World Development 120 (2019) 76–89

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

World Development
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev

The ‘New’ national development planning and global development goals:

Processes and partnerships
Admos O. Chimhowu a,⇑, David Hulme b, Lauchlan T. Munro c
a
The Global Development Institute, School of Environment Education and Development, University of Manchester, Arthur Lewis Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL,
United Kingdom
b
School of Environment Education and Development, University of Manchester, Arthur Lewis Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom
c
School of International Development and Global Studies/École de développement international et mondialisation, Social Sciences Building/Pavillon des sciences sociales, FSS8006,
University of Ottawa/Université d’Ottawa, Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5, Canada

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The number of countries with a national development plan has more than doubled, from about 62 in
Available online 16 April 2019 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
Keywords: discredited in the 1980s and 1990s as a relic of directed economies and state-led development. Several
National planning factors have fostered this re-emergence but from about 2015 the momentum for producing plans has
Sustainable Development Goals accelerated, driven in part by a need to plan for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Based on
Economic planning
an analysis of 107 national development plans, and drawing insights from 10 case study countries, this
Development planning
Development policy
paper analyses ‘new’ national development planning and identifies the types and content of the plans,
National strategy 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 devel-
opment 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.
Ó 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

1. Introduction
This paper looks at the recent return of national development
planning and its potential as a catalyst for achieving Agenda
2030 for Sustainable Development. On September 25, 2015, all
193 UN member states committed themselves to a set of 17 Sus-
tainable Development Goals (SDGs). Unlike the Millennium Devel-
opment Goals (MDGs), which were largely top-down in approach,
the SDGs are to be implemented through locally-generated and -
driven plans that reflect the ambitions, priorities and contexts of
respective UN member states. Work done by the University of
Manchester-based Strategic Network on New National Planning
shows that the number of countries with a national development
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: admos.chimhowu@manchester.ac.uk (A.O. Chimhowu), david.
hulme@manchester.ac.uk (D. Hulme), lauchlan.munro@uottawa.ca (L.T. Munro).
plan has more than doubled – from 62 to 134 – between 2006
and 2018, and that nearly 80 per cent of the global population
now lives in a country with a national development plan of one
form or another. Parallel to this process, the UN-Habitat’s New
Urban Agenda emphasizes the need for municipalities to develop
territory-based plans. This has seen municipal authorities increas-
ingly making their own detailed SDG plans. Clearly, substantial
state and civil society efforts are being devoted to the preparation
and implementation of these plans at all levels of governance as
the role of the nation-state in promoting development is reimag-
ined in an era when the dominance of the International Financial
Institutions (IFIs) over development policy is more contested than
ever before. Yet little systematic work has been done to understand
the value of such pursuits.
National development planning has had a chequered history
anchored in the failure of centrally planned economies in the
1950s and 1960s. Many developing countries are now seeking to

