Implementing Inequality

​The introductory chapter presents the central case study of the Good Governance in Angola Program, or GGAP, operating at the time in the five shaded provinces shown here. Reviewing common characterizations of “the development encounter,” this chapter outlines the book’s central analytical concept of the development implementariat as that class of development workers charged to carry out interventions in-country.

This chapter discusses how development organizations “think” about their work and their workers, arguing that the industry’s increasing professionalization and managerialism does not adequately recognize, nor support, the social, relational, and interpretive labor inherent to intervention, especially at the level of implementation. 

Here, the everyday work of the GGAP’s provincial field staff is presented and compared to the program’s official prescriptions for such work, revealing how much of the field staff’s daily labor is considered merely preparatory to the “real” work of development intervention. 

Here, the everyday work of the GGAP’s provincial field staff is presented and compared to the program’s official prescriptions for such work, revealing how much of the field staff’s daily labor is considered merely preparatory to the “real” work of development intervention. 

Moving back from the day-to-day work of delivering the Good Governance in Angola Program, this chapter recounts how the intervention came about, tracing contentious debates over where the program should be implemented. Donors’ and implementers’ reputational concerns are shown to work at cross-purposes in international development as donors seek status among their peers and implementing organizations seek distinction from their peers. These lateral ties among interventionists may have more influence on development programming than is commonly recognized.

This chapter examines how the GGAP came to adopt its interventionist methods, arguing that these were selected not because they were best suited to the development problems at hand but because they served the more immediate, instrumental purpose of cementing interventionists’ working relationships with one another.

The book’s conclusion recaps its arguments about the internal social dynamics of international intervention, urging practitioners, theorists, and critics to examine the organization and conduct of humanitarian and development work differently. Recent efforts to decolonize the profession and redress its internal inequalities of race and nation will not be successful unless the ideas and practices underlying them are also addressed.