Lancaster, Carol 1942- (Carol J. Lancaster)

PERSONAL:

Born August 23, 1942. Education: Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service, B.Sc., 1964; attended Universidad de San Andres, La Paz, Bolivia, 1964-65; London School of Economics, M.Sc., 1966, Ph.D., 1972.

ADDRESSES:

Office—School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057. E-mail—lancastc@georgetown.edu; clancaster@cgdev.org.

CAREER:

Kingston Polytechnic (now Kingston University), Kingston-upon-Thames, England, lecturer, 1968-72; Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President, Washington, DC, budget examiner, 1972-76; U.S. Congress, Washington, DC, congressional fellow, 1976-77; U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, member of policy planning staff, 1977-80, Bureau of African Affairs, deputy assistant secretary, 1980-81; Georgetown University, Washington, DC, research professor, 1981-89, director of African Studies, 1981-89, 2004-05, School of Foreign Service, assistant professor, 1989-93, 1996-98, associate professor, 1999-2005, professor, 2005—, director of M.S. program in foreign service, 1998-2002, director of Mortara Center for International Studies, 2005—; U.S. Agency for International Development, Washington, DC, deputy administrator, 1993-96. Held visiting fellowships at Institute for International Economics, 1987-91, 1996-98, at Overseas Development Council, 1992-93, and at Center for Global Development, 2002—. Presenter or panelist at numerous conferences organized by scholarly associations, academic institutions and research institutes, U.S. government agencies, international development agencies, and private voluntary organizations. Consultant for the Aspen Institute, the World Bank, United Nations, Office of Technology Assessment, Congressional Research Service, Institute of International Education, U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of Education, InterAction, Center for Strategic and International Studies, National Geographic, Time/Life Books, Overseas Development Council, Aspen Institute, University of Chicago Press, Cornell University Press, Lynne Rienner Publishers, and Grolier Press.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fulbright fellowship, 1964-65; Carnegie scholar, 2002-03.

WRITINGS:

(Contributor) Careers in International Affairs, School of Foreign Service (Washington, DC), 1982.

(Editor, with John Williamson) African Debt and Financing, Institute for International Economics (Washington, DC), 1986.

U.S. Aid to Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges, Constraints, and Choices, Center for Strategic and International Studies (Washington, DC), 1988.

African Economic Reform: The External Dimension, Institute for International Economics (Washington, DC), 1991.

United States and Africa: Into the Twenty-first Century, Overseas Development Council (Washington, DC), 1993.

Aid to Africa: So Much to Do, So Little Done, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1999.

(With Samuel Wangwe) Managing a Smooth Transition from Aid Dependence in Africa, Overseas Development Council/African Economic Research Consortium (Washington, DC), 2000.

Transforming Foreign Aid: United States Assistance in the 21st Century, Institute for International Economics (Washington, DC), 2000.

(With others) Equity and Growth: The Role of Civil Society in Sustainable Development, National Policy Association (Washington, DC), 2003.

(With Ann Van Dusen) Organizing U.S. Foreign Aid: Confronting Challenges of the Twenty-first Century, Brookings Institution Press (Washington, DC), 2005.

Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development, Domestic Politics, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2007.

George Bush's Foreign Aid: Transformation or Chaos?, Brookings Institution Press (Washington, DC), 2008.

Contributor of articles to collections, including The African State in Transition, edited by Zaki Ergas, Macmillan, 1987; Les experiences d'integration regionaledans les pays du tiers-monde, edited by I. William Zartman and Sadok Belaid, Centre d'Études de Recherches et de Publications (Paris, France), 1993; Oxford Companion to Politics, Oxford University Press, 1993; Africa in World Politics, edited by John Harbison and others, Westview Press, 1995; The World Bank: Its First Half Century, Volume 2, edited by Devesh Kapur, John Lewis, and Richard Webb, Brookings Institution Press, 1997.

