ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 outlined some concrete mechanisms of very stark intervention in governance states by external agencies, most prominently, the World Bank: sectoral donor groups, large amounts of expatriate external assistance, pervasive ideological ‘power projection’ and so on. The World Bank is also ‘arguably the most prestigious and . . . most powerful producer . . . of international development knowledge’ (Berger and Beeson 1998: 487). During my fieldwork in Uganda and Tanzania, reading the daily papers, I was struck by how quickly I became familiar with the faces of World Bank resident representatives before almost all Tanzanian or Ugandan ministers. The daily papers1 provide a window into the level of political presence of the Bank in another way. Many of the development projects and investment schemes announced in the paper are accompanied by pictures of Bank personnel or soundbites from Bank personnel who are involved in the funding of the project.
