The relationship between female and younger legislative representation and performance on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Though the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were crafted through an inclusive process, research on the relationship between greater female or younger legislative representation and SDG performance has been lacking. This article employs a linear mixed effects modeling approach to shed light on this relationship. Controlling for economic and democracy levels and population, the modeling reveals a positive correlation between female and youth legislative representation and SDG performance. Additional analyses, however, suggest the strength of the relationships with female and youth legislative representation vary between the socioeconomic and environmental SDGs. Female and youth representation are strongly correlated with the socioeconomic SDG index; they improve the fit of the model for the environmental SDG index. This result may stem from a tendency in developed countries to trade off the environmental SDGs for the socioeconomic SDGs. It may also imply that greater legislative representation is not sufficient to overcome constraints in energy and consumption and production systems that often lead to those trade-offs. Rather bringing women and younger people into legislatures may need to be combined with institutional and policy reforms that turn socioeconomic and environmental trade-offs into synergies

Governing the Sustainable Development Goals in the COVID-19 era: Bringing back hierarchic styles of governance?

Adopted in 2015, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were intended to motivate governments and the international community to address the world's most pressing social and environmental challenges. However, most countries are not on pace to achieve the SDGs. The economic and human toll of the COVID-19 pandemic stands to further delay action beyond the SDGs' 2030 target date. Yet, viewed from another perspective, COVID-19 offers an opportunity to improve the governance of, and accelerate progress in, the SDGs. This paper builds upon well-established work on meta-governance to determine what changes in governance could be needed for such an outcome to materialize. More specifically, the paper employs a text analysis of keywords related to hierarchic, market, and network governance styles in high-profile SDG plans from Denmark, Japan, and Viet Nam. The text analysis demonstrates that all three countries potentially rely too heavily on market-oriented governance styles. The paper then contrasts the governance for the SDGs with a qualitative review of more hierarchic styles of governance outlined in the three countries' COVID-19 programs. The paper closes by discussing whether crises such as COVID-19 can lead to more balanced modes of governance to strengthen the political momentum on the SDG