Policy Support, Effectiveness and Legitimacy in the Localization of the SDGs

Policy support, effectiveness and legitimacy in the localization of Sustainable Development Goals1

This study was commissioned and co-published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Generalitat de Catalunya, Spain (through its Agency for Development Cooperation, ACCD).

Research was conducted by Mr. Francisco J. Granados, Senior Researcher of the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI), and Mr. Andrea Noferini, Senior Researcher and Adjunt Professor Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and Pompeu Fabra University (UPF).

This document is a summary version of the study published by the same authors titled “Subnational governments and the 2030 Agenda:Strengthening policy effectiveness and legitimacy with the localization of the Sustainable Development Goals” (UNDP and Generalitat de Catalunya, 2019).

Peer Reviewer: Javier Sánchez (Generalitat de Catalunya), Francine Melchioretto (UNDP), Johannes Krassnitzer (UNDP) and Gemma Aguado (UNDP).

We wish to acknowledge the financial support provided by the Generalitat de Catalunya.

Overall coordination, including initial project design, procurement and supervision were assured by Francine Melchioretto (UNDP) and Javier Sánchez (Generalitat de Catalunya).

Editing and proofreading: Victoria Patience.

Graphic design and layout editing: Fernando Muñoz.

The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the United Nations, including UNDP; the United Nations Member States; ACCD; IBEI; UAB; or the UFP. These institutions do not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this publication and accept no responsibility for any consequence of their use.

Please note that quotations or excerpts from the study may be reproduced on condition that the source is indicated.

Copyright © UNDP, ACCD, Spain, 2020. All rights reserved.

Abstract

The implementation of the 2030 Agenda relies on a form of global governance that is characterized by weak institutional arrangements and the absence of legally binding commitments and formal enforcement incentives. The resulting policy framework for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) withing countries is prone to low levels of policy support from political authorities and stakeholders, which can lead to policy failure and shortfalls in implementation. Three policy components can help enhance policy support by strengthening the effectiveness and legitimacy of policy processes: (a) institutional coordination between different levels of government and policy domains; (b) stakeholder participation in the process of negotiating policy preferences and contributing policy resources; and (c) policy monitoring as a core factor in holding political authorities accountable. We examine how localizing policy processes by involving subnational authorities in the implementation of the SDGs can enhance the way these three components contribute to generating greater policy support and more successful policies. Our analysis is divided into four sections that reflect the classical stages of the policy cycle – agenda setting, policy formulation, implementation and evaluation – and aims to guide further research on this topic and be used as a policymaking tool.

01. Introduction

The 2030 Agenda invokes a set of shared international principles and values that countries should apply when defining policies to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It aspires to have a transformational effect on policymaking and policy impacts by calling for coordination between different levels of government, the integration of policy domains, inclusive stakeholder participation and policy monitoring as a foundation for accountability. Unlike other global governance efforts, the 2030 Agenda relies on a novel form of international governance that is characterized by weak institutional arrangements and an absence of legally binding commitments and formal enforcement incentives. These circumstances may result in low policy support at the country level, which may lead to shortcomings in implementation and thus to policy failure. As a consequence, initiatives to foster the effectiveness and legitimacy of policies can increase support for them among stakeholders and the political authorities who are responsible for delivering SDGs policies, thus resulting in the 2030 Agenda being implemented successfully.

Stakeholder participation, monitoring and institutional coordination are core aspects of the 2030 Agenda. In this paper, we argue that obtaining and maintaining ongoing policy support for the long-term implementation of the 2030 Agenda is more feasible if the effectiveness and legitimacy of the policy process are strengthened by (a) observing stakeholder preferences during the process of defining SDG policies and making them participant of the policy process, (b) establishing monitoring systems that hold the political authorities responsible for implementing SDGs accountable for doing so, and (c) fostering appropriate institutional coordination between the levels of government and policy domains involved in multisectoral policies.

Stakeholders are supportive of policy processes that rely on inclusive participation and monitoring systems that hold the public institutions involved in these processes accountable for them. Both of these factors increase the effectiveness and legitimacy of policies and the likelihood of stakeholders committing to transformative policy processes. Governments are expected to support policy processes that stakeholders perceive as legitimate and effective because of the potentially positive impact this can have on electoral outcomes. Moreover, governments tend to find it convenient to increase their political commitment to policy processes that have been legitimated by inclusive stakeholder participation, as these are more likely to lead to effective outcomes.