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.03.013
0305-750X/Ó 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
 A.O. Chimhowu et al. / World Development 120 (2019) 76–89
guide their own development through a set of processes, policies
and practices that can usefully be termed the ‘new national plan-
ning’. This new national planning has attracted little research
interest, yet there is growing evidence that it has implications
not only for how countries respond to the SDGs but also in terms
of the global and local challenges that they confront. A common
response by governments to these challenges has been their
reassertion of the necessity of national development planning to
build institutions, resources and risk/shock-management capabili-
ties that are needed to achieve national development. This reasser-
tion of the need for national development planning is a reaction to
the dominant trend of the past three decades, namely that of eco-
nomic liberalization, marketization and deregulation. While suc-
cessful in some respects, this trend has created greater economic
inequality, while socializing many of the risks and amplifying cer-
tain shocks (e.g. the financial crisis of 2008) and increasing the fre-
quency and severity of economic, especially financial and currency,
crises (Polanyi-Levitt, 2013). Additionally, it is also a response to
the possibilities offered by new flows of financing, especially new
natural resource finds during a commodity boom, at a time when
more policy space has been created by the decline of leverage of
the IFIs and of the Washington Consensus, and by post-Highly
Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC).
The term ‘new’ national planning is used in this paper to cap-
ture the new context in which the current generation of national
development planning practices is emerging. It is adopted for
two reasons. First, as the paper shows, ‘new’ national development
planning is largely a practice-led paradigm with a body of knowl-
edge, concepts and practices that relate both to state responses to
economic globalization and to how they plan to implement Agenda
2030 for Sustainable Development. As shown later, ‘new’ national
planning defines a new paradigm of ‘real’ ownership, in terms of
the closer fit of plans with electoral cycles and nationally deter-
mined priorities, albeit with reference to new global norms.
Second, although there are certain elements of continuity, ‘new’
national development planning displays conceptual and method-
ological characteristics that are in some ways distinct from the
planning practices of the 1950s through the 1980s. Third, ‘new’
national planning frames an emerging epistemic community built
around this study, and the unique database in particular offers
insights into how development ideology and policy are being
remade in a multipolar world.
The paper is structured as follows. After presenting its analyti-
cal framework and methodology, it traces the rise, fall and re-
emergence of national development planning from the 1960s to
the present. It then explores the factors driving the emergence of
‘new’ national development planning; identifies the main charac-
teristics and types of new national planning; and examines the
ways in which national planning and the SDGs may interact. The
conclusion summarizes the argument and highlights the main
findings.
2. Paradigms of planning and organising concepts
The central element of our conceptual framework focuses on
the ways in which the process of planning and the ‘plan document’
as an output contribute to results (national development) and cre-
ates the typology we apply in Section 7. A review of the literature
on national development plans identifies two competing para-
digms informing understandings and practices. The first, grounded
in theories of linear rationality, is a classical planning paradigm
that sees planning as ‘an organized, conscious and continual
attempt to select the best available alternatives to achieve specific
goals’ (Waterston, 1965, p. 26). Often called the rational compre-
hensive model, where national development planning is seen as
77
a rational science, a plan becomes a blueprint document informed
by science and driven from the top by impartial experts (tech-
nocrats) with access to all necessary data and almost infinite ana-
lytical capacity. In its simplified form it involves a process in which
the technocrats ‘survey things as they are, observe what needs to
be done, study the means you have to do it with, and then work
out practical ways of going about it’ (Waterston, 2006, p. 430). It
frames national development as a ‘problem’ that can be theoreti-
cally and empirically understood by experts so that the outcomes
of public interventions can be predicted and optimal policies iden-
tified. Plans therefore pursue agreed and defined developmental
goals in the most technically efficient way – which minimizes costs
and risks and which maximizes benefits and opportunities. To
achieve this optimal position, a top-down approach is posited in
which intellectual and professional elites apply the best techniques
(such as linear modelling, input–output modelling, cost–benefit
analysis and critical path analysis) to the best available data. This
permits them to identify optimal policies and actions so that devel-
opment goals (from economic growth rates to human development
improvements) can be achieved. Although this framing of national
development planning has been used extensively in ‘mixed’ eco-
nomic contexts, at the extreme it supports the idea of state-
based central planning rather than allowing the market to drive
how economic development occurs.
The second paradigm, based on more recent theories of commu-
nication and negotiation, uses collaborative or instrumental
rationality (Innes & Booher, 2010). In this way of thinking national
development is a ‘development mess’ which is understood differ-
ently by citizens and is only partially understood theoretically.
Data on which understandings are based are accepted as often
being patchy, partial and of poor quality and hence not susceptible
to accurate predictions based on binary logic (cause and effect) but
rather only to fuzzy logic (Allmendinger, 2017), or what Johnston
and Clark (1982) called ‘dynamic logic’. Planning therefore is seen
as a process of communication and negotiation about a desired
future, involving interaction of numerous individuals who bargain
and negotiate from varying power bases to achieve objectives that
at least partially reflect their self-interest built around shared val-
ues (Innes & Booher, 2010).
Collaborative rationality therefore posits a quite different
heuristic for decision making. It views planning as a process of
negotiating and communicating across communities and citizen-
ries about shared values, cause–effect relationships and probable
outcomes (see Forester, 1999; Sager 2002; Innes & Booher, 2010;
Healey, 1992, 2010). The national development plan is a point of
engagement about the future in the mould of Habermas’s (1987)
idea of communicative rationality. In effect, the national plan is
not so much a set of decisions as an important and ongoing ele-
ment of social deliberation that involves constantly (re)negotiating
goals and policies/actions so that choices are made that are techni-
cally desirable and politically feasible. National plans are part of a
continuing social ‘conversation’ rather than the end of an objective
technico-analytical exercise: the process of planning is as impor-
tant as the eventual content of the plan. Such a framing of planning
has been criticized for its normative nature and also for its lack of
engagement with power asymmetries in the planning process
(Hillier, 1993). Others like Fainstein (2000) raise concerns about
the time it can take to reach consensus and also the fact that
flawed alternative (top-down) approaches may also produce desir-
able outcomes.
In reality, it is important to realize that the understandings
described above probably represent ends of a spectrum, and the
practical logic of planning for national development in most cases
involves more nuanced understandings and different shades of the
ends of the spectrum. For this paper the interest is in understand-
ing the approaches to planning for Sustainable Development and
78 A.O. Chimhowu et al. / World Development 120 (2019) 76–89
the types of rationality that underpin practices embodied in the
107 plans analysed.
3. Methodology
This study has adopted a multiple-methods design so that a
comparison of what is happening globally (review and analysis of
secondary data) is accompanied by more detailed insights into
the state of national planning practices in 10 countries (primary
research). This section discusses the secondary data used and the
analysis done. It also provides details of the primary case study
work carried out as part of this study. The secondary data and its
analysis are discussed first, starting with bibliometric analysis.
The study uses bibliometric analysis (quantitative analysis of
written publications) to capture trends in the popularity of
national development planning over time and, in particular, how
the published literature reflects this. Google Ngram searches were
conducted in English, French, German, Russian and Spanish, the
major languages in which the national planning literature exists,
with a focus on key terms: central planning, economic planning,
(national) development planning, as well as on variants of those
terms, e.g. economic plan. A broadened search period from1925
(i.e. just before the first Soviet Five-Year Plan) until 2008 (the most
recent year for which Ngram provided data) was used to capture
trends in the popularity of national development planning over
time. As the data from all languages were broadly similar (with a
peak in discussions of national planning in the 1960s and 1970s),
the paper reports on and uses only the English language results.
In order to cross-check our Ngram results, content analysis of
seminal textbooks in development economics that have multiple
editions was also carried out, to see how much attention these paid
to national development planning. Meier’s (1964–2005) Leading
Issues in Economic Development (eight editions) and Todaro’s
(1977–2015) Economic Development (12 editions) met these crite-
ria. The results are broadly similar; however, this paper reports pri-
marily from Meier, mainly because, in addition to being a seminal
text and a compendium with extended commentaries, it is broadly
representative of development economics discourse at its many
publication dates.
Next, the study conducted a systematic and comprehensive
review of literature on national development planning published
since the Millennium. Very little coverage of such planning was
found during this period apart from fleeting references in Poverty
Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). A meticulous search of websites
of key international organizations (the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD), the UN Department of Economic and Social
Affairs, the UN Development Programme, the World Bank Group),
done in 2016 and 2017, sought to identify whether these organiza-
tions were aware of the apparent return of national development
planning and whether they appeared to be promoting its return.
A key World Bank document was found (World Bank, 2007), which
reported on the results of the Bank’s survey looking for ‘results-
oriented’ national development plans. The World Bank reported
finding 62 countries with such plans in 2006, which provided it
with a baseline figure for national development plans a decade
before our study.
Finally, an exhaustive web search to identify and download as
many national development plans as could be found was then con-
ducted, with a focus mostly on government websites of member
countries of the United Nations. This created an archive of 134
national development plans published between 2012 and 2018.
For this study a national plan document was defined as ‘any
time-bound national plan with a set of coherent economic and
socio-political objectives that transcends sectors and articulates a
vision for national development’. A focus on the national meant
that sub-national plans were not included although, in the end,
the research sought to understand the many meanings of a
national development plan and embraced the findings emerging
from the trawl of plans. This search created a large repository of
plans from 134 countries. These formed the basis of a systematic
content analysis. In the interests of fidelity and accuracy, content
analysis was performed wherever possible on the original language
version of the plan (Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Russian or
Spanish) and not on the English translation. This paper is based on
an analysis of 107 of the 134 national plans in the repository (see
Appendix 1). Those plans not analysed here are mostly from coun-
tries with populations of one million people or fewer for which
work is still ongoing. For this study conventional, directed and
summative content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) of each
national development plan generated the data we report on. Fol-
lowing conventional content analysis, and corroborating this with
detailed country case studies, we proceeded to directed content
analysis. This was based on coding, using 10 core themes and 90
variables derived from our literature review. The 10 themes were:
1. Country profile;
2. Plan outlook (data on the plan itself, title, themes, duration,
language of publication, cost of producing the plan, main
actors in the planning process);
3. Quality of the plan’s evidence base, including assumptions,
level of evidence, use of economic modelling;
4. Scenario snapshots (i.e. past plan achievements and current
plan goals and targets; strategic focus);
5. Key objectives and targets, including priority sectors and/or
demographic groups;
6. Links to global agendas;
