Conversations in Conflict Studies presents: Rebecca Peters

"Whose Program? Institutional Partnerships and the Sociality of International Development Work."  Rebecca Peters, Assistant Professor, Public Administration and International Affairs. 
The pseudonymous Good Governance in Angola Program (GGAP) was implemented in the post-war period by a consortium of three international NGOs working in partnership with the Angolan government. Despite formal memoranda of understanding, staff members of this democratization intervention and its sponsoring bilateral aid agencies understood the terms of their collaboration--and its history--quite differently. In this case, discrepant perspectives on the program’s structure, purpose, and origins caused two parallel GGAP “consortia” to arise. The first held greater responsibility for the program’s practical implementation and was composed of Angolan nationals. The second had more decision making influence over the program, and was repeatedly dissolved and reconstituted as expatriates came and went. This discussion unravels the GGAP¹s history through examining these different staff experiences and understandings of the program, using the case to examine the global rhetoric of development “Partnership” and the underlying inequalities of such unions’ sociality. 
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