Pragmatism and Politics

D. John Shaw

Chapter 20 in World Food Security, 2007, pp 235-258 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The year 1976 marked a major juncture in FAO’s history with the election of a new director-general, Edouard Saouma, a Maronite Christian from the Lebanon with a distinctly different personality, and sharply different views, from his predecessor. An agricultural engineer, who had been director-general of Lebanon’s National Agricultural Research Institute and Minister of Agriculture, Saouma joined FAO in 1962, fourteen years before becoming executive head of the organization, first as regional representative for Southwest Asia in New Delhi, India (1962–65), and then for ten years as director of FAO’s Land and Water Development Division in Rome (1965–75). He was to be elected three consecutive times (in 1975, 1981 and 1987) and to serve for eighteen years as FAO’s director-general. Saouma immediately displayed a very different personality and character from that of his amiable and co-operative predecessor (Murray, 1989). His style of leadership was ‘perceived by many as self-perpetuating by whatever means, preoccupied with personal prestige, and egocentric toward authority’ (Abbott, 1992, p. ix). He established an unrivalled position, creating enemies in donor countries and support in the developing world, that ensured his election as director-general on three occasions (Pilon, 1988).

Keywords: Food Security; Recipient Country; World Food; Donor Country; World Food Programme (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-58978-0_20

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230589780

DOI: 10.1057/9780230589780_20

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().