We examine how the localization of policy processes to implement SDGs at the territorial level can enhance stakeholder participation, monitoring and institutional coordination. This strengthens policy effectiveness and legitimacy and thus makes both political authorities and stakeholders more committed to creating policies to implement the SDGs. By “SDG localization”, we mean actively involving subnational governments (SNGs) and local stakeholders in defining, implementing, and monitoring SDG policies along the different stages of the policy cycle. This approach is more sensitive to the social, economic, and political context of a particular territory, enhances stakeholder participation, and emphasizes accountability. The analysis is structured around how stakeholder participation, monitoring and institutional coordination can increase policy support at each of the four policy cycle stages: agenda-setting, decision-making, implementation and evaluation.

The next section discusses policy support, its relationship with policy effectiveness and legitimacy, and the policy cycle approach in the context of implementing the 2030 Agenda. Section three focuses on institutional coordination, stakeholder participation and policy monitoring in the context of the localization of the 2030 Agenda and subnational localization. The fourth section examines for each policy-cycle stage how localizing these three policy aspects can enhance policy support by strengthening policy effectiveness and legitimacy at each stage in the policy cycle. Our analysis could guide further research on this topic and be used as policymaking reference for localizing the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. The final section in the paper contains our general conclusions.

02. Analytical framework

The key concepts discussed in this document are policy support, effectiveness and legitimacy; the policy cycle approach; the localization of the policy processes; and how the 2030 Agenda addresses the policy aspects of institutional coordination, stakeholder participation and monitoring. These concepts are explored in this section.

2.1. Policy support, effectiveness and legitimacy

The 2030 Agenda invokes a set of shared international principles and values that countries should apply when defining policies to implement the SDGs. These include coordination between different levels of government, the integration of policy domains, inclusive stakeholder participation and policy monitoring as a foundation for accountability. Unlike other global governance efforts that are largely based on a topdown approach, the 2030 Agenda relies on “governance through goals”, a novel form of governance defined by weak institutional arrangements and the absence of legally binding commitments and formal enforcement incentives (Young, 2017; Biermann, Kanie, and Kim, 2017; Kanie and Biermann, 2017; see also Jones, 2017; Persson, Weitz and Nilsson, 2016; and Karlsson‐Vinkhuyzen and Vihma, 2009). Under this governance paradigm, the success of the 2030 Agenda relies on the commitment of sovereign countries not legally bound to the achievement the SDGs.

The legitimacy conferred by the broad international consensus around the SDGs increases the likelihood of countries implementing the 2030 Agenda. Nevertheless, a key challenge to this process is ensuring constant long-term policy support from national political authorities and stakeholders. Enforcing political decisions is difficult without a formal system of sanctions (Dahl, 1989; Peters, 1986). This makes it necessary for alternative drivers of policy support to be strengthened, such as policy effectiveness and legitimacy. Fostering political support is especially relevant to implementing the SDGs because, besides putting forward a set of development goals, the 2030 Agenda aspires to transform policymaking by proposing multilevel, multisector and multi-stakeholder

governance reforms that may diverge from countries’ existing government and administrative structures and policy dynamics.

We analyse how the localization of the 2030 Agenda can take advantage from the policy capabilities of subnational governments and local stakeholders to strengthen the effectiveness and legitimacy of the policy process, thus, resulting in greater policy support for the implementation of SDGs. Potential effectiveness and legitimacy gains are presented in connection with four policy cycle stages: agenda setting, policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. The core argument of the study suggests the following: (a) reaching and maintaining a persistent policy commitment to the long-term implementation of the SDGs is more feasible if the policy process generates highly effective and legitimate policies; (b) these two policy characteristics can be fostered if policies are determined according to local stakeholders’ preferences and are sensitive to the development needs and the social, economic and political characteristics of specific territories; and (c) this can be better achieved when the policy process is localized at the subnational level.

