The influence of corporate interests on USAID's development agenda: The case of Haiti

This dissertation is an attempt to use the radical political economy approach, which assumes that there is a connection between a state's strategic interests and the interests of dominant multinational corporations (MNCs) located within a state's territory, to explain continuity in the USAID development agenda and lending patterns during the past 30 years of development aid to Haiti. Employing the qualitative method of "process-tracing," my study concludes that the radical political economy approach has an explanatory power when it comes to understanding continuity in the USAID development agenda and lending patterns during the past 30 years of development aid to Haiti. The evidence shows that USAID has implemented in Haiti, from the 1980s through the post-9/11 Washington Consensus period, neoliberal policies that conform to the political economy of US multinational corporations (US MNCs). Contrary to the claim that the USAID-sponsored post-earthquake development paradigm has departed from previous development strategies, the study has shown that USAID has used the occurrence of the January 2010 earthquake tragedy to accelerate in Haiti the implementation of a neoliberal agenda congenial to the business promotion of multinational investors, particularly US multinational corporations. In terms of the way ahead, the study argues for the implementation of a new development approach articulated by a legitimate Haitian state and primarily intended to promote the socioeconomic development of the poorest Haitians.

The Bankruptcy of Liberalism and Social Democracy in the Neoliberal Age

The increasing similarity between the economic policies of center-left and center-right political parties has effectively diminished the legitimacy of governments in relationship to their citizenry in Western Europe and the U.S. Capitalist democracies during the period of managed capitalism gained legitimacy by the appearance of the separation of capitalist ownership rights in the marketplace from the political institutions that govern capitalism. During this period, Social Democratic parties in Western Europe, and to a lesser extent the Democratic Party in the U.S., paid some amount of attention to labor unions and mass constituents in formulating their policy agendas. The era of neoliberalism (late 1970s to the present) has broken any such appearances, with the dominant political parties, regardless of party label, moving rightward to embrace many of the same economic policy agendas.