Governing through Goals

In September 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals as an integral part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Sustainable Development Goals mark the most ambitious effort yet to place goal setting at the center of global governance and policy. This book is the first book addressing global governance through goals, asking three sets of questions. First, the book studies in detail the core characteristics of goal setting in global governance, asking when it is an appropriate strategy in global governance and what makes global governance through goals different from other approaches such as rule making or norm promotion. Second, the book analyze under what conditions a goal-oriented approach can ensure progress toward desired ends; what can be learned from other, earlier experiences of global goal setting, especially the Millennium Development Goals; and what governance arrangements are likely to facilitate progress in implementing the new Sustainable Development Goals. Third, the book studies the practical and operational challenges involved in global governance through goals in promoting sustainability and the prospects for achieving such a demanding new agenda. The book revealed that the approach of “global governance through goals”—and the Sustainable Development Goals as a prime example—is marked by a number of key characteristics, but none of those is specific to this type of governance. Yet all these characteristics together, in our view, amount to a unique and novel way of steering and distinct type of institutional arrangement in global governance.