ABSTRACT
Aid policy decisions were indeed a matter of ‘pushing and coaxing’. Budgets and procedures were essential in determining the directions, quantities and terms of Japanese aid flows; likewise, consultants were a source of energy and initiative in aid policy, keeping particular projects and bilateral relationships well ahead in the queue for official approval. But business consultants were not the only innovative force in what was an extremely open (albeit dispersed) policy-making system; such was the multiplicity of leverage points, in fact, that management by officials was essential in giving some order to cross-cutting pressures, This chapter examines how bilateral pressures affected the direction of aid flows.
