International development formed a core plank of the twentieth-century international system. While we know a great deal about the politics and planning of development, historians have rarely pursued the grassroots dynamics of project implementation. In this paper, Professor SobocinskaI illustrates that international development projects could be dramatically rescoped and renegotiated in the time between project approval and closeout, resulting in significant implementation gaps. Acknowledging that international development was marked by implementation gaps challenges historical approaches to international development that take high-level planning and negotiation as a proxy for the enterprise in its entirety. Taking the example of Australian-financed projects in New Order Indonesia, she argues that the messy process of project implementation reveals development to be a complex historical process influenced by historical actors at multiple scales and geographies, and with material consequences.

Agnieszka Sobocinska is Professor of Global History and Director of the Australia Studies Institute at King’s College London. She is Primary Investigator of the European Research Council Consolidator project DEVHIST (2025-2030). Her books include Saving the World? Western volunteers and the rise of the Humanitarian-Development Complex (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and Visiting the Neighbours: Australians in Asia (UNSW Press, 2014).