Alternate Author Name(s)

Dr. Robert DeWitt, PhD '76

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

1976

Keywords

Inter-American Development Bank, Investments, Foreign, Costa Rica, Economic conditions

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Political Science

First Advisor

Arthur K. Smith

Second Advisor

James F. Petras

Third Advisor

Edwin H. Rutkowski

Abstract

This inquiry began as an analysis of the impact of foreign assistance through the Inter-American Development Bank in Costa Rica. From the outset it became apparent that a focus purely within the national boundaries of Costa Rica would not be sufficient to elucidate the impact of the Bank's projects on the social, political and economic structure of the country. The impact of foreign aid within Costa Rica could only be understood by considering the global dimensions of the problems. Specifically the internal and external factors impinging on Costa Rican development had to be defined and studied.

In the initial months of the study conducted in Washington, D.C., I was increasingly made cognizant of the very considerable leverage that the United States had on the Bank indirectly through the United States Congress and in the Executive Branch through such agencies as the U.S. Treasury, General Account Office; U.S. State Department and other governmental bodies. Through extensive interviewing during a summer in Washington, D.C., the pattern of United States influence in the Bank became clearer and the now obvious linkage between the United States’ leverage and its connection with actual institutional control over major aspects of Inter-American Development Bank's funding of programs in Latin America became more apparent. The aspect of U.S. formal and informal control are discussed fully in the initial chapters of this manuscript.

From this fundamental analysis of the Bank it was obvious that the following salient questions must be asked: What is the impact of U.S. national interest on the Inter-American Development Bank? and What are the linkages between United States influence in the Inter-American Development Bank and the Bank’s impact on Costa Rican development? An analysis of the parameters of United States’ national interest, however, could only shed a partial light on the problems of Costa Rica development. It was necessary, therefore, to expand my theoretical framework to include not only questions of national interest, but additionally to link these questions with internal and external factors of Costa Rican development. The analytic framework that I found most useful here in analyzing the global factors of Costa Rican development that went beyond the conceptual boundaries of the nation-state was the contemporary theories of underdevelopment or dependency. The dependency theoretical framework does address itself to the questions which this study is concerned with and proves to be exceedingly useful when linked with the concept of national interest. Dependency theory, which has been adopted by Marxists, Neo-Marxists and Non-Marxists alike, has been defined theoretically by such scholars as Bodenheimer (Jonas), Cardoso, Frank and Dos Santos. The usefulness of dependency to my study and any study in international political economy represents an immense advance, conceptually, over conventional development theories which advocate development and modernization by diffusion. This is not to say that dependency theory does not have some defects such as the tendency of dependency theorists to be “grand theorists” who often fail to provide us with concrete researchable indicators of dependence. I have attempted to overcome this fault by using traditional economic indicators of development to measure the impact of dependency in my study of the Inter-American Bank’s role in Costa Rican development.

By employing the dependency conceptual framework and exploring the impact of United States’ national interest in the Bank and on Bank projects in Costa Rica, this study analyzes the following set of interrelated propositions: (1) What is the impact of the United States’ national interest on the Inter-American Development Bank?; (2) What is the impact of the Inter-American Development Bank on Costa Rican development?; and (3) What are the linkages between United States influence in the Inter-American Development Bank and the Bank's impact on Costa Rican development? I believe that the discussion to follow will shed light on these above questions and that the example of the Inter-American Development Bank in Costa Rica can be generalized to the issue of international lending throughout Latin America.

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