Contents and AbstractsIntroduction chapter abstractThe introduction focuses on defining central terms and agenda of an anthropology of policy. The chapter argues that policy narratives play a central role in making politics legible, that is, coherent and comprehensible, rather then setting out a concrete plan for future action. This chapter analyzes process of policy problematization, through which particular social relationships, identities and practices are defined as requiring institutional intervention from state, and how policy production generates alliances and support among competing bureaucracies through strategic ambiguity providing an appearance of institutional coherence and consensus among disparate programs. Such ambiguity also limits dissent and opposition. This chapter analyzes challenges of ethnographic research on policy, developing concept of embedded ethnography, in which ethnographiers have taken on positions within organizations not as researchers, but in institutional roles gain valuable insight that enrich their later anthropological analysis. 1Domestic Drug Policy Goes to War chapter abstractThis chapter argues that zero tolerance paradigm that U.S. embraced domestically in 1980s provided ideological architecture for subsequent militarization of domestic drug policy abroad. It begins with history of contemporary US war on drugs beginning with Nixon Administration and traces how illegal narcotics emerged as a national security threat, requiring war-fighting machinery of U.S. to be applied in concert with foreign militaries throughout Western Hemisphere and reorientation of military industrial bureaucracy. Increased military roles bolstered a range of institutional interests, including U.S. Southern Command's efforts to increase their mission profile and Democratic concerns about culture wars. The labeling of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia as a narcoguerrilla meta-threat merged lingering Cold War fears of Communism with escalating concern of hyper-violent traffickers. 2Human Rights Policymaking and Military Aid chapter abstractChapter 2 tells story of how an increasingly professionalized human rights lobby attempted to transform their documentation of abuses into specific policy reforms. Many of these activist practices originated with Central America peace movement of 1980s. One of most important examples of human rights legislation was Leahy Law, which prohibited US military counternarcotics assistance to foreign military units facing credible allegations of abuses, and its unintended consequences. First passed in 1997, law emerged from strategic alliances between elite NGO advocates, grassroots activists and critically located Congressional aides. This chapter explores resulting transformation of aid delivery: rather than suspend aid when no clean units could be found, US officials convinced their Colombian allies to create new units consisting of vetted soldiers. Implementation of law reveals knowledge practices inherent in policy implementation, social production of credibility, and erased some forms of violence. 3Paramilitary Proxies chapter abstractChapter 3 examines evolving forms of counterinsurgency violence, arguing that paramilitaries emerged as state proxies in part because of human rights legislation that demanded accountability from official actors. 4Living Under Many Laws chapter abstractChapter 4 describes strategies employed by Putumayans to shape their political future while living in a region contested by multiple actors claiming right to govern during coca boom of 1990s. For much of 1980s and 1990s, FARC were dominant power in region, regulating local conflicts, organizing collective work, and imposing their rules. The Catholic Church played a critical role in developing a vision of peasant autonomy and political participation. Despite repeated protests and ongoing lobbying efforts, local farmers were unable to shift counternarcotics program imposed by US: aerial spraying of chemical herbicides. Beginning in late 1990s, United Self Defense Forces paramilitary forces working with military commanders terrorized region in order to consolidate their social and territorial control. Despite their criminalization and repression, peasant farmers in Putumayo used a range of tactics to encourage state presence in region. 5Origin Stories chapter abstractChapter 5 employs origin stories produced through oral history interviews with policymakers to reveal agency and institutional action frequently hidden in public policy debates. The officials describe Plan Colombia as emerging from a range of policy priorities: a domestic counternarcotics policy intended to address Clinton's administration moral crisis, a peace plan to bolster Colombian President Andres Pastrana's negotiations with FARC, or a counterinsurgency program to defeat Colombian guerrillas. This strategic ambiguity enabled range of institutional alliances to coalesce in support of military aid. This chapter explores functioning of Plan Colombia Interagency Task Force, charged with creating Plan Colombia. The Colombian diplomatic corps also played an active role in shaping aid package to fit their political agenda. Yet some lower ranking officials disputed description of Plan Colombia as a consensus plan they were losers in bureaucratic battles dominated by militarization. 6Competing Solidarities chapter abstractThis chapter explores how solidarity emerges from resonance of a particular issue or population has with a set of could-be advocates and materially made through institutional and organizational channels. Supporters and critics imagined themselves as acting in solidarity with distinct categories of Colombians, from counternarcotics soldiers to human rights activists. For critics of Plan Colombia, this process reactivated activist identities and commitments, legacies of Central American peace movement. The focus of this chapter is travel as a technique of emotional management, producing new forms of political subjectivities accompanied by expectations of political action. Travel played a central role in construction of distinct sensory, affective and moral geographies. Congressional delegations focused on militarized technology, weaponry and enacted scenarios of counternarcotics operations. These excursions were channeled into larger political field valorizing militarized expertise delineating boundaries of appropriate policy debates. 7Putumayan Policymaking chapter abstractChapter 7 explores how elected officials and local residents resisted criminalization and exclusion, attempted to engage distant powers and mobilized to shape policies impacting their region, presenting policy alternatives through scientific efforts to document harms of fumigation, depoliticized development proposals, and testimony. Although these efforts were invisible or discounted in official Washington policymaking arenas, policy imaginaries and practices of targets of intervention are a critical site for apprehending full process of policymaking. Putumayan activists participated in proxy citizenship, mechanism through which certain rights of citizenship-the ability to make claims for redress to a state-are conferred on activists through relationships with NGOs. This process generated political opportunities, created new citizenship subjectivities but also involved political costs, as activists were forced to transform their claims and their profound critiques of US policy were remade into support for US programs. Conclusion: Plan Colombia in US Policymaking Imagination chapter abstractU.S. intervention in Colombia has been widely praised as a success to be replicated in other sites. The conclusion analyze these claims to success and what constitutes the Colombian miracle, as title of a 2010 National Standard article put it. The life stories of three residents of Putumayo challenge this triumphal narrative, offering in their place sober assessments of damage in region, including failures and catastrophic results of counternarcotics programs, economic and political legacies of paramilitarism, and complexities of community security. This chapter argues that an anthropological approach necessarily includes appraisals of policymakers and analysts and targets of policy, their efforts to shape these programs and their reflections on process. Examining democracy promotion and nation-building efforts reveal that such projects are less involved with encouraging widespread involvement in governance than facilitating specific policy outcomes.