•Over 130 countries have produced national development plans to show their priorities for achieving SDGs.•Many of the plans are a product of national consensus processes although some are produced ...mainly technocratic elites.•The five year (medium term) plan is the most popular although some countries have longer term visions documents.•National Planning Commissions are back and play a lead role although Economic Ministries still dominate the process.•A majority of national plans lack financing strategies a factor that can affect implementation and achievement of SDGs.
The number of countries with a national development plan has more than doubled, from about 62 in 2006 to 134 in 2018. More than 80 per cent of the global population now lives in a country with a national development plan of one form or another. This is a stunning recovery of a practice that had been discredited in the 1980s and 1990s as a relic of directed economies and state-led development. Several factors have fostered this re-emergence but from about 2015 the momentum for producing plans has accelerated, driven in part by a need to plan for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Based on an analysis of 107 national development plans, and drawing insights from 10 case study countries, this paper analyses ‘new’ national development planning and identifies the types and content of the plans, and their implications for the sustainable development agenda. The paper generates a typology of the new national plans, analyses their characteristics and explores the ways in which the new national development planning and the SDGs may interact. The study finds greater ownership and political control of the processes leading to plan production. It also finds that the plans vary in terms of the evidence used, the degree of internal consistency between different parts of the same plan, the process of developing the plan (inclusive or elite-driven), and the extent to which they are clear on how they will be financed. In contrast to 20th-century national development plans the new-generation plans are often underpinned by theories of collaborative rationality rather than by linear rationality. This new generation of national plans has been neglected by academic researchers and merits much greater examination, especially to understand the ways in which their implementation can enhance the achievement of the SDGs.
In order to identify their different knowledge areas, concepts, tools and emphases, this article compares project management standards from two non-profit, one parastatal and two governmental ...organisations working in international development against the standards of the Association for Project Management (APM) and the Project Management Institute (PMI). It finds that the international development and non-international development standards have quite different ideas of what project management entails. International development standards emphasise beneficiary participation, environmental impact, gender, unintended consequences of projects, soft objectives, evaluation techniques, and cross-cultural issues more than the APM or PMI standards. The latter standards have strengths in scoping and scheduling.
This paper explores the influence of the community-based rehabilitation approach among international development actors in Gulu, Uganda through the lens of policy transfer. Developed by international ...organizations, this approach has been promoted as a meaningful way to address the needs of persons with disabilities in low-income countries. This qualitative case study consists of a questionnaire completed by representatives from 25 different organizations, in addition to semi-structured follow-up interviews with 8 development professionals. The findings indicate that the community-based rehabilitation approach has had some influence, as respondents appeared cognisant of key principles of the approach in relation to persons with disabilities. However, detailed knowledge of the approach is mainly limited to the field of health, and there were few current examples of the approach being implemented. These results illustrate the challenges of implementing community-based rehabilitation specifically, as well as broader issues related to the transfer of international policy ideas to the Global South.
Points of interest
Community-based rehabilitation is a way of helping people with disabilities in low-income countries where services are limited
Development organizations in Gulu, Uganda (like the local government and non-governmental organizations) think that this approach is a good way to support people with disabilities
Only a few of the people interviewed for this study had a strong understanding of the community-based rehabilitation approach, and these people mostly worked in the health sector
There were no examples of community-based rehabilitation programs in Gulu at the time of the study, but some projects (mostly in the health field) used some ideas drawn from the approach
Local development organizations find it difficult to apply policy ideas like community-based rehabilitation, especially when they do not have consistent funding
This article describes the strategies of emerging and dominant countries as they struggle over the shape of the international order. The article extends Hirschman's tripod of exit, voice and loyalty ...as responses to organisational decline, using Ostrom's work on social dilemmas. A country's reaction to the declining legitimacy of the post-1945 international order depends largely on whether it is a traditional OECD donor country or a developing or emerging country from the South. Developing and emerging countries are engaging in selective and partial exit, voice and innovation to change things, while dominant powers are using maintenance, absorption and expulsion to maintain their status.
This paper assesses the literature on “capacity building” through a systematic literature review. Taking concepts as the ontological building blocks of theories, we ask: what is known about the ...evolution of capacity building as a concept and what can that history tell us about its strengths and weaknesses? To this end, we dig into the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of capacity building. Through this Foucauldian “archaeological description”, we show that capacity building discourse has evolved dialectically, with each new concept emerging to address the failings of earlier concepts. The paper suggests the “new pragmatism” as a theoretical framework to guide a more rigorous and relevant theory and practice of capacity building especially for public administration. Rooted in sensitivity to context and methodological pluralism, the new pragmatism embraces complexity, delivers “best‐fit” rather than “best practice” solutions, and involves researchers and practitioners in decolonial knowledge co‐creation to tackle capacity building challenges.