Our analysis is structured around three policy aspects that are underscored in the 2030 Agenda and are fundamental to examine how the localization of the policy process can favour policy effectiveness and legitimacy: (a) institutional coordination, understood as mechanisms for attaining and organizing policy resources and political will from different levels of government, administrative bodies and other public actors; (b) stakeholder participation, which seeks to achieve inclusive, plural, open policy preference negotiation and attain policy resource contributions; and (c) monitoring of the policy process and its outcomes, which enables the political actors taking part in the process to be held accountable for this. In this section and the following one, we explore these concepts, which are also summarized in figure 1.

Policy legitimacy

Legitimacy is considered to be a prerequisite for political authority (Beetham, 1991; George, 1980; Buchanan, 2002). Different types of legitimacy have been defined according to their source (Beetham and Lord, 1998; Dahl, 1989, 1998; Scharpf ,1999; O’Donnell, 2004). Input legitimacy is rooted in the idea of “government by the people” – legitimate authoritative decisions result from a negotiation process that considers people’s preferences – and it focuses on the processes informing political decisions and policymaking dynamics. Output legitimacy is based on “government for the people’, wherein a policy is legitimate if it benefits the public. This approach focuses on the consequences of the decision-making process and policy accountability rather than on the decision-making process itself.3 Recent studies (Schmidt, 2013; Jagers, Matti and Nordblom, 2016; see also Dryzek, 2001) on newer governance systems (with multiple stakeholder participants or spanning multiple levels of government) define a “throughput” legitimacy, which is based on the quality of the inclusion of actors in the policy process, policy interactions and policy procedures. This form of legitimacy is associated with deliberative practices that broaden stakeholder participation throughout fair, open, inclusive and transparent governance processes.

Regulatory governance studies that are based on the principal-agent approach look at accountability (and transparency) to examine the delegation of authority (Majone, 1994, 1997; Scott, 2000). Majone (1997) argues that public sector reforms and network governance models emphasize accountability and a change from input to output legitimacy since the latter is strongly associated with evaluating policy outcomes to improve accountability. Institutionalized accountability processes are also associated with policy effectiveness because they increase the authorities’ incentives for being politically effective (O’Donnell, 2004). In an analogous discussion, Patil, Vieider and Tetlock (2014) differentiate between input accountability, which focuses on the efforts to achieve outcomes, and output accountability, which centres on how effective efforts to deliver the expected policy outcomes actually are. The 2030 Agenda encourages both input accountability (concerning the “means of implementation” of the SDGs) and outcome accountability (the attainment of the SDGs).

Policy effectiveness

Policy effectiveness concerns how far a public policy attains its objectives (Peters, 2012) and, as discussed above, confers policy legitimacy (i.e. output legitimacy). In turn, policies that effectively satisfy citizens’ needs result in greater support for these, which facilitates the compliance of policy actors. Effectiveness is achieved improving policy design, which involves assessing the nature, urgency and priority of a policy

issue, evaluating the channels available for negotiating interests and the preferred styles of governance, and also defining formal and informal mechanisms and incentives to mobilize public and private policy resources to ensure policy support (Meny and Thoening, 1992).

The implementation of the 2030 Agenda is a process that aims to combine universal principles with heterogeneous local preferences and territorial contexts with diverse institutional settings and socioeconomic conditions.4 Since countries and subnational territories vary regarding their initial positions, governance styles and preferences, the shared, universal SDG targets must be translated in “differentiated” ways to adapt them to particular territorial contexts (Meuleman, 2018). Designing effective policies to implement the SDGs becomes particularly challenging under these circumstances (Nilsson, Griggs and Visbeck, 2016). Achieving the 2030 Agenda demands going beyond “governance as usual”, not only because implementing the 2030 Agenda implies dealing with intersecting and interlinked policy goals, but, more importantly, because it poses the challenge of how to successfully combine different governance approaches “on the ground”. That is, choosing the situational best tailor-made combination of hierarchical, network and market governance styles depending on the opportunities (and limitations) of a specific territory and its policy actors.5

In sum, the particular ways of implementing the SDGs in a specific context are determined by diverse institutional capacities and the preferences of countries and subnational territories when it comes to establishing an enabling environment for flexible, inclusive, effective combinations of governance styles (i.e. some degree of coordinated governance). Apparently contrasting approaches (e.g. bottom-up versus top-down modes, cooperative versus market-oriented methods, strong leadership versus decentralized ownership) may be mutually enforcing rather than contradictory and can be reconciled to be implemented in particular policy situations (Meuleman and Niestroy, 2015; Christopoulos, Horvath and Kull, 2012).

