Development Capital: USAID and the Rise of Development Contractors

Abstract

Development assistance from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is conceptualized as flowing through an assemblage that includes heterogeneous subjects and objects and that has coevolved with USAID's contracting regime. Key assemblage elements are contractors (firms, nongovernmental organizations, individuals), contracts, and procurements, and key flows include capital, knowledge, and people. The focus of this article is the rise over the past forty years of a lucrative development contracting industry in the United States, through a relational examination of USAID contractors and other key elements in the assemblage. This article traces the contemporary U.S. development assistance contracting assemblage and its geographies. This entails identifying and mapping the assemblage's component elements, its networks and flows, with the overall aim being to take steps toward building a critical geographical understanding of development capital.

本文将来自美国国际发展署 (USAID) 的发展援助, 概念化为流经包含各种异质主体与物体的凑组关係, 并与 USAID 的承包体制共同演化。主要的凑组元素为承包者 (公司, 非政府组织, 个人), 契约, 採购, 以及包括资本, 知识与人的主要流动。本文透过对凑组关係中的 USAID 承包者与其它主要元素进行关係性的检视, 聚焦美国过去四十年来, 有利可图的发展承包产业的兴起。本文追溯当代美国发展援助的承包凑组及其地理, 而此需要指认并绘製该凑组关係的组成元素, 及其网络与流动, 并以针对发展资本建构批判地理学式的理解为整体目标。

La ayuda para el desarrollo de la Agencia Internacional para el Desarrollo de los Estados Unidos (USAID) se conceptualiza como proceso que fluye a través de un ensamblaje constituido entre otras cosas por sujetos y objetos heterogéneos que han evolucionado a la par del régimen contractual de esa entidad. Elementos clave del ensamblaje son los contratistas (firmas, organizaciones no gubernamentales, individuos), los contratos y adquisiciones, en tanto que los flujos clave incluyen capital, conocimiento y gente. Este artículo se concentra en el desarrollo en los Estados Unidos, durante los pasados cuarenta años, de una lucrativa industria de contratación para el desarrollo; se hizo un examen relacional de los contratistas de la USAID y de otros elementos clave del ensamblaje. El artículo reconstruye la estructura de la contratación contemporánea en EE.UU. sobre la ayuda para el desarrollo y sus geografías. Esto implica la identificación y mapeo de los elementos componentes de esa estructura, sus redes y flujos, con el propósito general de emprender pasos en la construcción de un entendimiento crítico del desarrollo del capital.

Key Words:

• assemblage
• contractors
• development
• foreign aid
• USAID

关键词:

• 凑组
• 承包者
• 发展
• 外援
• 美国国际发展署

Palabras clave:

• ensamblaje
• contratistas
• desarrollo
• ayuda extranjera
• USAID

Acknowledgments

Many people helped me with aspects of this article. Thanks to Rich Schein and Kenny Stancil for reading drafts and offering comments, and to Jeff Levy for making the map (Figure 3). I have much appreciated the words of encouragement offered at various points by Ed Carr, Jamie Essex, Ulrike Gerhard, Mikko Joronen, Emma Mawdsley, Tad Mutersbaugh, Jamie Peck, and Eric Sheppard. Students and colleagues at the University of Kentucky and at the University of Turku (Finland) shared insights about development, informing and influencing the arguments in this article. The comments provided by the three generous anonymous reviewers for the Annals were exceptionally helpful in strengthening the article. Thanks also to the Editor, Richard Wright, for valuable advice.

Notes

Deleuze famously recommended beginning in the middle, saying that what happened in the middle was always more interesting than the beginning or end points (in an interview with Claire Parnet; Deleuze and Parnet 1987).

Norgrove's death added to the fourteen officially reported deaths of persons working for DAI in Iraq and Afghanistan between 1 September 2001 and 30 June 2010 (Miller 2009, 2010).

Senator Patrick Leahy (D–VT) called USAID “a check-writing agency” in 2009 (in Dilanian 2009b).

2003 is the first year available in the usaspending.gov database.

This can be supplemented with information from business analyses, such as that by Hoover's Inc. (a subsidiary of Dun & Bradstreet). So, for example, Hoover's identifies the top three competitors for Chemonics as Abt, Creative Associates International, and DAI. For DAI, the top three competitors are Accenture PLC, Chemonics, and Creative Associates (Hoover's 2013).