Children in Zimbabwe suffered badly during the long crisis from circa 1990 to 2008 as the economy and social services collapsed, under-five mortality, maternal mortality and malnutrition rose, the ...number of orphans increased 20-fold and thousands of children experienced psychosocial trauma. Recent household surveys in Zimbabwe show that most indicators of child welfare remain at or below where they were 25 years ago. Many effects of the crisis on children are long term, even permanent, including prenatal and early childhood malnutrition, orphanhood, traumas from witnessing or being victims of violence, and disrupted education. This article analyses the Government of Zimbabwe's two most recent national development plans in relation to children's needs and rights as expressed in major international declarations. Suggestions are made for focusing on re-establishing basic services to break the cycle of harm to children, build children's capacities and deal with past traumas.
What are Canada's various links with international development and globalization? They extend beyond foreign aid to diplomacy, trade, finance, aid, immigration, military intervention (both ...peacekeeping and combat roles), membership in a variety of international organizations, relations with indigenous peoples, and people-to-people links.
This multi-disciplinary and multi-author textbook, designed for first- or second-year students, introduces the main concepts, theories, and perspectives that have shaped Canada's interactions with developing countries in a globalizing world. It starts by considering Canada as a case study in international development and globalization. It examines Canada's diplomatic, economic, military, social, immigration and aid policies, how they have changed over time and how they have interacted with each other and with Canada's treatment of Indigenous peoples. The book presents economic, political, and cultural dimensions of the process of globalization and the ways they affect Canada; examines the public institutions, private sector and civil society organizations in Canada; and explores the moral imperatives behind Canadian international policy. Finally, it examines current issues, including Canada's promotion of human rights, democracy, good governance, support to the private sector, and relations with fragile and conflict-affected states and the emerging economies.
Comment se déploient les interventions du Canada en matière de développement international et de mondialisation ? Bien au-delà de l'aide à l'étranger, celles-ci touchent la diplomatie, le commerce, les finances, l'aide, l'immigration, les interventions militaires, l'adhésion à des organisations internationales et des liens entre personnes.
Conçu pour les étudiants de première et de deuxième année du premier cycle, ce manuel multidisciplinaire est une initiation aux principaux concepts, idées, théories et approches qui forment le contexte historique et les fondations mêmes des interactions du Canada avec les pays en développement à l'ère de la mondialisation. Il aborde la question de la diplomatie canadienne et de son évolution, examine les politiques canadiennes en matière d'immigration, d'aide, de politique, d'économie, militaires et sociales. Il présente les dimensions économiques, politiques et culturelles du processus de mondialisation et les façons dont elles touchent le Canada, les institutions et politiques en lien avec le développement, les organismes du secteur privé et la société civile au Canada et les impératifs moraux qui sous-tendent la politique internationale canadienne. Enfin, il examine les droits humains, la démocratie, la bonne intendance, le soutien au secteur privé, les relations avec des états fragilisés et les liens avec les économies en émergence.
•Essay suggests five insights for tackling grand challenges projects.•Essay proposes ten questions for research on grand challenge project behavior.•Essay outlines peculiarities of grand challenge ...projects.•Essay posits selectionism and instructionism are worthwhile approaches.•Essay argues collaborative rationality trump linear rationality.
The project management field has two blind spots: a focus on “run-of-the-mill” projects at the expense of pioneering “push-the-envelope” projects and a rigor-relevance gap in the research. There are simply too few scholarly works devoted to project management and grand challenges, those wicked, complex, uncertain, messy, boundary-crossing problems that confront the world. Drawing on the grand challenges of sustainable development and COVID-19 and the projects they provoke, this essay highlights five insights for theory and practice and suggests that selectionism and instructionism are worthwhile approaches, while collaborative rationality may trump linear rationality. We argue that project management for grand challenges is a promising land of “push-the-envelope” portfolios that can help overcome these two blind spots, regain relevance, avoid anomia, and revitalize theory and practice. To this end, we show that there is a concomitant need for a theory of grand challenge project behavior and offer an agenda for future research.
Les Objectifs de développement durable (ODD) sont souvent perçus comme un programme politique mondial hégémonique. Pour mettre à l’épreuve cette perception, nous analysons le rôle que jouent les ODD ...dans ce que la plupart des gouvernements considèrent comme leur déclaration de politique générale la plus élevée : leur plan national de développement. Dans quelle mesure peut-on y retrouver les ODD, leur logique synergique, leurs thèmes centraux que sont la pauvreté, le genre et l’inégalité, et l’imaginaire associé aux ODD ? Nous appliquons l’analyse de contenu conventionnelle, dirigée et sommative à 170 plans publiés entre 2016 et 2021 et déployons cinq mesures de l’importance que ces derniers accordent aux ODD. On constate que peu d’éléments probants permettent de soutenir l’affirmation selon laquelle les ODD sont un agenda hégémonique dans la politique de développement. Au contraire, les ODD sont un agenda contesté.
It is often suggested that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a hegemonic global policy agenda. To test this proposition, we ask what role the SDGs play in what most governments consider ...their highest policy statement, their national development plan. To what extent are the SDGs, the logic of the interconnected nature of the SDGs, the core themes of poverty, gender and inequality and SDG imagery found in recent national development plans? We use conventional, directed and summative content analysis on 170 plans published between 2016 and 2021 and deploy five measures of the importance that plans accord to the SDGs. There is little evidence from these plans to support the assertion that the SDGs are a hegemonic agenda in development policy. The SDGs are a contested agenda.
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