Contributor to periodicals, including Revue Tiers Monde, IISS Quarterly, Foreign Policy, Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Washington Quarterly, Current History, Foreign Affairs, Perspectives on Africa, Africa Notes, International Economic Insights, Africa Report, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, and Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

SIDELIGHTS:

Former U.S. Foreign Service officer Carol Lancaster specializes in the study of American foreign aid and the development of African nations. She currently holds the position of director of Georgetown University's Mortara Center for International Studies and works as a fellow for the Center for Global Development; she also has had a distinguished career in government service. Her service in U.S. governmental roles from 1972 to 1981 includes time spent with the Office of Management and Budget, the policy planning staff of the Department of State, the U.S. Senate, and the House of Representatives. She joined the Georgetown faculty in 1981 but returned to work for the government between 1993 and 1996 as deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa. According to her biography on the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service Web site, "her current research centers on the politics of foreign aid in the U.S., Europe, Japan and China, evangelicals and world poverty, history, politics and society in Washington, DC."

"Why do governments give foreign aid?" asked Michigan Journal of Public Affairs Online contributor Daniel M. Rothschild in his review of Lancaster's Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development, Domestic Politics. Ostensibly, Rothschild posited, the answer is to turn poverty-stricken countries into wealthy (or at least moderately well-off) ones. In reality, as Lancaster shows in her book, the reasons are manifold and complicated. Modern foreign aid from the United States and European nations, Lancaster explaines, began as a tool to curb the spread of communism during the Cold War. "Modeled after the small, limited humanitarian programs for ‘underdeveloped countries’ run by the Scandinavian states, the United States and European countries began similar programs … by supporting strategic allies like Greece, Turkey, and India," Rothschild explained. "Similarly, the Soviet Union used aid to advance its geopolitical goals, giving three-quarters of its aid to communist developing countries including North Vietnam, North Korea, and Cuba." After the end of the Cold War in 1991, however, the rationale for foreign aid shifted, and government giving changed from direct aid to economic development. Since then it has become "a virtually universal norm," declared Phyllis R. Pomerantz in her Political Science Quarterly review, "that rich countries need to give money to poor countries."

Lancaster suggests, according to Richard N. Cooper in his Foreign Affairs review, that "domestic politics plays a greater role in determining the level, destination, and character of aid than most supporters of aid normally recognize." In Foreign Aid, Lancaster "eschews policy recommendations in favor of tentative conjectures that depict aid as a complex endeavor that will continue to be shaped by national ideas, interests, institutions, and organizations," declared Robert Picciotto in Ethics & International Affairs. He continued: "Specifically, she argues that the way the public discourse about aid is framed will determine its future policy orientations." Lancaster sees the growth of future U.S. foreign aid as a reflection of "the increasing influence of the evangelical movement and the Christian right in domestic politics," Pomerantz stated. "Ideas and interests combine to create an unlikely coalition between the secular left and the Christian right to help the world's poor. Strange bedfellows indeed!" "Given her careful analysis of the force field of development assistance in major donor countries," Picciotto concluded, "… official aid will continue to be shaped by public concerns with human betterment combined with national imperatives of security and stability."