2.2. The policy cycle approach

The policy cycle approach allows analysts to assess and explain possible gaps and shortcomings in public policies that may affect the effectiveness and legitimacy of a given policy.6 It usually divides the policy process into the four stages presented below: agenda setting, policy formulation, implementation and evaluation (Anderson, 1975; Peters, 1986; Bates and Eldredge, 1980; Hogwood and Gunn, 1984). This division into observable components allows the policymaking process to be analysed systematically in a way that differentiates the role of the actors involved at each stage (Sutton, 1999; Scharpf, 1999).7 This is particularly helpful when it comes to analysing policies to implement the SDGs that are characterized by multi-actor and multilevel governance models in which

participants’ levels of commitment and responsibility vary throughout the stages of the policy cycle (Bexell and Jonsson, 2017). The policy cycle approach allows us to consider how support for a policy is driven by different forms of legitimacy at different points in the policy process: input legitimacy during the initial decision-making stage, throughput legitimacy during the implementation stage, and output legitimacy during the evaluation stage (Jagers, Matti and Nordblom, 2016).

The policy agenda-setting stage involves prioritizing different social needs and selecting which problems to tackle according to how important and urgent they are. Government institutions seeking to achieve the SDGs need to inform, listen to and mobilize citizens. They must also provide structured, formal forums for debate among stakeholders and improve coordination mechanisms for the negotiation of interests. The policy agenda becomes more effective and legitimate when citizens and stakeholders who are sufficiently and critically informed can openly negotiate their preferences.

The target audiences for information vary depending on which stakeholders and actors are involved in particular territories and policy issues. Three groups are particularly important to implementing the SDGs at the local level: citizens, politicians and technical civil servants. Although public awareness around the SDGs appears to have grown in the five years since they were officially announced, they remain opaque, unknown and abstract in the eyes of mainstream audiences. In a recent survey with more than 26,000 individuals from 174 countries, less than half of the respondents worldwide said they knew of the SDGs.8 The average awareness score for the SDGs is just under 50 percent, although the rate is slightly higher among respondents from the European Union (56 percent).

Politicians also appear to be insufficiently informed regarding the salience and relevance of the SDGs for their political agendas. Political elites are not yet fully aware of the SDGs, especially in low- and middle-income countries. To date, there has been little politicization of the SDGs, by which we mean their inclusion in political parties’ electoral programmes. Doing so would be an innovative step towards more effective, accountable, legitimated implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

Public officials working in technical areas – in other words, the people who truly execute many public policies –perceive the SDGs as being too conceptual and vague. The administrative structures of many governments deem the SDGs to be global interests that are mainly linked to international cooperation, and departments may resist changing existent sector-based policy dynamics. Moreover, when power is dispersed within a government, conflicting agendas among administrative units from different sectors can undermine policy coherence.9

The second stage in the policy cycle is policy formulation, which involves selecting appropriate governance mechanisms and policy instruments to achieve certain expected policy goals. As regards the 2030 Agenda, after undertaking critical reviews of existing governance structures, governments and stakeholders are co-responsible for

designing the institutional setting (i.e. institutions and processes) used to implement the SDGs. Internal committees, task forces, working groups and the like can be created or adapted to coordinate and strengthen the policymaking process. When goals bring together different sector-specific policy issues and affect multiple stakeholders, policy formulation becomes more complex, and actors may have divergent positions on which policy instruments are appropriate. This difference of opinion can result in an unclear distribution of tasks and responsibilities that may jeopardize the implementation of the policy and accountability for it.

