Multistakeholder Partnerships for the SDGs: Actors’ Views on UN Metagovernance

Abstract

In the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the United Nations assigned an important role to multistakeholder partnerships for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals. Since partnerships show a mixed success record, this article analyzes whether relevant actors in the UN context are inclined to translate lessons learned and the increased knowledge about partnerships’ conditions for success into an improved “UN metagovernance.” Criticizing the current institutional setup, most of the interviewed actors proposed that partnerships should be metagoverned by the UN through systemwide principles, rules, and procedures. There is, however, little consensus as to how that should be done. Drawing on assumptions from the literature and extensive empirical research, the article identifies patterns in actors’ perspectives on the issue.

Tourism partnerships: localizing the SDG agenda in Fiji

“…We focus here specifically on the multi-stakeholder partnerships which aim to 'enhance the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development' (target 17.16) and 'encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships' (target 17.17). Existing research on partnerships and the SDGs centers principally oncross-sectoral, multistakeholder, transnational partnerships (Beisheim & Simon, 2018;MacDonald et al, 2018), emphasizing the role of government policy and leadership in enabling their successful governance and operation (Horan, 2019;Kamphof & Melissen, 2018). Horan refers to such multi-levelled collaborations as a 'partnership of partnerships' revolving around 'solidarity, cooperative action, and the governance of sustainable development' (2019, p. 5).…”

A New Approach to Partnerships for SDG Transformations

“…Increasingly it is recognized that better frameworks are needed for partnerships [71]. There is a consensus that current frameworks are fragmented and rudimentary [45].…”

“…Partnership governance, often defined as meta-governance in the literature, refers to the "strategic steering and coordination of the partnership system" [63]. A tension in this literature exists over whether a bottom-up or top-down approach is more appropriate for partnerships (see Beisheim and Simon [71] for a recent review of this debate).…”

“…(cf. Beisheim and Simon [64,71] for a summary of these recommendations). Furthermore, there could be a rating and reward system and a website tracking keystone transformation partnerships.…”

“…The UN resolution "Towards Global Partnerships" defines them as "collaborative relations between various parties, both public and non-public, in which all participants agree to work together to achieve a common purpose or undertake a specific task and, as mutually agreed, to share risks and responsibilities, resources and benefits" [70]. In the academic/expert literature, one common definition defines them as intersectoral collaborations between parties from two or more sectors, e.g., state, business, civil society, that strive to contribute to a sustainability goal [35,59,71].…”