This article historicises the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Development Assistance Committee (DAC) as a site where the meanings of development and the purposes of aid were contested and where gradually a more diverse set of actors were invited to engage in the argument.
The author’s ethnographic approach examines the micro-level processes of ideological struggle in a ‘closed space’ that transformed into an ‘invited’ one. During this transformation, rights-based approaches to development rose and fell within a changing global landscape wherein the DAC seeks to sustain a foothold. The article concludes by considering the future of debates about development within the post-Busan Global Partnership in which the DAC is only one of many stakeholders.
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