Learning from international development projects: Blending Critical Project Studies and Critical Development Studies

• Paper aims at making international development projects critical.
• Paper presents critical perspectives in development project management.
• Paper proposes postdevelopment, Habermasian, Foucauldian, and neo-Marxist lenses.
• Paper suggests a Framework for practitioners to reflect on power relations.
• Paper blends Critical Project Studies and Critical Development Studies.

This article aims at making international development (ID) projects critical. To that end, it shows that project management (PM) in ID has evolved as an offshoot of conventional PM moving like the latter, but at varying speeds, from a traditional approach suited to blueprint projects where tools matter (1960s–1980s); towards eclectic and contingent approaches suited to process projects where people matter the most (1980s–now); and finally pointing towards the potential contribution of a critical perspective which focuses on issues of power (1980s–now). Consequently, it points to a confluence between the Critical Project Studies movement and Critical Development Studies movements. More specifically, it argues that the postdevelopment, the Habermasian, the Foucauldian and the neo-Marxist lenses may be effectively called upon in that scholarship. Thus, it suggests a framework to encourage project actors to reflect on their personal positions in light of the power relations which shape PM in ID.