possible to say something about the
relative valuation of different goals expressed by Representatives. As we have seen,
legislators who appealed to humanitarian goals frequently explicitly stated that they
considered political or economic self-interest more important. In the coding of the
debates, such relative assessments are obscured, as each argument is counted equally.
Nevertheless, even then the overall pattern is quite striking.
100%
90%
80%
70%
Human Rights
Humanitarianism
60%
Obligation
50%
Reputation
40%
Enlightened Self-int.
30%
Economic Self-int.
Influence
20%
Geopolitics
10%
0%
75
77
79
81
All representatives
75
77
79
81
Democrats
75
77
79
81
Republicans
Figure 1. Relative salience of broad frames for aid, 1975-1981. Source: appendix.
The left-hand cluster in the figure illustrates the importance of political goals
throughout. About half of all arguments for foreign aid refer directly either to geopolitical
goals or to the closely related goal of increasing international influence. The importance
27
of geopolitical interests remained steady from Ford to Carter, and then rose under
Reagan, at the expense of humanitarianism. Human rights appeared on the scene under
Carter; in 1977 they increased the salience of humanitarianism overall to be equivalent to
geopolitics (albeit not if we add the influence frame to the latter), but that change was
very shortlived. In 1979, economic interests became noticeably more prominent. The fact
that the rising salience of economic self-interest (in 1979) and geopolitics (in 1981) each
came almost entirely at the expense of humanitarianism reflects the fact that most
legislators saw humanitarianism as a secondary goal of foreign aid.
Overall, then, the most noticeable substantive change overall was not one that set
Carter apart from his predecessor or successor, but rather one that set in during Carter’s
presidency. As economic conditions deteriorated, the notion that foreign aid could serve
to promote exports and secure jobs gained favor among Representatives. Moreover, this
frame increased in salience at the expense of humanitarianism, despite Carter’s continued
emphasis on the importance of human rights. Interestingly, throughout the period under
consideration arguments for aid appealing to reputation, obligation, and enlightened selfinterest, which are quite prominent in debates about foreign aid in Europe (Van der Veen,
2011), were of little significance in the American debates studied, with a combined
weight of only about 15%.
Rather more variation over time in the salience of the key frames emerges within each
party, although the overall conclusions hold. For the Democrats, Carter brought a
temporary increase in the salience of humanitarianism, largely in the form of a more
explicit emphasis on human rights, but also at the expense of geopolitics, which until then
for Democrats had been a more salient goal of foreign aid than it had been for
28
Republicans. Economic goals increased quite dramatically in salience in 1979 and again
in 1981. For the Republicans, Carter did nothing to increase the salience of humanitarian
goals; instead, they actually emphasized geopolitics more than they had under Ford.
Reagan’s emphasis on geopolitics further increased the salience of this category.
The data presented here allow us to draw several useful conclusions about Carter’s
efforts to change the discourse on foreign aid. First, the debates offer a valuable
confirmation of the primacy of geopolitical and influence goals in the United States
foreign aid program, at least as legislators conceive it. This suggests that standard
domestic political economy variables can only hope to explain a comparatively small
portion of the aid decision-making process. On the other hand, difficult domestic
economic conditions do make a difference, and here those same models can be valuable
in studying the nature and strength of the effect (Milner and Tingley, 2010, Powers, et al.,
2010). Second, presidents can shift the debate marginally, but only for Representatives of
their own party, and, it appears, only temporarily. Thus, Carter brought a temporary jump
in the salience of humanitarian goals, and Reagan’s election made Republicans more
likely to emphasize geopolitics. This adds some new data to the literature on the
rhetorical presidency (Barrett, 2004, Eshbaugh-Soha, 2010, Tulis, 1988).
Third, and most importantly for our purposes here, the relative stability over time in
the salience of the key frames for aid supports the argument that Carter failed to convince
legislators. In other words, as predicted, we can locate the debates during Carter’s
presidency in the bottom right quadrant of table 1 earlier in the paper. Indeed, the
qualitative analysis of the debates made it clear that even though we observe a brief
increase in the salience of human rights considerations, these remained a secondary
29
objective even for most of Carter’s fellow Democrats. This supports my overall
argument: one reason Carter failed to shift aid policy substantially was that he failed to
bring about a reframing in the way legislators thought about the goals of United States
foreign assistance.