7. Financing of the plan and means of implementation;
8. Keywords such as aid, economic growth, job creation,
empowerment, human development, poverty reduction/
eradication, SDGs, social transformation, sustainable
growth/development, competitiveness
9. Issues, including assessments of the quality of the data, evi-
dence and methods used in the plan, quality of scenarios, if
any;
10. Plan orientation (technocratic, transformational or with ele-
ments of both).
While items 2–8 largely involved noting and counting in an
objective fashion, items 9 and 10 involved expert judgement. We
applied an adaptation of the policy Delphi technique (Dunn,
2017). Originally used as a forecasting technique that relies on a
panel of experts, for this study, we engaged economic policy and
planning experts, and developed the respective sets of variables
(see Appendix 2) used for themes 9 and 10 above.
Apart from the secondary data described above, the study also
uses primary data from 10 country case studies as a way to better
contextualize findings in the empirical realities of day-to-day pol-
icy making. The paper draws on insights from the 10 case studies of
the new national planning in Bangladesh, Benin, Ghana, Indonesia,
Peru, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, South Africa and Zimbabwe. These
countries have a variety of linguistic, legal and cultural traditions,
are based on several continents and also reflect various levels of
development. Each national case study used causal process tracing
(CPT) (Collier, 2011) of national development planning and imple-
mentation. In the case studies CPT was used more in a deductive
sense to help identify which planning paradigm they fitted into
and to build an understanding of the level of elite commitment
to plans. All 10 case studies used a common methodology and
are written in a common format. The next section discusses the
study’s findings.
 A.O. Chimhowu et al. / World Development 120 (2019) 76–89
4. The Rise, fall and return of national planning
For many newly independent states in the 1950s and 1960s, a
national development plan was almost as important a symbol of
national sovereignty as a flag, written constitution or seat at the
UN. In those mid-20th century decades, economic theory tended
to focus on market failures (e.g. Arrow, 1963; Coase, 1960;
Keynes, 1931, Keynes, 1936; Polanyi, 1957, Robinson, 1933;
Samuelson, 1954) and prescribe an interventionist economic policy
on a Keynesian, dirigiste or socialist model. Economic theories of
the big push (Rosenstein-Rodan, 1943), balanced growth (Nurkse,
1955), two-gap models (Chenery & Strout, 1966) emphasised the
need for the state to coordinate national development efforts or,
at least, to coordinate national investment planning to ensure com-
plementary investments.
In ideological terms, the mid-20th century saw a broad consen-
sus in favour of state intervention in the economy on both sides of
the Cold War. The apparent success of Soviet industrialization after
five-year plans started in 1928 was proclaimed as proof of the
superiority of planned over free market economies (Baran, 1962).
The success of the Marshall Plan in promoting post-war recovery
in Western Europe was also claimed as a triumph of interventionist
economic policy in a capitalist economy. Even the World Bank pub-
lished a how-to book on national economic planning techniques
(Blitzer, Clark & Taylor, 1975).
Over the 1970s, however, disappointment with national eco-
nomic planning began to set in. While some suggested that plan-
ning was failing because of a lack of political will or inadequate
data and planning capacity (Faber & Seers, 1972), many critics con-
cluded that planning itself was the problem. Planners distorted
government budgets by focusing too much on investment com-
pared to running costs (Caiden & Wildavsky, 1974) or by substitut-
ing failing state structures for more efficient market mechanisms
(Agarwala, 1983; Bauer, 1982). Following in the footsteps of public
choice theory, the concepts of government failure, rent-seeking
and directly unproductive profit-making activities (Krueger,
1974, Krueger, 1990; Bhagwati, 1982) caused by government inter-
ference came to dominate development thinking.
By the early 1980s, as a component of ‘structural adjustment’,
the World Bank and the IMF had begun a full-scale assault on
national development planning and on the planning ministries
and commissions that promoted it (World Bank, 1983). The col-
lapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989–91 and the spectacular growth
of the liberalized Chinese economy created further doubts about
the desirability of national development planning. Most of the for-
mer Soviet republics scrapped their planning apparatuses in the
1990s and early 2000s (Yazlyyev, 2017). In aid-dependent coun-
tries the processes were gradual but, over the 1980s and 1990s,
many national planning agencies and economic development min-
istries were abolished or merged into ministries of finance, where
they became marginalized in terms of status, staffing, budget and
relevance to policy.
Nevertheless, national development planning never went away
completely. China, India and Malaysia kept their national planning
apparatus, even as they liberalized their economies. The World
Summit for Children in 1990 pushed dozens of countries to pro-
duce ‘national plans of action for children’. This push was conso-
nant with research showing that there was no one-to-one
relationship between economic growth and the advance of human
development – conscious effort by the state was needed to effec-
tively promote health, nutrition and education (Drèze & Sen, 1989).
Starting in 1996, the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) ini-
tiative offered debt relief in exchange for commitments by benefi-
ciary states to invest in health, education, nutrition and poverty
reduction. The creditors insisted, however, that HIPC beneficiaries
79
have a demonstrable strategy for reducing poverty, as well as the
means to measure and track anti-poverty investments and poverty
levels. At the same time James Wolfensohn, President of the World
Bank, was energetically proposing that all developing countries
should have a Comprehensive Development Framework (Mallaby,
2004, pp. 232–260) as the newly liberalized economies had ‘the
need for a more integrated approach to development based on a
framework articulated and ‘‘owned” by the country itself’ (World
Bank, 2001).
The PRSPs were the eventual result of these competing initia-
tives and were adopted by 63 countries starting in 2001 (IMF,
2016). In many ways, PRSPs resembled old-style national develop-
ment plans, with investment plans, output targets across a range of
directly productive and social sectors, and results matrices. The
PRSP approach included ‘participatory assessments’ to ensure that
planning was integrated with ‘good governance’. After preparing
PRSPs, governments (for example Bangladesh, Benin, Ghana,
Malawi, Togo, Uganda, Vietnam and Zambia) began to think about
returning to national plans that would pursue the MDGs and other
goals. It was noted earlier that in some of the ex-HIPCC Phase II
countries (for example Zambia) new-found confidence to craft
their own plans came from a commodity boom that provided the
fiscal space to be more imaginative about their futures.
Around the same time, the rise of complexity science (Colander
& Kupers, 2014; Ramalingam, 2013) argued for new forms of plan-
ning, based on contingency, behaviour change, adaptation and con-
stant learning (Swanson & Bhadwal, 2009; Earl, Carden & Smutylo
2001). Especially in environmental science and policy, planning for
complexity became increasingly mainstream. Planning increas-
ingly aimed not for specific outcomes, but for increased ‘resilience’
of individuals, organizations and systems in the face of emergent
phenomena (Hummelbrunner & Jones, 2013).
From the 1990s onwards, economic theory became more
favourable to certain types of state intervention. The economics
of asymmetric information (Barr, 1992) and behavioural eco-
nomics (Kahneman, 2011; Thaler & Sunstein, 2009) both pointed
out new flaws in the idea of self-regulating markets. Similarly,
the new institutional economics (North, 1990) provided justifica-
tion for considerable government activity beyond the night watch-
man state. Indeed, one prominent member of the 1980s liberal
counter-revolution warned that ‘an older generation (of scholars
and advocates) who had emphasised the importance of market
failures in development economics finds in the new institutional-
ism new justification for their interventionist beliefs’ (Bates,
1995, p. 27). Although none of these new economic theories sup-
ported old-style central economic planning, they suggested that
new forms of state intervention were in order, in sharp contrast
to the liberal counter-revolution of the 1980s.
Bibliometric research allows us to examine when and how
interest in national development planning rose and declined.
According to Google Ngram searches in English and French, the lit-
erature on economic planning peaked in the mid-1960s, coinciding
with the apogee of post-independence optimism regarding
planned, autonomous development in the ‘Third World’ (Fig. 1).
The peaks in the Russian, Spanish and German language literatures
occurred somewhat later, in the 1970s. There was a revival in the
use of the term ‘central planning’, especially in German, in the
early 1990s as the countries of the former Soviet bloc transitioned
from centrally planned to market-based economies.
Content analysis of all eight editions of Meier’s (1964–2005)
textbook, Leading Issues in Economic Development, reveals a marked
decline in interest in economic planning over time (Fig. 2).1 Meier’s
1
As measured by the percentage of the pages mentioning ‘plan’, ‘planning’,
‘development planning’, ‘economic planning’, ‘central planning’, ‘decentralized plan-
ning’ or ‘plan implementation’.
80 A.O. Chimhowu et al. / World Development 120 (2019) 76–89
Fig. 1. Mentions of development planning in books published in English 1925–2008. Source: Author’s analysis.
Fig. 2. Percentage of pages concerned with development planning in Meier’s
Leading Issues in Economic Development, various editions. Source: Author’s analysis.
own comments on the prospects for planning also became markedly
less optimistic between the early and middle editions. The same gen-
eral trend is found in Todaro’s Economic Development, as the propor-
tion of pages devoted to development planning declines from 6.2 per
cent in the second edition (1981) to 1.5 per cent in the 10th edition
(2009).
The decline in interest in development planning in the Meier
textbook is paralleled by a rising interest in government failure,
rent seeking and other aspects of the liberal critique of state-
driven development.2 Discussions of government failure rise from
no pages in the 1964 edition to 6.5 per cent of the total pages in
the 2005 edition.
By the mid-1990s, national development planning had virtually
disappeared from the development literature, appearing on under
2
As measured by the percentage of pages mentioning ‘rent seeking’ (society),
(vested) ‘interest groups’, ‘government failure’, ‘state failure’, (price) ‘distortion(s)’,
‘directly unproductive profitable activities’, or ‘welfare loss’.
1% of the pages in Meier in the 1995, 2000 and 2005 editions and in
similar amounts in other development economics textbooks.
In 2007, after a quarter century of leading the drive toward eco-
nomic liberalization, the World Bank published a survey of ‘na-
tional results-based national development strategies’ or what an
earlier era would have called national development plans. The
Bank found 62 countries had such documents. In 2016–17, we
replicated that World Bank survey and located equivalent docu-
ments in 134 countries, almost a doubling in the number of coun-
tries having a national development plan or strategy between 2006
and 2016. Countries with a national development plan now once
again form the majority of countries on earth. Furthermore, most
people now live in a country with a national development plan.3
Countries with national development plans are found on all conti-
nents and regions, with all major metropolitan linguistic traditions
(Anglophone, Arabophone, Francophone, Hispanophone, Lusophone,
Russophone), all levels of income and human development (includ-
ing the leading ‘emerging countries’), and with a wide variety of legal
and constitutional traditions and political regimes (including liberal
democratic market economies in the OECD). Countries with a
national development plan include recent development ‘successes’
like China, India and Malaysia, as well as those that have been in
decline like Zimbabwe.
The increasing number and spread of national development
plans over the past decade is an important policy trend that
requires explanation and exploration. It might be tempting to
assume that, like so many trends in development, this one origi-
nated in the UN, in the IFIs, or in the Development Cooperation
Directorate of the OECD (OECD-DAC). A search and analysis of
the UN,4 World Bank, IMF and OECD websites in July–August 2016
and again in July–August 2017, however, found no evidence to sup-
port such an assumption. On the contrary, these international bodies
3
This is largely because populous emerging countries like Bangladesh, China, India,
Indonesia, Nigeria and Vietnam have national development plans.
4
Our search focused on the UN Development Programme, the UN Department of
Economic and Social Affairs and the UN Economic and Social Council.
 A.O. Chimhowu et al. / World Development 120 (2019) 76–89
seem barely aware of the recent return of national development
planning. All their websites together contained fewer than a dozen
documents related to national development planning and no recog-
nition that such planning had made a return. The return of national
development planning appears to be an initiative led by the coun-
tries of the global South and, recently, a result of mobilising to pur-
sue the SDGs (see Southernvoice.org).
5. Why has national development planning Re-emerged?
This section draws on the evidence from a review of the litera-
ture, an analysis of 107 plans, and detailed evidence from the 10
case study countries. While the broader development literature
provided a more global context for the production of plans, analy-
sis of the plans and case study work in the 10 selected countries
allowed a better grounding of the reasons for the re-emergence
of national development planning. A majority of the plans analysed
include a preamble explaining the reason for producing them, as
well as any acknowledgements for their production. An analysis
of these sections helped to build a picture of why countries are pro-
ducing plans. In addition, the detailed case study analysis allowed
this study to follow up on some of the reason why national devel-
opment planning has re-emerged in specific contexts.
Our analysis suggests four reasons why developing and other
emerging economies have created and published national develop-
ment plans. First, the HIPC conditionalities meant that PRSPs led
back to national development planning in many of those countries.
Of the 63 countries in the IMF database of PRSPs (IMF, 2017), 52
now have some kind of national development plan that goes
beyond ‘poverty reduction’ and the remaining 11 have new-
generation PRSPs. There is evidence from our specific country case
studies of Ghana, Uganda, Benin and Togo that the tightly managed
HIPC and the PRSPs helped to build state capacity to plan as well as
orient state institutions and elites to learn to commit to plans. The
main impact of PRSPs was getting ministries of finance to look at
poverty and human development as ‘their’ concern rather than just
passing them over to social sector ministries (Driscoll & Evans,
2005).
Second, it is clear from reading the content of the 107 plans
analysed in this study that the new wave of national development
plans (NDPs) are a response to the challenge posed by the MDGs of
2000 and the SDGs of 2015; simply put, the existence of these
increasingly comprehensive sets of development goals required a
planning and monitoring framework. A majority of plans from
the global South make specific mention of the MDGs and SDGs in
their content. The institutional support availed to countries signing
up to these has also spurred the practice of producing plans. Global
goals affect NDPs in different ways. This is clear when one looks at
the structuring of planning and at whether a comprehensive or a
sectoral approach (or both) are adopted. From the detailed case
study work done as part of this study we learn that, in Indonesia,
the SDGs fostered a shift towards comprehensive planning while,
by contrast, in Bangladesh the MDGs and SDGs have encouraged
both a set of sectoral strategies around specific, selected goals (that
ministers and sectoral ministries seek to control) and the continu-
ation of a national plan that seeks to be comprehensive. Global goal
setting has fostered a professionalization of national development
planning, created more and better data and strengthened belief in
technical monitoring and analysis.
A third and perhaps perverse reason for the return of national
planning is that NDPs are seen as a counter-narrative to the global
agreement embodied in the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Develop-
ment. This on the surface appears to contradict the preceding para-
graph but Munro (2017), argues that some of the country plans are
in fact rebelling against the MDG–SDG consensus (as in the case of
81
some of the earlier plans from Turkmenistan and North Korea). A
few have objectives that diverge from the international consensus
embodied in the MDGs and SDGs, promoting cultural purity (Bhu-
tan), productivist development even if it is at the expense of the
environment (North Korea and Uzbekistan) and a variety of nation-
alist themes. To some extent this third reason confirms a recurring
theme in the plans analysed, especially the way pluralist develop-
ment thinking is evolving in a multi-polar, post-financial crisis,
post-Washington Consensus World. The crucial point to this is that
national plans are providing a window into the nature of develop-
ment in a post-neoliberal world and views that run counter to glo-
bal ideals are also reflected in the plans. For these ‘rebels’ there is
an element here of a desire to chart a course of development not
necessarily based on what the global consensus is.
A fourth reason for the return of national planning relates to the
fears and opportunities presented by some of the forces of eco-
nomic globalisation. Rodrik (2011) has coined the term the ‘tri-
lemma’ to characterize the challenges of how to manage the
tensions inherent in processes of economic globalization, national
sovereignty and democratic governance. Evidence from the 107
plans analysed suggests that some national development plans
are tools of virtue signalling – activist states trying at the same
time to manage both upside and downside risks of liberal global-
ization. In other words, national development plans are an attempt
by emerging economies to build resilient and integrated national
economies capable of facing the downside risks of globalization,
as seen in events such as the 1998 East Asian Crisis and the 2009
Great Recession. At the same time evidence from some of the coun-
tries where deliberative bottom-up approaches to producing the
plans was used suggests a clear effort to reclaim national sover-
eignty and (re-)democratise the process of setting national goals.
6. New national plans: characteristics and types
6.1. Duration of plans
Most national development plans have a planning horizon of
four to six years, with 45 per cent of plans running for five years
(Fig. 3). Many countries call these medium-term plans, which
may or may not be accompanied by a longer-term ‘vision’ docu-
ment of 20 years or more. Five-year plans are the most common,
especially in the ex-HIPC countries. For many of these countries
the plans broadly map to the political calendar of elections (for
example, the Ghana plan). This is longer than the three-year PRSPS
and their IFI-dominated schedules. Countries with longer-term
plans will in some cases also produce more detailed sector plans
or break the long-term plan into bite-sized segments. There are
some regional variations, however, with Eastern Europe and Latin
America showing more significant variation. In trying to under-
stand determinants of plan duration we find that that this is less
dependent on how long it actually takes to physically implement
plans and much more on other factors. Preliminary analysis sug-
gests a strong association between plan duration and the political
calendar of elections in countries. This is particularly true for coun-
tries where democratic transitions are a common tradition through
elections. There is also a strong association between those coun-
tries with long term plans (over five years) and 1) either the
absence of strong political contestation for power; or 2) political
governance conditions that do not allow the possibility of change
in government. This is particularly true in parts of the former
Soviet Union.
Another interesting dimension to the duration of plans is the
implication of the shorter planning horizon (five years and below)
for the more long-term SDGs that require sustained commitment
across electoral cycles. Preliminary evidence from the more recent
82 A.O. Chimhowu et al. / World Development 120 (2019) 76–89
Duraon of Naonal Plans(Years)
50
45
40
35
30
25
Number of Plans
20
15
10
5
0 Polical Party
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 15 18 20+
Fig. 3. Duration of plans. Source: Author’s analysis based on 99 plan documents.
plans suggests that, while many countries have begun to accom-
modate the SDGs, this has not necessarily changed the shorter
planning horizons, as focus remains on the political calendar, espe-
cially in democracies. There is evidence suggesting that, in some
countries (e.g. Ghana and to some extent South Africa) where the
process of producing the plan has been inclusive and created some
form of ‘elite consensus’ across the political divide, the longer-term
planning horizon can survive a change in government. There is
more evidence from the detailed case study work that national
development plans more generally are more politically embedded
and more a part of national political systems, and therefore more
nationally owned, than PRSPs ever were. This is particularly true
for both the above countries, where deliberative bottom up
approaches have been used to generate the plans.
6.2. Who owns and produces the plans?
Here ‘ownership’ of the plan refers to the agency or unit that
produces the plan, mobilises support and is ultimately responsible
for supervising plan implementation, monitoring key results and
reporting on progress. Ownership of national plans is important
in that it sends a political signal about leadership, commitment
and the importance attached to the plan. Information on owner-
ship of a plan was extracted by content analysis of national plan
documents. Fig. 4 indicates that a majority of the plans and the
offices responsible for them still sit in the traditional ministries
of finance or economic planning. The fact that a majority of the
countries in this group are countries that went through the HIPC
programme suggests that this arrangement is a legacy of the insti-
tutional arrangements from that time. There is no widespread evi-
dence yet to suggest that merely being located in a finance
ministry or a powerful political office like that of the president
increases commitment or the possibility of plan implementation.
However, there is some evidence of an association between the
location and ownership of a plan in a powerful political office
and the likelihood that the plan will begin to influence how
resources are allocated through the budget. For example, in coun-
tries where the National Planning Authority has constitutional
backing and is based or located in the most politically powerful
office in a country, there is closer alignment between the plan
and public expenditure allocations through the national budget.
We identified 27 such countries and have evidence from one of
the 10 case study countries (Ghana) suggesting that having consti-
tutional status raises its profile and independence, thereby giving it
an ability to survive changes in government during elections. We
also learn from the Uganda case study, however, that achieving
constitutional status can reduce the operational effectiveness of
the planning authority. In this case, constitutional protection of
Naonal Planning Agency
Unit Office of
President/Prime Minister
Ministry of Finance or
Economic Planning
Related Ministry
No specific Owner
Fig. 4. Ownership and drivers of national development plans. Source: Author’s data
compiled from plans: n = 97.
the planning agency has meant that it is now much more directly
aligned with the president/state house than with the ministry of
finance (seen as donor-captured). However, this has also meant
that the agency is not as influential in sector ministries as it was
when it was more aligned with the finance ministry. These two
cases suggest that individual country context and related political
factors often determine how effective the agency can be, irrespec-
tive of where it is located. In 24 of the 107 plans there is no indi-
cation of which government agency owns the plan, a factor that
has been taken to mean a lack of serious effort to make the plan
work. Without a clear sponsor and multiple or conflicting owners,
plan implementation and monitoring may become quite confusing
and there is evidence in such contexts that line ministries often
then do not take the national development plan seriously and will
often produce their own operational plan.
The content analysis also provides evidence of the return of
national planning agencies as independent quasi-state bodies.
When countries moved away from national development planning
in the late 1980s and 1990s national planning agencies were either
abolished, got whittled down or were absorbed by finance or eco-
nomic development ministries. They re-emerged in the form of
parastatals with the resurgence of new national planning and
now constitute the third most likely location for driving national
development plans (Fig. 4). There is no direct evidence that their
existence means plans will be of a better quality than before or that
they will be more likely to be implemented. However, indications
from the 10 case studies suggest that a country with a specialised
agency is likely to have greater state capacity and better quality
national development plans. The existence of national planning
agencies is more likely to indicate a commitment to driving
through a plan, as it can ensure that the process is run by specialist
technocrats rather than generalist bureaucrats. The latter point is
particularly important as some evidence from our detailed case
study work indicates that national development plans associated
with ‘professionalised’ agencies are more likely to survive a change
in government than those housed in traditional ministries.
6.3. The content of plans and global goals
The content analysis, based on key search terms, revealed com-
mon elements but also some regional variations in the content of
national development plans (Table 1). Four findings merit atten-
tion. First, all plans include a major focus on economic concerns
and policies: growth rate, trade, investment, export earnings and
productivity growth. Second, plans from mainly natural resource-
rich countries have a distinct focus on the ‘structural transforma-
tion’ of their respective economies by fostering economic diversifi-
 A.O. Chimhowu et al. / World Development 120 (2019) 76–89 83

Table 1
Bibliometric analysis of key phrases/words used in all national plans by region.

Region Aid Capacity Economic Investment Poverty Resilience Sustainable Socioeconomic SDGs
development/ growth reduction/ growth/ growth/devt./
building eradication development transformation
Sub-Saharan Africa1 732 1606 1335 3980 1194 175 531 282 100
Asia1 123 432 430 1967 251 182 188 92 24
Europe & CIS1 20 210 644 1757 147 8 284 135 18
Middle East & North Africa1 124 265 195 1197 500 25 557 45 56
Latin America1 137 656 361 1611 463 59 434 23 3
USSR1 0 7 2 13 0 0 2 22 0
Total 1136 3176 2967 10,525 2555 449 1996 599 201

Source: Author’s data compiled from NDPs.

1
The assumption that a data revolution is apolitical is extremely naïve. Much data has commercial value and is harvested and monopolised by very powerful corporations
(e.g. Amazon and Google). Other data, for example hydrological data (especially about dams), is classified as ‘top secret’ in many countries (e.g. China and India).

cation. In Middle East and North African (MENA) countries there is
a focus on reducing dependency on natural resources and on
employment creation, and young people are singled out as a group
needing special attention (after the ‘Arab Spring’).
Third, plans from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) often have an
emphasis on investment, economic growth and poverty reduction
and they single out youth and women as special groups for atten-
tion. Reading through many of the plans from SSA shows the iner-
tia created by years of externally managed programmes under the
HIPC initiative and the PRSPs. Many of the key headings required
under HIPC remain and it is also clear that many SSA countries
have economic content in their plans that map closely to World
Bank-led country diagnostic studies. The social development prior-
ities of SSA plans tend to strongly integrate the MDG and/or SDG
agenda. A small sub-set of African national development plans
(e.g. Algeria, Eritrea, Zimbabwe) emphasises strongly nationalist
themes, such as indigenization of the economy, the maintenance
of national sovereignty, self-reliance and resistance to outside
interference.
A fourth observation that differentiates contemporary plans
from an earlier generation is the attention paid to common global
issues, like climate change and the environment, and to global pub-
lic goods. Almost all plans mention climate change and the uncer-
tainty it creates as a risk that plans must take into account.
Similarly, the SDGs are referenced in the newer plans with a partic-
ular focus on social and human development issues. To a degree, it
is as if the national development plan is an opportunity for a coun-
try to show it is a ‘good global citizen’ responding to a common
agenda.
6.4. Financing of national development plans
7. Types of contemporary national development plans
It is evident that the re-emergence of national planning has not
produced a homogeneous set of plans. Instead, there are distinct
variants. Here we conduct a preliminary analysis based on a simple
22 matrix that sorts plans in terms of whether they are based
on a linear or a collaborative conceptualisation of rationality
(see Section 2) and whether they are strongly or weakly
evidence-based and socially embedded (Fig. 5).
Our 22 matrix yields four ‘types’ of plan:
Type A – Top-down, expert-led plans with a strong evidence
base but limited social embeddedness;
Type B – Bottom-up, collaboratively created plans with a strong
evidence base and high social embeddedness;
Type C – Top-down plans, disjointed and with weak evidence
and limited social embeddedness;
Type D – Bottom-up plans with weak evidence base and limited
social embeddedness.
Some 38 per cent of plans adopted the linear/top-down
approach (A or C), as against 62 per cent adopting more collabora-
tive or communicative approaches. This suggests that the historical
domination of planning theory by linear thinking has not been con-
tinued by the new national development planning. In addition, 68
per cent of plans were strongly evidence-based and coherent,
while 32 per cent were weakly evidence-based and/or disjointed
or incoherent. Thus, around one-third of contemporary national
plans are either intellectually weak or purely ornamental.
7.1. Type A: Top-down, expert-led, strong evidence base but limited
social embeddedness

