ABSTRACT
The Peace Corps quickly recognized the expatriate syndrome. "The British often apply strong pressure on Volunteers—of both the subtle and sledgehammer variety—to conform to the essentially colonial patterns of behavior established by themselves," recounted a Peace Corps official in Nigeria in 1963. Peace Corps volunteers are typically middle-class young whites who embody the best and worst of American society. "Drone" volunteers—the marginal performers—have plagued the Peace Corps from its inception. The phenomenon of the drone volunteer is best explained by the Peace Corps' conscious attempt to minimize the early return rate during the agency's trial by fire. The Peace Corps seldom demanded the best from its volunteers. It conceded to mediocrity and retained nonperforming volunteers to preserve the public image at home that the Peace Corps experiment was succeeding. Peace Corps evaluators were dismayed at the number of floundering volunteers they encountered in the pioneering programs of the early 1960s.