Conclusion
Research on the importance of ideas in policy-making often focuses on the role of
ideas in shaping changes at important turning points. The evidence presented in this study
shows that ideas can also inhibit change at such moments. Jimmy Carter assumed the
presidency in 1977 hoping to change U.S. foreign policy towards a greater emphasis on
humanitarianism and human rights. By most accounts, he failed to achieve this goal. I
have argued that his failure lies not in an inadequate or naïve commitment to human
rights, as some have suggested, but rather in his lack of success in shifting the overall
policy discourse among decision-makers. More specifically, Carter was unable to
convince these actors to think differently about the purpose of the U.S. foreign aid
program. In a review of Carter’s presidency, Schmitz and Walker claim that “Carter
succeeded in shifting the discourse on American foreign policy” (Schmitz and Walker,
2004:114, cf. Stuckey, 2008). The evidence presented here, however, suggests that any
such shift was both superficial and temporary, fading by the second half of Carter’s
presidency.
Most U.S. legislators — and, it appears likely, most members of the wider policymaking elite — did not share Carter’s beliefs about the relative importance of different
goals for foreign aid, and his rhetoric failed to change their minds. Instead of
30
emphasizing humanitarian motivations and human rights, they thought of aid as a fairly
narrow foreign policy tool: “The fact is that if properly framed and competently
administered, foreign aid serves vital American interests.”13 Moreover, they felt that this
tool was often of questionable value, especially considering its costs. Accordingly, more
than a few Representatives opposed foreign assistance altogether, just as many do today.
For Carter to succeed in his aims, he needed to bring such policy-makers around to his
way of thinking. Failing this, simply proposing an increased aid budget, or reallocating
aid from security assistance to more human rights-focused projects, was never likely to
gain much traction in Congress.
Carter’s goal of shifting US aid policy towards a greater emphasis on human rights
was not doomed from the beginning. There are good theoretical reasons for believing that
presidents can have such an effect, especially in the area of foreign policy, where
legislators may face fewer constraints from their voters. Moreover, for an empirical
example of a President succeeding in changing the aid program, we need to look back no
further than George W. Bush, whose introduction of the Millennium Challenge Account
did shift aid policy considerably (Hook, 2008). The evidence presented in this paper,
however, suggests that Carter’s failure to shift how legislators thought about aid policy
undermined his hopes of overseeing any comparable policy innovations.
13
Representative Studds (D-MA), December 10, 1981, p. 30699.
31
Appendix
GeoEcon. Enl.
Human
Year
politics Infl. SI
SI
Rep. Obl. Hum. Rights
1975 All
0.385 0.059
0.060 0.076 0.054 0.057 0.309
0.000
Democrats
0.510 0.066
0.024 0.053 0.066 0.057 0.224
0.000
Republicans
0.209 0.050
0.111 0.109 0.035 0.058 0.428
0.000
1977 All
0.374 0.092
0.029 0.030 0.040 0.045 0.239
0.150
Democrats
0.374 0.089
0.028 0.035 0.051 0.040 0.164
0.220
Republicans
0.375 0.098
0.031 0.023 0.020 0.055 0.363
0.034
1979 All
0.389 0.109
0.164 0.052 0.035 0.036 0.181
0.035
Democrats
0.371 0.126
0.175 0.048 0.012 0.032 0.209
0.026
Republicans
0.411 0.088
0.149 0.056 0.061 0.040 0.147
0.046
1981 All
0.499 0.085
0.183 0.038 0.053 0.040 0.078
0.023
Democrats
0.129 0.093
0.408 0.030 0.058 0.052 0.141
0.089
Republicans
0.629 0.082
0.104 0.041 0.051 0.037 0.056
0.000
Table A1. Debate aggregates (data used to generate figures 1-5 in the text).
Specific data about individual (non-aggregated) arguments and speakers is available from
the author upon request.
32
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