Development, intervention, and international order

Abstract

The project of international development involves the reordering of states (or at least attempts to do so), it sits at the intersection between transnational forces and bounded political entities and it is a manifestation of the will to order of powerful states. It would seem then to be closely connected to practices of intervention. At times, the practices of development agencies have taken on a more interventionist character, but in recent years their relationship to many developing countries has taken on a more intricate, subtle, and everyday form. It has in important respects moved ‘beyond’ intervention. This has significance beyond international development. Development agencies have been recruited to wider projects of international ordering, especially the construction of regimes of global governance and the ‘development’ of post-intervention states.