ABSTRACTOver the past two decades national and other large‐scale social assistance programmes have multiplied across sub‐Saharan Africa. These programmes require considerable human resource capacity, institutional arrangements and systems of identifying eligible people, as well as delivery structures and mechanisms. Several countries have sought to extend programmes to areas at the margins of state power where governance and administration reflect negotiated arrangements involving a range of state and non‐state and informal actors. This includes Ethiopia, where the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) has expanded across the country's lowland Afar and Somali regions. This article examines evidence concerning the targeting of PSNP transfers in these predominantly pastoral and agro‐pastoral regions. While quantitative evidence indicates that the wealthy are as likely to be programme beneficiaries as the poorest, despite investments in establishing and providing training for local‐level targeting structures, local perspectives are that the right households are targeted. The authors explain this apparent paradox in relation to distributional politics nested within clan‐based social networks in the context of limited statehood. Formal systems of provisioning social assistance are negotiated and reconfigured, in acceptable ways, through local agency. The PSNP lowland experience calls into question the limits of ‘technocratic approaches’ and underscores the need to understand social norms and preferences in design and implementation of social assistance programmes.
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