Publications

Burkina Faso was the first country to sign a threshold program with the MCC and the second nation to transition from a threshold program to compact implementation. In CGD’s latest MCA Monitor Report from the Field, Rebecca Schutte examines the implementation successes and challenges of the MCC’s programs in Burkina Faso at every level of society

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The Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC) has received wide praise for its innovative approaches to aid allocation and delivery but has not yet reached its full potential. Now, with the transition to a new administration, the MCC must take bold steps to achieve greater effectiveness, clarity of purpose, and integration with the broader U.S. foreign assistance framework. CGD analysts Sheila Herrling, Steve Radelet, and Molly Kinder offer timely suggestions, including introducing smaller, multiple compacts, reorienting the Threshold Program, and focusing exclusively on low-income countries.

With the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC) soon to release the scorecards and performance data that form the basis of the FY09 country selection round, Sheila Herrling and Amy Crone examine how countries fare on the control of corruption indicator, the only “hard hurdle” that countries must pass to qualify for MCC money, in this new MCA Monitor Analysis.

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Meeting today’s foreign policy challenges requires a new vision of American global leadership based on the strength of our core values, ideas, and ingenuity. It calls for an integrated foreign policy that promotes our ideals, enhances our security, helps create economic and political opportunities for people around the world, and restores America’s image abroad. We cannot rely exclusively or even primarily on defense and security to meet these goals. CGD senior policy analyst Sheila Herrling and senior fellow Steve Radelet argue instead that we must make greater use of all the tools of statecraft, including diplomacy, trade, investment, intelligence, and a strong and effective foreign assistance strategy.

New Day, New Way: U.S. Foreign Assistance for the 21st Century calls on the next American president, Congress, policymakers and the American people to overhaul how the U.S. helps poor people in developing countries. Among the recommended steps: a new national foreign assistance strategy and a new Foreign Assistance Act to replace the outdated framework that President Kennedy signed nearly 50 years ago. CGD senior fellow Steve Radelet is a co-chair of the authoring group, the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network.

Amid a contentious FY2008 budget round between Congress and the White House, foreign assistance -- particularly that for development -- may face cuts during negotiations. The Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) -- one of few U.S. foreign aid programs specifically targeted to long-term development objectives -- is especially vulnerable. In a new MCA Monitor Analysis, senior policy analyst Sheila Herrling presents a path forward for Congress and the administration to address the real issues hindering MCA implementation, and argues against an amendment introduced by Senator Lugar to change the MCA's compact funding obligations policy because it erodes key innovations that distinguish the MCA from other aid programs.

The board of the Millennium Challenge Corporation will soon decide how to incorporate two new natural resources indicators—a Natural Resource Management Index (NRMI) and a Land Rights and Access indicator—into the FY2008 country selection process. In a new paper by CGD’s MCA Monitor team, Sarah Rose, Sheila Herrling, and Steve Radelet explore how to integrate these new indicators into the MCA's three eligibility criteria categories: Ruling Justly, Investing in People, and Economic Freedom. They recommend adding the Land Rights indicator to the Economic Freedom category, and the NRMI to Investing in People. They also urge the MCC to offer incentives for a third party to create an educational quality indicator, thereby bringing the total number of investing in people indicators to six, equal to the number of indicators in the other two categories.

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As Congress gears up to allocate some $36 billion in the international affairs budget across a multitude of foreign aid programs, CGD senior policy analyst Sheila Herrling and research assistant Sarah Rose ask whether the MCA should receive the full $3 billion requested by the president for the initiative. The authors applaud the MCA as one of the few U.S. foreign aid programs specifically dedicated to long-term global growth and poverty reduction and argue that reduced funding could jeopardize its core credibility.