Progressive reduction in government action commitment

Governmental delayed withdrawal of commitment to action

Nature

Having made a strong commitment to act on a problem, and received the politically necessary media coverage, governments tend to feel free to gradually reduce the level of their commitment so that little is in effect accomplished in response to the problem. The reduction of commitment may take the form of disempowering the agency mandated to act, either by imposing impossible constraints, reducing the funds committed to the project, or appointing incompetent people to manage the programme.

Claim

Increasingly industrial democracies only involve themselves abroad when they are forced to do so by the portrayal of crises in the media. Absorbed in domestic problems, such countries are systematically depriving themselves of the tools needed to deal with publicized or unpublicized disasters, as they pare back foreign aid and development budgets and dismiss multilateral approaches to global problems. An example is the American government's reduction by 35% of funds for international family planning programs to placate American anti-abortion zealots.

The basic problem in foreign policy formulation is the growing number of crises as the world's leading powers disengage from leadership roles in long-term development and preventive diplomacy.