Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review

The Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) is a study by the United States Department of State, first started in 2009 and intended to be done every four years, that analyzes the short-, medium-, and long-term blueprint for the United States' diplomatic and development efforts abroad. It seeks to plan on a longer-term basis than the usual year-to-year, appropriations-based practice, and to integrate diplomacy and development missions under one planning process. It similarly seeks to correlate the department’s missions with its capacities and identify shortfalls in resourcing. Finally, it is also a precursor to core institutional reforms and corrective changes. The first such review was completed as year 2010 drew to a close. A second such review began being conducted during 2014 and was released in April 2015.

The final report of the QDDR lays out, in the department's own words:

On July 10, 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the initiative at a State Department town hall meeting. The most ambitious of Clinton's departmental reforms, it is modeled after the U.S. Defense Department's Quadrennial Defense Review, which Clinton was familiar with from her days as a United States Senator on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Previously the American Academy of Diplomacy had determined that the Secretary of State “lacks the tools – people, competencies, authorities, programs and funding – to execute the President’s foreign policies.” More fundamentally, the department did not even have a methodology in place to know how under-resourced it was.

She appointed Deputy Secretary of State Jacob Lew, Director of Policy Planning Anne-Marie Slaughter, and the United States Agency for International Development Administrator to undertake the review. At the time of the announcement, that was the Acting USAID Administrator, Alonzo Fulgham. (On November 10, 2009, Rajiv Shah was nominated to be USAID Administrator.)

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