Lancaster continues to examine the issue of foreign aid in Aid to Africa: So Much to Do, So Little Done, in Transforming Foreign Aid: United States Assistance in the 21st Century, and in Organizing U.S. Foreign Aid: Confronting Challenges of the Twenty-first Century. In Transforming Foreign Aid, she suggests that aid in the new millennium will have to target four specific areas: global peacemaking, transnational concerns such as global warming, charitable actions to relieve global human suffering, and human rights. "Lancaster provides extensive citations of recent scholarly literature and data sources that facilitate follow-up study," stated Stephen W. Hook in the Political Science Quarterly. "Overall, she does an impressive job of framing the current and future debate over U.S. foreign aid." Africa in particular remains a target for much U.S. foreign aid, in part because of the vast untapped resources of the continent, and in part because of Communist China's heavy investments there. In Aid to Africa, "Lancaster criticizes the lopsided balance of power between donors and their clients, and she often implies that Africans have relinquished power, or failed to call the shots, in their dealings with donors," David Sogge wrote in the Christian Century. "Africans should draft the broad frameworks and propose the projects—though, of course, in the end these have to fit within the donors' strategies and priorities. And indeed most of Lancaster's book is about how to strengthen donor agencies." Aid to Africa suggests that "the main reason for the failure of aid appears to be the donors' ineptitude in designing and managing effective programmes," declared Mak Arvin in the Journal of Development Studies. "Part of this problem stems from their lack of technical expertise and knowledge of local culture." However, Arvin added, this is worsened "by the fact that donor agencies appear to operate without any strong coordination amongst themselves. Uncoordinated operation of a large number of donor agencies (on average 40-50) in a single recipient country cannot be regarded as efficient, nor can it be expected to produce significant positive results."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

African Affairs, October 1, 1999, Douglas Rimmer, review of Aid to Africa: So Much to Do, So Little Done, p. 589.

Booklist, April 1, 1999, Mary Carroll, review of Aid to Africa, p. 1370.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, November 1, 2007, M.E. Carranza, review of Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development, Domestic Politics, p. 541.

Christian Century, February 23, 2000, David Sogge, review of Aid to Africa, p. 206.

Ethics & International Affairs Journal, winter, 2007, Robert Picciotto, review of Foreign Aid.

Foreign Affairs, January 1, 1986, review of African Debt and Financing, p. 206; March 1, 2007, Richard N. Cooper, "‘Economic, Social, and Environmental’—Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development, Domestic Politics."

Futurist, November 1, 2005, review of Organizing U.S. Foreign Aid: Confronting Challenges of the Twenty-first Century.

Journal of Developing Areas, October 1, 1992, Ronald McMullen, review of African Economic Reform: The External Dimension, p. 95.

Journal of Development Studies, June 1, 2000, Mak Arvin, review of Aid to Africa, p. 176.

Journal of Economic Literature, March 1, 1987, review of African Debt and Financing, p. 220; June 1, 1992, review of African Economic Reform, p. 1013; September 1, 1999, review of Aid to Africa, p. 1253; June 1, 2001, review of Transforming Foreign Aid: United States Assistance in the 21st Century, p. 660.

Journal of Modern African Studies, March 1, 2000, Peter Burnell, review of Aid to Africa, p. 156.

Los Angeles Times, July 2, 1993, "Clinton Names Choices for OSHA, AID," p. 2.

Political Science Quarterly, June 22, 2001, Steven W. Hook, review of Transforming Foreign Aid, p. 339; September 22, 2007, Phyllis R. Pomerantz, review of Foreign Aid, p. 518.

Prairie Schooner, June 22, 2001, review of Transforming Foreign Aid, p. 339.

Reference Services Review, January 1, 2003, review of Managing a Smooth Transition from Aid Dependence in Africa, p. 191.

Times Literary Supplement, September 22, 2000, Michael Chege, review of Aid to Africa, p. 8.

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, July 5, 1993, "Nomination for Deputy Administrator of the Agency for International Development," p. 1218.

ONLINE

Center for Global Development Web site,http://www.cgdev.org/ (August 16, 2008), author profile.

Georgetown University Department of Government Web site,http://georgetown.edu/ (August 16, 2008), author profile.

Georgetown University School of Foreign Service Web sote,http://explore.georgetown.edu/ (August 16, 2008), author profile.

Michigan Journal of Public Affairs Online,http://www.mjpa.umich.edu/ (August 16, 2008), Daniel M. Rothschild, review of Foreign Aid.

Peterson Institute for International Economics Web site,http://www.iie.com/ (August 16, 2008), author profile.

SourceWatch Web site,http://www.sourcewatch.org/ (August 16, 2008), author profile.