A key consideration of the quality of any plan is whether it has
been properly costed and sources of financing worked out. Without
this, a plan will lack credibility and, though still useful in other
respects (for example, as political signalling), the extent to which
it influences future spending decisions will diminish. Our content
analysis of the national plans shows that financing is the weakest
area in most plans. Of the 107 analysed, a majority (79) have no
specific costing associated with plan implementation, save for
vague references to domestic and foreign sources. Of the 29 plans
that explained how they would be financed, 14 mentioned govern-
ment and donors while, 13 of them identified central government
and domestic sources as their main sources of finance. A majority
of the countries talk more generally about both domestic and inter-
national financing as crucial for implementing plans. While there is
great variability in the levels of detail, generally countries that
ascribe a greater role for domestic sources of funding provide more
certainty and precision about financing arrangements compared
with those that seek external investment and other external
receipts.
Just over a quarter of the 107 plans are Type A. National plans
produced in this way are usually led by technical teams in core
economic and finance ministries or, in the case of many Persian
Gulf countries, by global consulting companies. The content of such
plans is tailored to a technical and economically literate audience.
Sometimes, simpler, less technical summaries are published for the
lay citizenry. Development plans in this mould show limited social
embeddedness, in terms of being inclusive of views and ideas from
all social groups, but are shaped by the thinking of selected polit-
ical, bureaucratic and corporate elites. The weaknesses of such an
approach are now well known and include a lack of shared vision
and the effect this has on accountability and confidence in both
political and economic governance processes. The prevalence of
such types of plans in countries without significant political power
contestation (especially the absolute monarchies) suggests a need
to test further an association between this type of plan and types of
governance systems in a country.
Plans tending towards Type A are generally technically compe-
tent and sophisticated in the forms of analysis and evidence base
84 A.O. Chimhowu et al. / World Development 120 (2019) 76–89
Fig. 5. Functional classification of types of national development plans. Source:
Author’s analysis of plans from 103 countries.
used to arrive at decisions. The typical Type A plan includes some
form of economic modelling, scenario building and/or the use of
input–output models. The plans from Togo, China and Saudi Arabia
are good examples of this approach. Such plans have limited social
embeddedness, as there is little or no evidence that state-led pro-
cesses have recognized or engaged the wider society about the
plan’s values and vision (beyond opaque public consultation exer-
cises). Some plans will state that all stakeholders were ‘consulted’,
but it is not apparent what mechanisms have been used. In coun-
tries with autocratic regimes the national developments plan usu-
ally reads like the ‘ruler’s world-view’ of what is good for the
‘subjects’, rather than a collective vision. Plan documents tending
towards Type A are generally very well written and costed, and
set clear goals and targets. The content is heavily skewed towards
economics, finance, trade, business and productivity, although
some attention is paid to public administration and social issues.
Although sustainability and climate change get mentioned, there
is limited emphasis on global goals, such as the SDGs and the Paris
climate change agreement. Monitoring mechanisms tend to be
clearly laid out using the language of new managerialism and the
plan document has a clear ‘owner’ responsible for results.
7.2. Type B: Bottom-up, collaborative plans with a strong evidence
base and high social embeddedness
Around 42 per cent of the 107 plans fall into this group. These
plans involve creating a broad-based social consensus about values
and actions towards a defined and shared future (see Section 2).
The national development plan is therefore seen as a set of agreed
values, actions and pathways for achieving this common future,
and the process of building national consensus is as important as
the content of the plan itself. However, it must be noted that it
may take a very long time to establish a consistent set of prefer-
ences for a society or may simply be impossible. In spite of these
weaknesses, communicative rationality does appear to have
become the default modus operandi for those working to plan for
the achievement of the SDGs.
National development plans tending towards type B are the
most common of the 107 plans analysed. The current plans for
Uganda and Ghana are examples. Typically, such plans have evi-
dence of the participation or involvement of groups other than just
the bureaucratic, political and corporate elites. There is evidence of
wider social consultation on what constitutes national values and
priorities. Reading such plans gives an impression that the national
development plan is a document for communication and negotia-
tion with multiple stakeholders, both internal and external. Type
B documents are usually publicly available and in forms that are
easily accessible to a lay audience. Plans tending towards Type B
show a balancing of their economic and social content, being
couched in the language of ‘inclusive growth’ and often identifying
specific social groups (women, young people and the elderly) for
attention. Type B plans also relate local priorities to the regional
and global development contexts. This is especially true of the
more recent plans, whose content includes specific reference to
the SDGs and the Paris climate change agreement. Such plans have
relatively strong evidence bases (including economic modelling
and/or scenario building) but are written in a language accessible
to both lay and professional audiences. The language of new man-
agerialism is used to relate the different levels at which results are
to be achieved and there is usually a clear agency that owns the
plan.
Plans tending towards Type B match the spirit of the SDGs, in
which the pursuit of SDG 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions)
and SDG 17 (partnerships) make the planning process as important
as the plan itself. From an SDG perspective, Type B is probably the
closest fit to an ‘ideal–type’ national development plan. There is
some evidence from our detailed case study work – especially in
Ghana and Uganda – that a Type B plan draws in commitment from
across the political elites and therefore improves its prospects of
implementation. Resource allocation (budget and staffing) closely
resembles the priorities set in such plans and the political rhetoric
matches plan contents. This is not to suggest that plans tending
towards Type A cannot draw commitment or mobilise implemen-
tation capacity. About half the countries in the B group are former
HIPC countries, appear on the DAC list of aid-eligible countries and,
in some cases, are still significantly dependent on aid donors.
Whether they have adopted a Type B approach through domestic
choice or following donor preferences is unclear from reading the
plan document but the case studies of Uganda and Togo suggests
a combination of both.
7.3. Type C: Top-down plans, disjointed and with a weak evidence base
and limited social embeddedness
Our content analysis identified only 10 plans of this type. Plans
tending toward Type C are premised on the linear rationality that
underpins Type A plans but they lack competence, are disjointed
and use evidence poorly. Evidence from the content analysis sug-
gests that Type C is produced in a context of degraded state capac-
ity. Zimbabwe’s original ZIMASSET 2013–18 plan is a typical
example of Type C plans. Such plans are driven from the top and,
rather than being evidence-led, they attempt to mimic elements
of plans from successful countries. There is often little coherent
examination and justification for the key priorities listed or of
how they relate to each other. The content tends to an eclectic col-
lection of topics, ranging from the economy, finance and business
to the social and environmental, without a structured considera-
tion of how they support or undermine each other. Although key
terms such as sustainability, climate change and SDGs appear in
Type C plans, it is clear that these are used as sound-bites and
are only superficially engaged and deployed. Often Type C docu-
ments do not have a clear owner and monitoring mechanisms
are not clearly articulated. There is no evidence of the plan being
socially embedded, although in some of them there is mention of
‘consultations’ with society. Our detailed case study work suggests
that countries tending towards Type C have significant political
and economic governance deficits.
7.4. Type D: Bottom-up plans with a weak evidence base and limited
social embeddedness
When national development plans reflect broad-based and par-
ticipatory processes but produce a vision that is poorly translated,
 A.O. Chimhowu et al. / World Development 120 (2019) 76–89
they tend towards Type D. Some 20 per cent of the 107 plans we
analysed fell into this category; Peru and Venezuela are clear
examples of the type. For such plans there is evidence that a
bottom-up process was attempted but there is a lack of credible
and coherent analysis justifying the decisions and priorities
reached. Plans tending towards Type D are produced in a participa-
tory manner and are usually publicly available. In terms of the con-
tent, Type D plans engage with global issues such as the SDGs and
climate change but in a superficial way. The national–global links
to these issues is not clearly enunciated and evidence is weak or
inconsistent. Further, the scale of the issues and challenges identi-
fied is not matched by the scale of response proposed and there are
usually unrealistic expectations about the availability of resources
for plan execution. Countries tending towards Type D have often
gone through periods of political or economic instability or are in
the process of emerging from conflict. Sometimes Type D plans
are part of mass political mobilisations meant to convey a message
of hope to citizens. Such plans convey a message that says:
although there are challenges, those with power know about them
and are doing something through this plan. They can be seen as
part of ‘state theatre’, a performance by the state to calm a restive
population or to win the trust and confidence of citizens but with
little obvious intention of any meaningful achievement of stated
objectives.
8. The new national development planning and global
development goals
We argued above that the emergence of global goals has in part
spurred the emergence of new national planning. Internationally,
at least in terms of the public record, one of the most important
recent factors is the apparent consensus that all countries should
pursue global goals agreed through UN processes. These included
the MDGs, the SDGs and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change
of 2015. While these agreements are sometimes presented as
‘technical’, all were the products of intensely political negotiations.
The MDGs were driven by aid donors (OECD countries and
international agencies) and sought to reduce (roughly ‘halve’) glo-
bal poverty by 2015. They pursued income poverty reduction,
human development and sustainability by setting goals and targets
whose achievement was to be assessed by objectively verifiable
indicators. This was straight from a results-based management
textbook. The SDGs were the product of much more complex nego-
tiations from 2012 to 2015 about ‘what comes after the MDGs’.
They were arrived at by discussions among all UN member states
and are much more ambitious in both depth and breadth – seeking
to eradicate poverty (in income and human development dimen-
sions) and promote sustainability, equality, human rights and good
governance. But, like the MDGs, the SDGs are non-binding: there
are no sanctions for countries who do not honour the agreement.
By contrast, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change sought to be
binding but, after tortuous negotiations, took a relatively weak
form: countries should voluntarily set their own targets (not adopt
international targets) and these nationally determined targets
should be binding.
How has this international move to set and agree global goals
affected the re-emergence of national planning? Evidence suggests
that the MDGs helped reignite national planning but in close asso-
ciation with other elements of the ‘Millennium moment’, such as
HIPC and PRSPs, so exact effects are hard to confirm. The most
obvious impact is that the MDGs ‘deal’, agreed by the UN
Secretary-General and the IFIs (World Bank and IMF) in March
2001, continued to grant oversight of national-level policy negoti-
ations to the IFIs through PRSPs. These documents required formal
Bank/IMF approval before IFI and donor funds could be released to
85
developing countries.5 This meant that the IFIs had a concrete
mechanism to shape (critics would say ‘control’) plans in aid-
recipient countries. In effect, plans and policies were often deter-
mined by negotiations between the IFI ‘partners’ – with the World
Bank sometimes supporting pursuit of the MDGs (through increased
public expenditure on health, education and gender projects) and
the IMF seeing the MDGs as threatening fiscal discipline.
The UN created two concrete mechanisms to ensure the MDGs
would have an impact on practice. First, a linear–rational, planning
mechanism in the form of the Millennium Project (led by Jeffrey
Sachs) and a social transformation mechanism, the Millennium
Campaign (led by Evelyn Herfkens). The Millennium Project took
a ‘Type A’, top-down, technocratic frame: its MDG-based Poverty
Reduction Strategies would shape national plans such that vastly
increased public expenditure and better technical analysis would
achieve MDG targets across developing countries (Hulme 2007).
By contrast, the Millennium Campaign adopted a socio-political
change approach that was bottom-up and sought to mobilise civil
society and promote social action for poverty eradication. The
underlying principles and characteristics of the Project and the
Campaign could not have been more different (see Table 2).
In 2005 Sachs, and more than 100 expert colleagues from 13
working parties, published the UN Millennium Project’s main
report – Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the
MDGs – which sought to identify the projects, policies and invest-
ments that would most rapidly tackle poverty and human develop-
ment deprivations. These teams had conducted vast and high-
quality surveys of ‘what worked’ globally in anti-poverty pro-
grammes. Had the ambitious plans for rolling out this report been
supported by UN members, then an era of standardised Type A
plans would have been promoted across developing countries.
But, after its grand launch, the main report and its detailed support
documents rapidly faded from the agenda for international devel-
opment. Technically, the UN’s Millennium Project may (or may
not) have been excellent, but the global South was not going to fol-
low the lead of ‘another middle-aged white man’ saving them.
Around the same time an increasing number of developing
countries became more assertive about how the IFIs’ PRSPs – and
plans more generally – should be prepared (Hulme 2015). The
drafting of PRSPs had partially rehabilitated the idea of compre-
hensive planning. But the ways in which they had been drafted
also had exposed the weaknesses of aid-led development. The first
‘principle’ of PRSPs – they must be ‘Country-driven: involving
broad-based participation by civil society and the private sector. . .’
(see Hulme (2010, p. 133) for World Bank webpages) – had been so
deeply abrogated by foreign consultants that Uganda, Ghana, Viet-
nam and others began to think of taking control of planning.
From what has been discussed above one might judge the
MDGs a failure in terms of their influence on national planning
processes. This would be incorrect. The MDGs helped to do three
things. First, they rehabilitated the idea of systematic planning –
market-based coordination by itself could not deliver national
development goals; second, they heightened the focus on the
application of evidence for planning and policy choices; and third,
they increased demand for good-quality data on poverty, depriva-
tion and other issues. These achievements have had great signifi-
cance for the successor to the MDGs – the SDGs of 2015.
8.1. The Sustainable development goals and new national planning
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, agreed by all UN
member states in 2015, adopt the MDG format of goals, targets
and indicators based on results-based management thinking. But
5
See Hulme (2007, 2010, 2015) for detailed discussions and evidence.
86 A.O. Chimhowu et al. / World Development 120 (2019) 76–89
Table 2
A comparison of the main characteristics of the Millennium Project and Millennium Campaign.
Characteristics Millennium Project
Approach Top-down
Key actors Scientists and specialists
Strategy Detailed plans and implementation
Interventions Focus on aid Pre-selected and tested
More aid means less poverty
Goal Deliver basic needs to the poor
Role of leader Lead from the front, take a high profile
View on MDGs Total acceptance
Source: Adapted from Hulme (2010, p. 130).
the SDGs emerged from a quite different negotiating process.
Rather than being driven by OECD countries and aid agencies,
the SDGs were produced after painstaking deliberation by all UN
members in an Open Working Group. This had two important con-
sequences for the ways in which the SDGs have affected and may
make an impact on national planning.
First, the SDGs are much more numerous than the MDGs, with
17 goals and 169 targets. Technically this makes it much more dif-
ficult to set priorities, as there is a much greater number of choices
and potential trade-offs than with the MDGs. But the SDGs have
the great advantage that they now cover economic growth and
related goals such as employment, infrastructure, urbanisation
and energy. The MDGs were always only partial goals, as they
did not include ‘economic development’, which had remained the
domain of the IFIs.
Second, the SDGs explicitly recognise that they are global goals
and that individual countries need to select their own national
goals and targets through national deliberation processes. The
ambiguity that surrounded the MDGs – did countries have to adopt
them into national plans or could they be re-set – has been
removed. This creates more opportunity for the SDGs to promote
national goal-setting and associated national planning initiatives,
as the argument, or feeling, that goals are being imposed from
above (by aid agencies or ‘middle-aged white men’) has gone.
The role of leading international technical specialists is to advise,
as Jeffrey Sachs now does through the Sustainable Development
Solutions Network, and not to direct through a New York-based
mega-project.
In addition to these effects, two specific SDGs have implications
for the new national planning. Goal 16 (peace, justice and strong
institutions) potentially fosters the evolution of strengthened ana-
lytical capacities in government and of greater citizen participation
in decision making. If it was seriously adopted, it would reduce the
number of weak national plans (types C and D) and would encour-
age type B processes based on collaborative rationality (see Sec-
tions 2 and 7). Goal 17 (partnerships for the goals) would
potentially foster stronger global, regional, national and sub-
national partnerships but its lack of clear indicators suggests that,
as with the MDGs, partnership will be encouraged as an idea, yet
with no practical plans-of-action.
8.2. The Paris agreement on climate change
In 2015, as tens of thousands of diplomats, politicians, civil soci-
ety activists and scientists were arguing into the early hours of the
morning on the final content of the SDGs, there was a much bigger
‘global goals game’ in the background – climate change. This was
an even more contentious negotiation as first, it involved real
trade-offs, in which some countries would have to agree to transfer
resources to other countries; and, second, it sought to be a binding
agreement. If Paris failed, as an earlier summit in Copenhagen had,
then the idea of global goal-setting would have been greatly weak-
ened. Indeed, some SDG veterans said that, if Paris failed, the SDGs
Millennium Campaign
Bottom-up
Civil society organizations
Political mobilization
Emergent through practice
All governments should be much more accountable for volume, quality and use of public finance
Promote human rights and empowerment for all
Let partners lead, stay in the background
Useful for ‘newcomers’ but experienced people and organizations need locally determined goals
would be useless. In the end the Paris Agreement on Climate
Change was agreed: countries should pursue voluntary, national
targets that would cap global warming at 2 °C and, if possible, at
1.5 °C. As targets are voluntary, much of its ‘success’ was that it
was not a public failure. Potentially, the Paris Agreement has pro-
found implications for national planning as, in future, all national
plans will need to consider the carbon footprint of their economic
and human development programmes, ideally by carbon budget-
ing. In many countries this will be through liaison with a specialist
ministry but there is a possibility that the need to assess the cli-
mate impacts of all activities could more broadly strengthen the
role of national planning in shaping public policy decisions.
8.3. Global goals, state capacity and elite commitment to national
development
As discussed earlier in this paper, the ways in which global goal-
setting exercises affect national planning processes can be concep-
tualised in different ways. At a purely technical level of analysis,
then, global goals can be seen as supportive of NDPs as they point
to the need for better technical analysis for public decision making.
There is substantial evidence that the MDGs have led to more and
better data being available for many important indicators.6 Not
surprisingly, there has been much enthusiasm for promoting a ‘data
revolution’ which promises to strengthen the planning, managing
and monitoring of development interventions from a politically
non-partisan position.7 In Indonesia one can argue that global goals
have moved well beyond ‘data’ and have directly shaped bureau-
cratic action: the National Planning Agency has been set the task
of planning for the country to fully achieve the SDGs by 2030.
But global goal-setting can also make an impact through com-
municative and/or collaborative rationality redefining values and
operating more ideologically. The UN Millennium Campaign
sought to activate this approach by mobilising civil societies, in
donor and emerging-power countries, to campaign against pov-
erty. Consciously or unconsciously, it focused on reshaping the
social norms of the middle classes by internationally diffusing
the MDGs (Fukuda-Parr & Hulme, 2011). More elite-focused frame-
works for understanding social change, such as the political settle-
ments framework (Hickey et al., 2015), see global goals as a
potential path towards encouraging political and business elites
to recognise that their fostering more effective state action (better
schooling and health services, etc.) could contribute to both social
progress and greater commercial opportunities for themselves
(self-interest).
6
For example, in 2000 the data available on maternal mortality in most low-
income countries was weak or non-existent. By 2015 most low-income countries
(except those engaged in conflict) had usable data on maternal mortality. See http://
mics.unicef.org/ and https://www.dhsprogram.com/.
7
The assumption that a data revolution is apolitical is extremely naïve. Much data
has commercial value and is harvested and monopolised by very powerful corpora-
tions (e.g. Amazon and Google). Other data, for example hydrological data (especially
about dams), is classified as ‘top secret’ in many countries (e.g. China and India).
 A.O. Chimhowu et al. / World Development 120 (2019) 76–89 87

