ABSTRACT
This chapter examines processes by which development project implementations afford the state the appearance of being a separate structure. By exploring the implementation of an important state development project in North-Western Ethiopia, the Koga Irrigation and Watershed Management (KIWM) scheme, it shows why and how the project plan does not correspond to the real life of the scheme. This chapter unpacks assumptions that policymakers and development practitioners make about the a priori existence of a community and state distinction, and the ways in which they arrange them as functionally differentiated entities. It also shows how the project’s community-driven participatory approach, wherein local people were involved in managing the scheme, produces the effect of ghettoizing practices of abuse as community issues.
