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Assessing the SDGs from the point of view of global social governance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2020

Bob Deacon
Bob Deacon*
Affiliation:
Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of York, York, UK Department of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
*
* Corresponding author. Emails: bob.deacon@york.ac.uk; b.deacon@sheffield.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article assesses the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in terms of their contribution to improved global social governance. As a global policy-making process they are commended. As a set of global social policy aspirations the SDGs are the first global social policy. In terms of the contributions the SDG document makes to improving the architecture of global social governance it is found to fail. It fails in the field of global redistribution, global taxation, global regulation and in the field of the realisation of global social rights. The SDGs document embodies a reversal in policy-making away from a concern to construct improved global governance institutions back to an era of strengthening national sovereignty. The anti-structural adjustment sentiments of the 1980s cast their shadow over attempts to construct a socially responsible globalisation in the 2010s. The SDGs do make suggestions regarding the role of regionalism in meeting the goals and targets and indeed the article suggests reforms in regional social governance might be a more productive route to follow.

Keywords

SDGsglobal social policyglobal social governance
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy , Volume 32 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Social Policy and the Transformative Potential of the SDGs , June 2016 , pp. 116 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

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