ABSTRACT
The US government and US development assistance community have been in the lead, and indeed helped to catalyze, now global trend of integrating concerns of democracy and governance into the design and implementation of development assistance. Although promoting democracy has long been a part of US foreign policy, it has not always been a primary objective of US foreign assistance policy. The evolution of US aid policy since 1990 has reflected that debate, and successive administrations, Democrat and Republican, have taken steps to integrate democracy into their development approaches. US Agency for International Development (USAID) has been at the forefront of aid efforts, but under the George W. Bush administration, establishment of the new Millennium Challenge Account was a significant policy development. The issue is whether and how the linkages between democracy and development will be impacted by fate of USAID, which in 2006 seemed increasingly in jeopardy.
