The politics that precipitated the law limiting U.S. development assistance to competitors of U.S. agriculture mix private interest with philosophical principle. The principle appeals to the social contract tradition of political thought, but the argument that would establish such an appeal is absent from the public record. There is little point in bemoaning the lack of rigor and attention to detail in American political rhetoric. Most advocates of the Bumpers Amendment undoubtedly thought that they had made their case clearly enough, and eventual passage of the law afforded them some practical satisfaction. Philosophical justification has always presumed a higher standard, however. Critique of the case for the Bumpers Amendment must be preceded by a careful statement of the argument in its behalf.

POLITICAL PRINCIPLE AND PRIVATE INTEREST

In Chapter 2, the argument for the Bumpers Amendment is broken down into two distinct themes. The first implies an interest argument, asserting that U.S. foreign agricultural assistance programs are in conflict with the interests of U.S. farmers, and appealing to the Representationalist Thesis as its justifying philosophical principle. The second is a principled argument making the same factual claim, but appealing to a version of social contract theory to show that the use of public funds to aid foreign producers at the expense of U.S. citizens is an inappropriate application of the budgetary authority of the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID).