Is Good Policy Unimplementable? Reflections on the Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice

Development and Change - Tập 35 Số 4 - Trang 639-671 - 2004
David Mosse1,2
1Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (Russell Square, London WC1H OXG, UK
2e-mail: [email protected]

Tóm tắt

AbstractDespite the enormous energy devoted to generating the right policy models in development, strangely little attention is given to the relationship between these models and the practices and events that they are expected to generate or legitimize. Focusing on the unfolding activities of a development project over more than ten years as it falls under different policy regimes, this article challenges the assumption that development practice is driven by policy, suggesting that the things that make for ‘good policy’— policy which legitimizes and mobilizes political support — in reality make it rather unimplementable within its chosen institutions and regions. But although development practice is driven by a multi‐layered complex of relationships and the culture of organizations rather than policy, development actors work hardest of all to maintain coherent representations of their actions as instances of authorized policy, because it is always in their interest to do so. The article places these observations within the wider context of the anthropology of development and reflects on the place, method and contribution of development ethnography.

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