Depending on their degree of autonomy, SNGs can employ various policy instruments that define their capability for formulating policies. These include economic tools (taxes, spending, incentives), legal norms (laws, decrees, regulations) or voluntary selfregulation. The process of aligning, adapting and/or including SDGs in subnational territorial strategies and frameworks has taken different forms (see section 3.1 on institutional coordination). Many national and subnational governments have formally included the 2030 Agenda as part of their political and development programmes. Some national and regional parliaments have officially approved long-term strategies to implement the SDGs that enhance the political nature of the agreement. In other cases, the strategy largely consists of a programmatic document which there is no legal obligation to implement. The involvement of parliaments strengthens horizontal public scrutiny and accountability, which helps address criticisms that claim that the SDGs are exclusively a government-driven exercise.10 Parliaments play a central role in advancing the SDGs by adopting enabling legislation (e.g. budgetary laws and regulations). They also contribute to improving the quality of the debate among diverse constituencies and help domestic political actors commit to non-partisan long-term development strategies.

The policy cycle stage of implementation is the real test of the power of governments, according to Hogwood and Gunn (1984). Public policy research suggests that there may be more than a hundred variables that affect the implementation of a policy. Implementation failures usually occur because policymakers and governments rely on dense, complex networks of diverse actors to execute approved policies, including different levels of government, public agencies, civil servants, the private sector and civil society. Implementation cases in which a single executive, independent, autonomous agency is responsible for executing an entire policy are extremely unusual, particularly in the context of the integrated, holistic policy approach that is associated with the SDGs.

As implementing the 2030 Agenda relies upon the participation of many diverse actors, understanding the relationship between policymakers and policy deliverers is crucial to improving policy effectiveness. Distributing tasks is difficult when many actors are involved and the policy issues at stake are complex, and communication and coordination costs tend to increase. Even assuming that communication channels work properly, policy instructions can easily be misinterpreted, understood only partially, or even ignored by actors with particular agendas and interests, who may apply policy instructions at their discretion.

Evaluation is the final stage in the policy cycle. It relies on monitoring the policy outcomes and assessing the expected impacts.11 Evaluating policy impacts is usually a challenging activity in which considerable amounts of data and deep methodological expertise are needed to analyse how much of the observed impact can be attributed to the policy, discarding possible spurious effects. Governments and public authorities present different degrees of commitment to policy evaluation depending on their institutional cultures. The institutionalization of policy evaluation is in its infancy in many low- and medium-income countries, which often lack a proper evaluation culture. The impact of policies to achieve the SDGs is often not evaluated properly because the policies in question have not been fully implemented and/or more time is needed before the impacts on beneficiaries become evident.

Monitoring refers to the collection and analysis of information about a programme, project or policy that usually begins while this is still ongoing. It accomplishes two main goals: controlling whether policy actions have been correctly executed and produced the expected outcomes while gathering relevant data to adjust and improve them. Monitoring is a fundamental component of accountability systems.12 Some national governments and weak SNGs may find it hard to implement the indicator-based monitoring system of the 2030 Agenda without deploying additional human and financial resources or without support from international institutions (or national ones, in the case of SNGs).

2.3. Localizing the SDGs

Localizing the SDGs means “taking into account subnational contexts in the achievement of the 2030 Agenda, from the setting of goals and targets to determining the means of implementation and using indicators to measure and monitor progress”.13

Localization refers both to how SNGs can support the achievement of the SDGs through bottom-up actions, and how the SDGs provide a framework for local development policy. Localization is also linked to three themes: whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches, the territorial approach to local development, and subsidiarity.

First, the whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches emphasize the need to frame policymaking processes in an integrated way that involves all levels of government and members of society (Gold V, 2019). This implies that subnational governments and members of society must effectively take part in all stages of the policy cycle. Second, localization recognizes local development as an endogenous, spatially integrated phenomenon and confers the primary responsibility for planning, managing and financing it to local authorities (European Commission, 2016; 2018). 14 Finally, localization relies on the concept of subsidiarity, according to which responsibilities for public policies should be exercised by the elected authorities that are closest to citizens.

The definition of localization used in this document does not refer exclusively to implementing SDG at the local level. Localizing also entails an ongoing political and policy process aimed at applying the universal principles of the 2030 Agenda to particular territories (e.g. the premise of “leaving no one behind”, the rights-based approach, and the “right to the city” principle). Localizing the SDGs is thus also about political will, the co-creation of effective public policies with communities, and finding solutions to global challenges at the territorial level. Given the heterogeneity of SNGs across and within countries and even within regions, localization is expected to be territorially sensitive: there are as many localization styles as there are territories and levels of government.

