Lauchlan T Munro
Biographic Data
| ID | 706758 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lauchlan T Munro |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lauchlan T |
| FAMILY NAME | Munro |
| SIGNATURE | MUNRO L T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Ottawa |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2132-1287 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 68 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Killing Two Birds With One Stone? A New Pragmatist Perspective on the Rigor‐Relevance Gap in the Literature on Capacity Building Projects
Despite scholarly and professional efforts, most capacity building projects fall short. The normative agenda, an effort to structure the concept and its practical applications, failed to produce rigorous thinking. A rigor‐relevance gap seems to prevail. This article examines capacity building in the academic literature using criteria of scientific rigor and practical relevance. We asked: Why has the normative agenda failed to produce rigorous cap…
A Thaw in the Chill? Charities and Public Policy Engagement in Canada
This article examines the effects of changes in 2018–19 to the Income Tax Act and Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) regulations that were ostensibly intended to facilitate public policy engagement by Canadian charities. The article examines a case study of charities in the international development sector through interviews with charity leaders and quantitative analysis of data from the Canada Revenue Agency, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying, and…
Did you notice? The Global South has just shifted the power
Inspired by Táíwò's call to investigate the “omissions and blind spots” (2022: 5) of the decolonization movement, we posit that important threads of both the decolonization and “shift-the-power” movements share (neo-)colonial assumptions. They overestimate the importance of “development industry” of bilateral donors, multilateral lenders and international NGOs for everyday life and public policy in most of the Global South. The middle-income coun…
Are the SDGs a Hegemonic Global Policy Agenda
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 plan…
Fifty years of capacity building
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 descripti…
The resurgence of national development planning
After decades in the political and ideological wilderness, national development planning has made a comeback. The number of countries with a national development plan has doubled since 2006. Given that national development planning has always served various interests and ideologies and that it has always had both political and technical aspects, this article asks, ‘how did we get back here?’. This article uncovers the pathways that countries have…
Guided by the beauty of our weapons
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 …
The policy transfer of community-based rehabilitation in Gulu, Uganda
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 organ…
The ‘New’ national development planning and global development goals
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 fr…
Strategies to shape the international order
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 …
Where Did Bhutan's Gross National Happiness Come From? The Origins of an Invented Tradition
The Kingdom of Bhutan has attracted international attention for adopting "Gross National Happiness" (GNH) as its national development policy. The central notion is that gross national happiness is more important than gross national product; the four pillars of GNH are sustainable economic development, good governance, preservation of the natural environment and preservation of the national culture. This paper traces the historical origins of the …
Risks, Rights, and Needs
A Social Safety Net for the Chronically Poor? Zimbabwe's Public Assistance Programme in the 1990s
Focus-Pocus? Thinking Critically about Whether Aid Organizations Should Do Fewer Things in Fewer Countries
The OECD Development Assistance Committee and G7 Finance Ministers have suggested that many bilateral and multilateral aid organizations are too dispersed, pursuing too many objectives in too many countries and too many sectors with too many partners. These organizations are accused of lacking critical mass, failing to follow their comparative advantage, failing to find and exploit a niche, and having high transactions costs and low effectiveness…
Zimbabwe’s Agricultural Recovery Programme in the 1990s
Zimbabwe's Child Supplementary Feeding Programme
In 1992-3 and 1995-6, Zimbabwe used a Child Supplementary Feeding Programme (CSFP) to combat child malnutrition during drought-induced emergencies. Previous evaluations of the CSFP relied on routine administrative data and key informant interviews and made only cursory use of available household survey data. These evaluations concluded that the CSFP was effective in preventing an increase in malnutrition among children under five, especially in 1…
Focus on Economic Sociology A Principal-Agent Analysis of the Family
This paper suggests that a principal-agent perspective may be one of several useful ways of analyzing the family. The principal-agent literature has so far ignored an important set of cases where the principal is incapable of defining and defending her own interests, and so is assigned an agent by law or custom. This paper applies principal-agent analysis to one such case, the family, where the child is taken as the principal and the parent is he…
Technology Choice in Bhutan
The macro-economic and environmental features of Bhutan are highly unusual, and have important implications for technology choice in that country. The labour intensive technologies appropriate for most developing economies are, in fact, inappropriate for Bhutan. Labour saving technologies which are economical in their use of capital and relatively intensive in their use of land, and which help generate government revenue, are best suited to Bhuta…
Immiserizing growth
Immiserizing growth: when growth fails the poor." Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 41(1), pp. 161–162
The ‘New’ national development planning and global development goals
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 fr…
Where Did Bhutan's Gross National Happiness Come From? The Origins of an Invented Tradition
The Kingdom of Bhutan has attracted international attention for adopting "Gross National Happiness" (GNH) as its national development policy. The central notion is that gross national happiness is more important than gross national product; the four pillars of GNH are sustainable economic development, good governance, preservation of the natural environment and preservation of the national culture. This paper traces the historical origins of the …
Immiserizing growth
Immiserizing growth: when growth fails the poor." Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 41(1), pp. 161–162
Strategies to shape the international order
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 …
The resurgence of national development planning
After decades in the political and ideological wilderness, national development planning has made a comeback. The number of countries with a national development plan has doubled since 2006. Given that national development planning has always served various interests and ideologies and that it has always had both political and technical aspects, this article asks, ‘how did we get back here?’. This article uncovers the pathways that countries have…
Focus-Pocus? Thinking Critically about Whether Aid Organizations Should Do Fewer Things in Fewer Countries
