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This article discusses the hybridism of the Ethiopian developmental state through an analysis of the local interface between the state and the peasantry. The aim is to explore to what extent bureaucratic rationality both conditions and perverts the procedures employed in the implementation of public rural development policies, in this case agricultural extension. And to what extent development policies can operate as an instrument of power that reinforces the local disempowerment of the most vulnerable peasants. The article makes a detailed analysis of the machinery of agricultural extension, the local conditions of distribution and reception of fertiliser and improved seeds in rural Ethiopia.