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the State Department would enmesh the corporation within the organizational cultures and
standard practices of these two existing bureaucracies. Such a relationship would be acceptable if
the MCC’s mission was identical to that of its predecessors. From the White House’s
perspective, however, the MCC would pursue a distinctive mission that demanded that it
maintain structural autonomy.
The application of institutional theory to U.S. foreign aid is an intriguing enterprise given
the locus of this policy domain. To Amy Zegart (1999), the creation of domestic and foreign-
policy agencies features contrasting sets of institutional actors and stake-holders. In the case of
domestic agencies, their design was driven primarily by members of the legislative branch and
private interest groups engaged in the area of policy for which new institutions were being
considered. Conversely, the creation of national-security agencies was more often driven by the
executive branch with little or no involvement by interest groups. Congress, of course, must
approve and fund the new agencies, but its members are inclined to defer to the White House
given its traditional leadership in defending the “national interest,” the greater need for secrecy in
foreign affairs, and the lack of strong constituent interests in agency creation.
While applicable to this study, Zegart’s analysis focused on a particular subset of foreign-
policy agencies, those dealing with national security. This study, in contrast, focuses on two
agencies related to U.S. foreign aid: USAID and the MCC. Both agencies thus form a third
institutional category that produces some similarities in their design and management (see Table
2). In particular, the design of both agencies was conceived primarily within the White House. As
noted earlier, President Kennedy took the lead in creating USAID in 1961. Its creation was
closely linked to the heightened Cold War concerns of the time, particularly the 1959 Cuban
Revolution and the challenge posed by Castroism in the Western Hemisphere. Similarly,
President Bush, not Congress, played the key role in creating the MCC. Like Kennedy, Bush had
come to equate international development with U.S. security in the wake of the September 11
terrorist attacks. Also like Kennedy, Bush had a distinctive vision of what shape U.S. foreign aid
should take that conformed to his broader view of U.S. foreign policy and global economics.
(Table 2 about here)
But important differences can be identified between USAID and the MCC. While the
Convention