ABSTRACT
How did policy evolve from this tangled system? Where did aid fit in government? John White, in his study of the politics of foreign aid, concluded that the makings of an aid policy lie within ‘the rather narrow institutional environment’ in which aid institutions operate, that people, rather than agencies or governments, determine the forces which allow policy to evolve, in a continuous and cumulative process.1 Beginning with a discussion of donor aid management, this chapter begins to probe this ‘environment’ as it was in Japaninitially in the bureaucratic setting-and examines the political context of the Japanese aid administration. Chapters 4 and 5 take the reader further into, first, the processes of the aid machinery and, secondly, aid budgeting.