The technical and elite commitment strands of analysis can
combine when national elites take actions that raise state capacity
to plan and implement public programmes (see Fukuyama (2014)
on the crucial role of state capacity for development). While it is
difficult to separate the impacts of global goals from the many
other factors operating on state capacity, a study by Evans (2013)
tracked the way in which the MDGs directly strengthened state
capacity in Zambia. The Minister of Health responded to regional
MDG meetings at which data showed that Zambia was not making
as much progress in reducing maternal mortality as were other
Southern African countries. Immediately afterwards he prioritised
services for pregnant women and over time significantly improved
health service delivery through better budgeting, motivation,
improved organization and staff management. Such clear examples
are rare but they do point to the potential for global goals to have
an ideational impact on behaviour that strengthens both planning
and implementation.
require much attention going forward. A fourth conclusion is the
clear need for further detailed case study work to understand some
of the determinants of state capacity and commitment to national
plans once they are developed, and to identify ways of raising both
capacity and commitment. Making progress with the SDGs in
many countries will depend to a large extent on the existence of
credible plans, of the capacity to implement agreed plans and of
a commitment to follow through with the plans. It is for this reason
that this emergence of ‘new’ national planning must be seen as an
opportunity for the global community to continue finding ways of
enhancing achievement of the SDGs by ensuring that there is
capacity to produce credible plans.
Conflict of interest
None.
Acknowledgements

