"Offers a dispassionate and thorough examination of a government activity of continuing and even growing importance."

Foreign Affairs

“This is a unique and excellent work, a story told from the inside and the outside, a book on an important subject for the new millennium. Lancaster lays out the main themes behind aid programs and also offers a better framework for understanding policy and relations among nations.”

William Zartman, Johns Hopkins University

“The grand themes Lancaster introduces and develops will become classic statements about foreign aid. And the assembly of country details relevant to aid—coalition politics in Germany, bureaucratic business traditions in Japan, national self image in France and Denmark—adds considerably to the literature in comparative politics. I can imagine scholars in international politics using this book as a definitive source upon which to construct other arguments and stories about international affairs in the contemporary era.”

Raymond F. Hopkins, Swarthmore College

"Lancaster offers a helpful and thoughtful retrospective account of sixty years of aid practices and a useful study on the question of how we got to the norms, bureaucracies, politics, and institutions that govern foreign aid today. For academics and practitioners alike, Lancaster’s study offers a compelling narrative for understanding why governments give aid, how it is done, and what it is expected to accomplish."

Daniel M. Rothschild | Michigan Journal of Public Affairs

"Because Lancaster has the dual vantage point of having been a government official and a professor, the analysis rings true and eschews simplistic motivations and conclusions."

Phyllis R. Pomerantz | Political Science Quarterly

"Foreign Aid succeeds in reminding the reader that development assistance programs were born to further the diplomatic and security interests of the governments that created thme."

Leonardo Martinez-Diaz | World Economics

"This is a comprehensive assessment of why aid is given, rich in historical and institutional detail, and meticulous in its coverage of the economic and political factions which affect aid programmes."

Mark Arvin | Development Policy Review

"This is an important contribution to the literature on comparative foreign policy making."

Choice

"[The] study provides a useful insight for postgraduates and academics of international relations and comparative politics, as well as practitioners involved in the field of aid giving and foreign policy. It also provides an accessible introduction for newcomers to the topic."

Khalid Salem Almezaini | Political Studies Review

"Lancaster affords a significant contribution to the current scholarly work on foreign assistance, as she elucidates the aid problematic and its complexity with a refreshing and suitable set of case studies. She writes for an educated, well-read audience, yet reaches beyond specialists in her field, and offers an intelligible, eloquent comparative analysis on an intriguing issue that will remain on the political agenda of governments in the twenty-first century."

Arnaud Kurze | Development and Change