ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the search for local civil society within a neo-institutional frame of reference delegitimizes the modern liberal-universal episteme. It argues that James Scott's influential critique of 'the view from above' has made its way into government. In the Merida Initiative, the more policymakers tried to get in touch with a truly local set of actors, the more they had to distance themselves from the analytical and normative foundations on which they used to base their foreign policy. The chapter examines how post-conditional regulatory practice in the Merida Initiative originated in a critique of certification, an annual review process of drug-producing and drug-transiting countries which evaluated compliance with US anti-narcotics policies in the War on Drugs. It also shows how reading intervention as 'geographical universalism' facilitates a view of regulatory practice as continuously refined top-down discipline. The chapter also argues that post-conditionality and bottom-up forms of intervention try to govern beyond standardized liberal-universal categories – with fewer and fewer.