9. Conclusions Work reported in this paper was done as part of the Strategic Net-
work on New National Planning-an 18 month project on funded
Our research has clearly shown that there is now a renewed glo- through a £130 585 GCRF-ESRC grant number ES/P007406/1.
bal interest in comprehensive national planning that we term the The authors would like to thank the following for their research
‘new’ national development planning. Surprisingly, this return to assistance in this project: Dr Olabimtan Adebowale, Ms Alexandra
national planning has received very limited academic or policy Garcia, Mr Gedeon Djissa, Mr Begench Yazlyyev, Ms Sarah Tal, Ms
analysis and yet it has implications for how SDGs can be opera- Mapenzie Tauzie, Dr Bala Yusuf, Dr Andrea Zinzani, Mr Pedro Lucas
tionalised and monitored within individual countries. The new Chagas Mendonca.
national planning has been stimulated by several factors: recogni-
tion that markets by themselves cannot coordinate development
Appendix A
activity and promote structural transformation; learning from
the experience of preparing PRSPs for the IFIs and concerns about
Appendix 1 and 2
the ways in which this weakened sovereignty; and the emergence
of agreements on global goals. It is important to highlight that this Appendix 1
era differs greatly from the 1950s to 70s era of national planning. It Countries whose national development plans were analysed for this paper.
sees the plan as a tool for development and not a guarantee of S/N Country Plan timeframe
development. While concepts of linear rationality inform the new
Sub-Saharan Africa
national planning, the paradigm also recognises uncertainty and 1 Angola 2013–17
contingency much more and concepts of communicative and/or 2 Benin 2011–15
collaborative planning now inform they way planning is carried 3 Botswana 2013–16
out in a majority of countries. 4 Burkina Faso 2011–15
5 Burundi 2010–25
Based on this analysis, four main observations on the ‘new’
6 Chad 2013–15
national development planning and its significance both in practice 7 Congo, DR 2011–15
and in theory can be made. First, there is little doubt that new 8 Ethiopia 2010–15
national development planning has ushered in a new era in which 9 Ghana 2014–17
10 Guinea 2013–15
plan documents are no longer an end in themselves but are seen as
11 Guinea-Bissau 2011–15
part of a process of communicating and negotiating national ideals 12 Ivory Coast 2012–15
with internal and external audiences. In an era of SDGs this shift 13 Kenya 2013–17
presents opportunities for ensuring more grounded responses to 14 Lesotho 2012–17
global ideals, especially in the SDG 16 call for more engaged state 15 Liberia 2012–17
16 Madagascar 2015–19
interaction with citizens in strategy, plans, policies and implemen-
17 Malawi 2011–16
tation. The typology introduced in this paper helps suggest which 18 Mali 2012–17
plans may be taken seriously and how far they represent elite or 19 Mauritania 2011–15
popular projects. In a way this enables local but perhaps more so 20 Mozambique 2015–35
21 Namibia 2012–17
external partners to understand ways of engaging with such docu-
22 Niger 2012–15
ments. Second, it is clear that the emergence of the ‘new’ national 23 Nigeria 2009–20
development planning has seen the return of ‘state-led develop- 24 Republic of Congo 2012–16
ment planning’ as an area where technical expertise has consider- 25 Rwanda 2013–18
able value. This has created (and is creating) new opportunities to 26 Senegal 2013–17
27 Sierra Leone 2013–18
raise state capacity, with implications for the effectiveness of the
28 Somaliland 2012–16
state, and elites, as the ‘owner’ of national development plans. 29 South Africa 2012–30
Third, our analysis suggests that, while many countries demon- 30 South Sudan 2011–13
strate an ability to better analyse, plan and monitor future activity 31 Swaziland 2013–18
32 Tanzania 2016–21
than before, the least convincing area is the way the plans will be
33 Togo 2013–17
financed. It is not clear from our analysis how far this is an issue of 34 Uganda 2015–20
low capacity to cost and finance plans, or of a more general lack of 35 Zambia 2011–16
access to finance for development. Clearly, this is an area that will 36 Zimbabwe 2013–18

(continued on next page)

88 A.O. Chimhowu et al. / World Development 120 (2019) 76–89

Appendix 1 (continued) Appendix 2

Themes and variables for analysis.
S/N Country Plan timeframe
Theme Variables
Asia
37 Bangladesh 2016–20 1. Country profile Country, Region, Population
38 Bhutan 2013–18 2. Plan outlook Title of plan, Vision, Theme, Years covered,
39 Brunei 2012–17 Number of pages, Language, Duration, Total cost
40 China 2016–20 of preparing the plan, Driver of the plan, Funder,
41 India 2012–17 Preparation approach, Preparation context,
42 Laos 2011–15 Performance monitoring and evaluation
43 Malaysia 2016–20 3. Evidence base Level of evidence, Analysis assumptions,
44 Myanmar 2014 Econometric modelling
45 Pakistan 2013–18 4. Scenario snapshots Past plan achievements, Current plan goals and
46 Papua New Guinea 2008–50 targets, Planning underpinnings
47 Philippines 2011–2016 5. Strategic focus Key objectives (specific measurable targets),
48 Thailand 2012–16 Extent of integration, Order of precedence of
49 Timor Leste 2011–30 focus, Sectors targeted, Public sector reform
50 Vietnam 2015–35 agenda, Targeted public sectors for investment,
Europe and CIS Recognition of demographic groups
51 Albania 2014–20 6. Links to global agenda Climate change, Trade, Sustainable Development
52 Armenia 2014–25 Goals, Migration, Remittances, Agenda priorities
53 Azerbaijan 2013–20 (international)
54 Belarus 2015–30 7. Financing and means Estimated cost of plan, Estimated cost of plan as a
55 Bosnia & Herzegovina 2016–18 of implementation % of GDP
56 Estonia 2015–20 Expected share of domestic financing, Expected
57 Georgia 2014–20 share of government financing, Expected share of
58 Kazakhstan 2012–50 private financing, Expected share of donor/
59 Kosovo 2016–21 external financing/aid, Investment breakdown,
60 Kyrgyzstan 2013–17 Financing mechanisms, Expected role of private
61 Lithuania 2012–30 sector, Expected role of donors/aid partners,
62 Moldova 2012–20 Expected role of civil society, Implementation
63 Mongolia 2016–30 performance mechanism, Key success factors,
64 Montenegro 2013–16 Spatial/regional implementation of plan
65 Russia 2012–20 8. Key words Aid, Competitiveness, Economic growth,
66 Tajikistan 2016–30 Economic empowerment, Employment/job
67 Turkey 2014–18 creation, Empowerment, Export driven, Human
68 Turkmenistan 2011–30 capital, Capacity building, Capacity utilization,
69 Ukraine 2015–20 Inequality, Investment, Poverty reduction,
70 Uzbekistan 2017–21 Poverty eradication, Resilience, Risk reduction,
Middle East and North Africa SDGs, Sustainable Development goals, MDGs,
71 Algeria 2010–14 Millennium Development Goals, Social
72 Bahrain 2007–30 transformation, Socio-economic development,
73 Egypt 2015–30 Strategic advantage,Sustainable growth,
74 Jordan 2013–19 Sustainable development , Value addition,
75 Lebanon 2011–16 Wealth creation
76 Morocco 2015–20 9. Issues (Criteria Economic growth, Poverty rate, Poverty
77 Oman 2016–20 Judgement) reduction rate, Socioeconomic growth, Data/
78 Palestine 2014–16 Method/Evidence used, Level of assumptions,
79 Qatar 2011–16 Statistics and analysis used, Use of scenario
80 Republic of Iraq 2013–17 forecasting
81 Saudi Arabia 2015–19 10. Plan orientation Technocratic
82 Tunisia 2016–20 Transformational
83 UAE 2015–21
Latin America
84 Argentina 2012–16
85 Barbados 2013–20 Appendix B. Supplementary data
86 Belize 2010–30
87 Bolivia 2016–20 Supplementary data to this article can be found online at
88 Brazil 2016–19
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.03.013.
89 Chile 2014–18
90 Colombia 2014–18
91 Costa Rica 2015–18
92 Dominica 2014–18
93 Ecuador 2013–17
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