Localisation or ‘Governing at a Distance’? A Qualitative Study of the Barriers to Localisation in Norwegian-Ugandan Aid Chains

‘Localisation’, ‘participatory development’, and ‘decolonialisation’ have become omnipresent and recurring concepts in development discourses. Drawing on research from Norwegian–Ugandan aid chains, this article identifies seven key barriers to localisation in practice: (1) administrative standards, (2) upward accountability discourse, (3) donor agendas, (4) short-term contracts, (5) inflexible funding, (6) donors’ presence locally, and (7) conditioned and undervalued local participation. By examining these barriers – through interviews and multi-sited fieldwork in two different aid chains – the article helps explain the half-hearted implementation of localisation that continues to puzzle many aid workers across aid chains. The barriers to localisation are analysed through Foucauldian theorisations of governmentality, specified as developmentality by Lie (2015. Developmentality An Ethnography of the World Bank-Uganda Partnership, Berghahn Books.). The study finds that actors in the aid chains comply with ‘the conduct of conduct’ and thus adapt to the coercive power of the back-donor. The intermediaries in the chains both uphold and lower the barriers to localisation in nuanced ways. The research concludes that the Norwegian–Ugandan aid chains privilege ‘Western’ thoughts and approaches in line with definitions of coloniality.