The Scenario: George W. Bush has proposed that foreign aid should be privatized. In order to encourage corporations to donate large sums of money to the development of markets in LDCs, he has offered large tax breaks and an elimination of certain trade barriers to companies willing to participate in an experiment to evaluate the feasibility of private aid for economic development in developing nations. The president hopes to prove that private corporations are better able to make decisions about where aid should go and what rules and guidelines aid should be contingent upon. As part of an initiative to begin this process, the president has organized a summit of economic advisors from various developing nations and representatives from several corporations in the US who have agreed to initially provide $200 million in aid over the next five years.

Goal of the Town Meeting: To determine which countries should be given aid based upon the quality of their economic development plans and to establish guidelines for the use of aid that should ensure the highest potential for the initiative to have a positive outcome.

Student Roles in the Town Meeting:

• U.S. Economic Advisor/ Representative of George Bush (1): This student should be prepared to open the meeting by explaining why privatization of foreign aid is a good idea and by explaining why privatization should be a more effective strategy. The student should give an overview of why governmental aid from the US has not been as effective as private aid would be. The issue of "homeland security" via the development of poor nations should be a key ingredient in this discussion.
• LDC Economic Advisors (7): This panel of economic advisors should make arguments why their nation has both the greatest need for aid at this time and why their nation would produce the "biggest bang for the buck" in terms of the degree of economic development that will result from receiving the aid. Economic development can be defined either in terms of GNP or human development indicators. Students should have a clear sense of the history of aid for investment in the country they represent and show that they have learned from the mistakes in the past and have developed new and better strategies.
• Representatives from US corporations (the rest of the class): Students should decide what corporation they represent and prepare at least 2 questions for the LDC economic advisors. Most of the questions should consider the overall strategies of the countries, others can focus on interests particular to the industries they represent. The questions should be posted on the discussion board by 8 p.m. the night before the debate (.25 points each towards weekly participation).

Methods:

• All students should come to class on Tuesday with an idea of what roles they would like to take in the town meeting. I will save the last 10 minutes of class for each of you to write down what roles you would most like to have and why. If you want to represent a country, let me know what countries (have at least 2 or 3) that you would like to represent. If you want to represent a corporation, you do not need to know what corporation in particular you want to represent but rather what goods and services this corporation deals with (farming, steel, pharmaceuticals, computers, etc.).On Thursday (2/3) I will let each of you know what roles you have been assigned.
• The town meeting will occur two weeks from this Tuesday, 2/15, (note schedule change from syllabus in order to give you more time to prepare for the town meeting). All other readings assignments will shift up. In other words, the reading due on 2/10 is due on 2/8, and the reading due on 2/15 is due on 2/10.
• At the town meeting, the US representative will begin the meeting with a 10-minute speech. Then each of the LDC representatives will give a 5-minute speech as to why their country should receive aid and how much of the aid they should receive. Following this each country will have a chance to respond to the pleas of the other representatives, emphasizing why their own plan is superior to those of the others (3 minute limit). At this point the town meeting will open up to questions from the representatives from US corporations. The representatives of US corporations can speak in any order, but once you have asked a question, you cannot ask another until all other representatives have asked a question. In addition, representatives of LDCs should have equal opportunities to respond to questions. Responses to questions should be limited to 2 minutes.

Grading:

• The US and World representatives should turn in a 6-8 page position paper on the day of the town meeting. Obviously there will not be time to read this whole paper in the time allotted (with the exception of the US representative), so you should give a briefer outline of the points made in the paper in your initial speeches. Part of the paper should briefly consider the relative advantage of aid to your country verses the others who will be represented, in order to facilitate the "response to the pleas of others" portion of the town meeting. The degree of knowledge and understanding of the assigned country as well as the strength and originality of your arguments will be used to evaluate these papers. Papers should be well written, with a clear introduction, body (with individual points developed in individual paragraphs) and a conclusion. Tables and graphs can be included to summarize data. Citations should be used, and a bibliography should be included. Both this paper and your oral presentation during the
• town meeting will be considered in grading (up to 75 points).
• On the Thursday following the town meeting (2/17) all students (including those who were representatives) should turn in a 2-3 page explanation of how the money should actually be divided based on the arguments presented during the town meeting. I suggest you take notes during the town meeting, so that your arguments will be more specific about what was covered. In the conclusion, you should also express whether or not privatization of aid is a good idea at all. We will debrief and discuss our post-town meetings evaluations on this day. These papers should synthesize the information presented and be well written (up to 25 points).

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