Understanding how national development planning (NDP) shapes public institutions and procedures for development: the case of Colombia

This article explores how national development planning (NDP) shapes the institutions and processes for coordinating multi-level strategic planning of public organizations for development in Colombia, drawing on the views of local NDP scholars and practitioners. This article applies a strategic planning lens to analyze the influence of NDP in public organizations, based on the data from 21 interviews of Colombian scholars and key experts. I found that NDP works as the State brain to think about cross-cutting issues and as a participative mechanism to foster the continuity of an implicit development agenda across public organizations. Additionally, the national planning agency DNP has worked as an elite school of dedicated econocrats that shapes the planning processes of public organizations, despite challenges linked to coordination and assessment of development processes, decentralizing the state capacity and a self-colonized way of thinking. My findings are of value to development scholars and decision-makers, particularly in Global South countries.