The OECD Development Assistance Committee and G7 Finance Ministers have suggested that many bilateral and multilateral aid organizations are too dispersed, pursuing too many objectives in too many countries and too many sectors with too many partners. These organizations are accused of lacking critical mass, failing to follow their comparative advantage, failing to find and exploit a niche, and having high transactions costs and low effectiveness…
Guided by the beauty of our weapons
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 …
Zimbabwe’s Agricultural Recovery Programme in the 1990s
Zimbabwe's Child Supplementary Feeding Programme
In 1992-3 and 1995-6, Zimbabwe used a Child Supplementary Feeding Programme (CSFP) to combat child malnutrition during drought-induced emergencies. Previous evaluations of the CSFP relied on routine administrative data and key informant interviews and made only cursory use of available household survey data. These evaluations concluded that the CSFP was effective in preventing an increase in malnutrition among children under five, especially in 1…
Did you notice? The Global South has just shifted the power
Inspired by Táíwò's call to investigate the “omissions and blind spots” (2022: 5) of the decolonization movement, we posit that important threads of both the decolonization and “shift-the-power” movements share (neo-)colonial assumptions. They overestimate the importance of “development industry” of bilateral donors, multilateral lenders and international NGOs for everyday life and public policy in most of the Global South. The middle-income coun…
The policy transfer of community-based rehabilitation in Gulu, Uganda
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 organ…
Technology Choice in Bhutan
The macro-economic and environmental features of Bhutan are highly unusual, and have important implications for technology choice in that country. The labour intensive technologies appropriate for most developing economies are, in fact, inappropriate for Bhutan. Labour saving technologies which are economical in their use of capital and relatively intensive in their use of land, and which help generate government revenue, are best suited to Bhuta…
Focus on Economic Sociology A Principal-Agent Analysis of the Family
This paper suggests that a principal-agent perspective may be one of several useful ways of analyzing the family. The principal-agent literature has so far ignored an important set of cases where the principal is incapable of defining and defending her own interests, and so is assigned an agent by law or custom. This paper applies principal-agent analysis to one such case, the family, where the child is taken as the principal and the parent is he…
Zimbabwe's Child Supplementary Feeding Programme
In 1992-3 and 1995-6, Zimbabwe used a Child Supplementary Feeding Programme (CSFP) to combat child malnutrition during drought-induced emergencies. Previous evaluations of the CSFP relied on routine administrative data and key informant interviews and made only cursory use of available household survey data. These evaluations concluded that the CSFP was effective in preventing an increase in malnutrition among children under five, especially in 1…
Zimbabwe’s Agricultural Recovery Programme in the 1990s
A Social Safety Net for the Chronically Poor? Zimbabwe's Public Assistance Programme in the 1990s
Focus-Pocus? Thinking Critically about Whether Aid Organizations Should Do Fewer Things in Fewer Countries
The OECD Development Assistance Committee and G7 Finance Ministers have suggested that many bilateral and multilateral aid organizations are too dispersed, pursuing too many objectives in too many countries and too many sectors with too many partners. These organizations are accused of lacking critical mass, failing to follow their comparative advantage, failing to find and exploit a niche, and having high transactions costs and low effectiveness…
Risks, Rights, and Needs
Where Did Bhutan's Gross National Happiness Come From? The Origins of an Invented Tradition
The Kingdom of Bhutan has attracted international attention for adopting "Gross National Happiness" (GNH) as its national development policy. The central notion is that gross national happiness is more important than gross national product; the four pillars of GNH are sustainable economic development, good governance, preservation of the natural environment and preservation of the national culture. This paper traces the historical origins of the …
Strategies to shape the international order
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 …
The policy transfer of community-based rehabilitation in Gulu, Uganda
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 organ…
The ‘New’ national development planning and global development goals
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 fr…
The resurgence of national development planning
After decades in the political and ideological wilderness, national development planning has made a comeback. The number of countries with a national development plan has doubled since 2006. Given that national development planning has always served various interests and ideologies and that it has always had both political and technical aspects, this article asks, ‘how did we get back here?’. This article uncovers the pathways that countries have…
Guided by the beauty of our weapons
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 …
Fifty years of capacity building
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 descripti…
Are the SDGs a Hegemonic Global Policy Agenda
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 plan…
Immiserizing growth
Immiserizing growth: when growth fails the poor." Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 41(1), pp. 161–162
Did you notice? The Global South has just shifted the power
Inspired by Táíwò's call to investigate the “omissions and blind spots” (2022: 5) of the decolonization movement, we posit that important threads of both the decolonization and “shift-the-power” movements share (neo-)colonial assumptions. They overestimate the importance of “development industry” of bilateral donors, multilateral lenders and international NGOs for everyday life and public policy in most of the Global South. The middle-income coun…
Killing Two Birds With One Stone? A New Pragmatist Perspective on the Rigor‐Relevance Gap in the Literature on Capacity Building Projects
Despite scholarly and professional efforts, most capacity building projects fall short. The normative agenda, an effort to structure the concept and its practical applications, failed to produce rigorous thinking. A rigor‐relevance gap seems to prevail. This article examines capacity building in the academic literature using criteria of scientific rigor and practical relevance. We asked: Why has the normative agenda failed to produce rigorous cap…
A Thaw in the Chill? Charities and Public Policy Engagement in Canada
This article examines the effects of changes in 2018–19 to the Income Tax Act and Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) regulations that were ostensibly intended to facilitate public policy engagement by Canadian charities. The article examines a case study of charities in the international development sector through interviews with charity leaders and quantitative analysis of data from the Canada Revenue Agency, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying, and…
Political science (15 works) · Economics (14 works) · Business (9 works) · Economic growth (8 works) · Law (8 works) · International Development and Aid (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Geography (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Politics (4 works)