Word: das
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...DAS decided at the outset that it would make the following considerations in deciding whether to accept a particular country's bid to become a client government: 1) the academic interest posed by that country's development problems; 2) the likelihood of gaining access to vital economic information and 3) the possibility of doing concrete good while confining itself to working within the policy strictures of the host government. On these bases the DAS accepted some project proposals and rejected others in turn...
...spite of the fact that a wide variety of governments turned up on the DAS roster-there were two unfailing characteristics which defined the work of its teams: 1) each client nation was headed by a non-Communist government which remained open and often friendly to American capital investment and 2) in each field project, the overwhelming priority was to raise that nation's Gross National Product without as much thought or attention to the social effects of growth or the basic fairness of that country's political-economic structure...
...despite its claim that it was essentially apolitical, that it did notconsistently support American goals, the DAS operated within the ever-expanding framework of American capital and aid. While seeking to act in the best interest of their host governments-often advising many of them to beware lopsided agreements with American traders and agencies-the DAS teams continued to tolerate the principle of exploitative American investment and the permissibility of American intervention. To take one striking example, as rendered by Lester E. Gordon,. the present director of the DAS, "We concluded early in the game that Liberia's decision...
...FAIR, the DAS team in Liberia-as in most other client countries-would have been impotent to change the government's stand on foreign investment; as Gordon said, "The fact is in Liberia they wouldn't have accepted [a proposed change]. We've been bounced out on our ear." Instead the team there concerned itself with advising the planning office on how to get the most money out of its U. S. contracts. But then, its objective function was to rationalize and stabilize the existing arrangements without challenging their economic and political consequence; strengthened ties to, and dependence on, American...
...typical of the DAS' work is the Liberian episode? If any answer can be extracted from two of its longest-standing projects-Pakistan and Indonesia-it is that despite what may have once been worthwhile motives and intentions, the DAS teams in those countries wound up as apologists for governments in which they had little significant influence for the good...