Foreign Aid Reconsidered (review)

290 SAIS REVIEW party or PCI. Political power is heavily concentrated in the political parties, and it is through these parties and their numerous factions that most of the representative aspects of Italian democracy operate. The factions, in fact, serve as effective channels for representing the interests of individuals and organizations not only within the parties themselves but in the legislative bodies and the bureaucracy as well. This system was set up with the realities of Italian political life in mind, and it has, therefore, worked well. Despite the sometimes theatrical quality of Italian politics — politics as spettacolo the system is effective, stable and highly democratic. The behind-the-scenes collaboration among the parties avoids open and direct ideological confrontation. LaPalombara argues convincingly that not only does this system not encourage political polarization, it actually helps dampen centrifugal forces within Italy. This highly pragmatic and accommodative approach to democracy in Italy is, for LaPalombara, the key to its success. That Italy is divided into subcultures and saturated by politics not only has failed to prove fatal to democratic development but in fact has most likely contributed to that development. The subcultures, for instance, serve to mobilize the citizens and bring them into the political process. Publicly, political leaders are mutually suspicious, partisan, and ideological. Yet in the less transparent arenas of politics, the political elites collaborate. These often-maligned political elites can truly be thanked for making the Italian democratic state a reality. Since the founding of the republic la classe politica has succeeded in bringing Western Europe's largest Communist party into the pluralist democratic fold, making Italy the world's fifth largest industrial economy, eradicating illiteracy, raising the Italian standard of living to previously unimagined levels, and forging a system resilient enough to withstand the mortal threat of terrorism without jeopardizing its democratic institutions . LaPalombara clearly demonstrates that Italians have, when all is said and done, developed for themselves a remarkable democracy that displays levels of toleration, freedom, and political inventiveness that can and should serve as a model for other nations. Foreign Aid Reconsidered. By Roger C. Riddell. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. 309 pp. $35.00/cloth. Reviewed by Alvaro Rengifo, M.A. candidate, SAIS. According to the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD, some 9,000 evaluations of official aid have been carried out by major donors since 1970. These evaluations, used as the basis to judge aid performance and for drawing general conclusions, actually represent only a fraction of the $420 billion of official aid given since 1970. Riddell estimates that it represents only about 10 percent of all aid since the late 1960s. His conclusion, therefore, seriously questions any theory about the effectiveness of foreign aid based on the present evidence. BOOK REVIEWS 291 Riddell provocatively discusses the fundamentals of official aid and gives an excellent survey of the debate over foreign aid. The book aims to clarify the basics of the debate in a way that will satisfy not only the expert but also the novice. Readable and fluent, the book maintains interest throughout the more than three hundred pages. It contains, in addition, an excellent bibliography that can guide those interested in delving deeper into the subject. Riddell starts his book with a study of what he calls the ethical foundations of aid. A 1983 national opinion poll held in Britain found that 78 percent of those in favor of aid (71 percent of the total) gave some sort of moral explanation for their attitude. Riddell questions this broadly-held belief (which is also reflected in major donor statements) for its lack of intellectual basis. Conventional wisdom guiding moral aid is founded on Christian tradition, human goodness, basic needs, utilitarianism, or the principles of justice or rights. But these arguments have been seriously questioned during the last few years, and no counterattack has ever really appeared. The group of philosophers and thinkers who question the objectives of aid, and therefore do not find any support for it, includes Hayek, Bauer, and Nozick. A second group, consisting mainly of economists from the Right and the Left, does find some obligation to provide aid but rejects the notion that government...