Rethinking Development for Executives

Catalog description

Debates on theories and practice of international development suggest that there have been serious challenges in ensuring aid effectiveness. Substantial investments made by 'donor' countries often fail to yield the intended development results. At the heart of such debates are varying, contested notions and frameworks to achieve 'development' and 'progress'. This short course attempts to familiarize students with how different actors perceive development and how that impacts development programming in local contexts. The course will assess the prevalent paradigms of development, from the United Nations system to the bilateral and multilateral frameworks and from international NGOs to the religious charities. Class participants will learn about the challenges faced and constraints reproduced by the international development bureaucracies. Each week, students would be expected to read and discuss the suggested readings, cite country contexts and address an applied development question. For final project, students will be given the option to apply course readings, discussions to a policy issue that they will complete with independent research and online inquires with development practitioners.