The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda, and their 169 targets, are interdependent and interlinked. The successful implementation of all SDGs will rely upon disentangling complex interactions between the goals and their targets. This implies that implementing the SDGs requires cross-sectoral processes to foster policy coherence. Over recent years, academic research has produced a number of different proposals for categorizing the SDGs, systematically mapping the linkages between them, and identifying the nature of their interdependencies. The aim of this review article is to provide ideas of how to move from generic appraisals of SDG interdependencies towards translating these interdependencies into policy action. To do so, the article first provides an overview of existing frameworks for the systematic conceptualization of the SDGs and the interlinkages and interdependencies between them. Secondly, the article critically discusses advantages and limitations of these frameworks, with a particular focus on methodological weaknesses, practical applicability to specific contexts, and utility for the development of policy strategies for coherent SDG planning and implementation. Based on this discussion, the article proposes a roadmap for how research on interdependencies can meaningfully provide orientation for policy action.

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Die deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar.The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Dr. Anita Breuer is a political scientist and senior researcher at the Department III "Governance, Statehood, Security" of the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), where her research focuses on the role of new Information and Communications Technologies in democracy promotion and civil society mobilisation. AbstractOne of the hallmarks of the Tunisian uprising that ousted President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011 was its broad base of support. To the surprise of many Middle East experts who had previously regarded co-opted and quiescent middle classes as the bedrock of stability for authoritarian regimes in the region, the Tunisian revolution rode on the back of a broad coalition of social forces that united an alienated intellectual elite with the rural poor and urban middle classes in opposition to the regime. It is a widely shared assumption that this joining of disparate forces would not have been possible without modern communication technologies and social media. But it is less clear exactly how such social media interacted with other contextual factors to bring about a national protest movement of sufficient proportions to topple an extremely entrenched authoritarian regime. Drawing on evidence from the popular protests in Tunisia between December 2010 and January 2011, expert interviews with Tunisian bloggers, and a web survey conducted among Tunisian Facebook users, this paper argues that social media (1) allowed a "digital elite" to form personal networks and circumvent the national media blackout by brokering information for outside mainstream media; (2) helped to overcome the "free rider" problem of collective action by reporting the magnitude of protest events; and (3) facilitated the formation of a national collective identity which was supportive of protest action and transcended geographical and socio-economic disparities by providing a shared, mobilizing element of emotional grievance.

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Starting from the 1980s, institutions of direct democracy were introduced into most Latin American constitutions. To date, the practical application of these institutions remains almost exclusively restricted to the subtype of government plebiscites while the use of citizen initiated instruments remains scarce. To explain the region's low frequency of use of citizen initiated instruments of direct democracy this explorative study proceeds in three sections. The first recapitulates regulatory legislation on, and practical experience with direct democracy in Latin America. The second proposes and applies an index for the comparative measurement of legal obstacles provided by institutional frameworks and goes on to discuss further explanatory propositions on factors that may interact with these legal obstacles to obstruct direct democratic citizen participation. Finally, these hypotheses are tested through an interview-based study with actors involved in the recent practical experience with direct democracy in Costa Rica. The study concludes that the institutional design of citizen initiated instruments of direct democracy alone does not suffice to explain the frequency of their practical application. Rather than this, application frequency appears to be a function of the combined interactive effects of legal institutional factors with sociological and political party factors such as strategic action preferences and party elites' attitudes.

El uso de los referendos de iniciativa gubernamental en América Latina. Hacia una teoría sobre las causas del uso de votaciones populares iniciadas por el gobierno AnitA Breuer Department of Comparative Politics, University of Cologne ABstrActOver the past two decades there has been a considerable increase in the number of referendums worldwide. the existing literature on direct democracy has so far failed to explain this phenomenon by delivering a consistent theory on the causes of referendums. this explorative study aims at undertaking steps toward closing this gap by focusing on the specific type of facultative government-initiated referendums (FGir) and their use in presidential systems. using Qca (a case-sensitive technique based on the formal logic of Boolean algebra), this study systematically compares the political opportunity structures of 49 presidential systems from 12 Latin american countries to detect the factors that spurred or obstructed the occurrence of FGir. it concludes that FGir are closely linked to high levels of party system fragmentation and divided government, i.e. two factors which have long been deemed problematic in the context of presidential systems, while their obstruction is mainly owed to the specific constitutional provisions regulating the referendum device.Keywords: referéndums, Latin america, Fragmentation, direct democracy. Resumen En las últimas dos décadas ha existido alrededor del mundo un considerable aumento en el número de votaciones populares. Sin embargo, la literatura existente sobre democracia directa no ha sabido explicar el fenómeno mediante una teoría consistente de las causas de los referéndums. Este estudio exploratorio busca dar un paso adelante para cerrar esta brecha, enfocándose en los referendum facultativos iniciados por poderes políticos formales (facultative government-initiated referendums -FGIR