Subnational governments are decentralized public authorities that operate below the central government level with their own responsibilities and some degree of autonomy in the provision of public goods to the population of a particular territory.15 The OECD accounts for a total of 522,629 SNGs (including more than 250,000 units in India alone –OECD, 2016a). Some 1,700 of these SNGs are defined as regions or federated units (i.e. state levels in federal arrangements). Our analysis focuses mainly on this smaller group of public authorities that are in an intermediate position between local and national governments, have legislative and executive powers that make them responsible for authoritative decision-making, and act over a specific territory with a significant population, usually more than 150,000 people (Hooghe, Marks and Schakel, 2010;).

SNGs are full contributors to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. They participate in defining international development goals, implement them in their territory and contribute to monitoring progress on them. SNGs are formally included in the United Nations High-Level Political Forum as part of the Major Groups and other Stakeholders (they make up the Local Authorities Major Group). Membership of this group grants them several benefits over a “normal” observer status, such as the right to make written or oral contributions to official meetings. Overall, the international political scenario is more positive for SNGs today than it was a couple of decades ago, and their participation in global policymaking is now uncontested (Grasa and Sanchez Cano, 2013). In multilevel and supranational polities such the European Union, scholars and practitioners have examined the role of SNGs as more than mere executors of policies designed elsewhere, but also as providers of greater policy legitimacy and promoters of policy innovation at the territorial level (Tatham, 2015).

It is usually claimed that SNGs are directly involved in many SDG-related policy sectors (particularly for SDGs 6, 7, 11, 12, 15 and 17). Research has indicated that the implementation of 65 percent of SDG targets would be at risk if local urban stakeholders were not involved (UCLG, 2019. From a governance perspective, SNGs contribute to defining and implementing more effective, legitimated public policies due to their intermediate position, below the central state and above the municipal level. SNGs can strengthen coordination and collaboration with higher and lower levels of government

to address contemporary challenges such as urbanization, demographic pressures, climate change, conflicts, and the impacts of technology (GOLD V Report, 2019). They contribute to creating transformative, innovative policy frameworks for several sustainable development fields.16 Importantly, SNGs are government actors with legal and fiscal mandates and prescribed responsibilities towards their citizens. Unlike other major groups or constituencies that defend their own interests (such as interest groups, advocacy coalitions or NGOs), SNGs advocate for the interests of all citizens in their jurisdiction. Their proximity to citizens reinforces their democratic legitimacy as they can guarantee the inclusion of local preferences in the complex process of implementing the SDGs.

In the five years since the 2030 Agenda was announced, various practical guidelines have become available to SNGs, including toolboxes, road maps and agreed practices seeking to facilitate the localization of the SDGs.17 Despite this, implementing the 2030 Agenda is expected to pose significant challenges to SNGs. Policy reforms are often controversial and when they are complex or poorly explained, resistance and obstacles are likely to appear. At the domestic level, reforms are generally prompted by central governments that are asked to adapt inclusive, territorially sensitive approaches to governance (UNDP, 2018). In institutional contexts where SNGs’ participation in domestic policymaking is limited, policy coherence and the negotiation of territorial preferences may be deficient. SNGs also vary notably according to their degree of autonomy (Hooghe and Marks, 2001). Finally, although decentralization processes have advanced all across the world, in some cases, only limited powers are delegated to SNGs, resulting in insufficient political, fiscal or administrative autonomy. In these contexts, subnational claims for greater inclusion and participation in the domestic implementation of the 2030 Agenda do not reflect any real power to deliver the SDGs.

03. Key policy elements in the localization of the 2030 Agenda

This section presents arguments in the 2030 Agenda concerning the three policy elements considered in the analysis because of their potential contribution to enhancing policy support strengthening the effectiveness and legitimacy of the policy process: institutional coordination, stakeholder participation and monitoring. They are examined also in connection with localization of the SDGs.

3.1. Institutional coordination and the localization of the SDGs

Institutional coordination here refers to formal means of coordination between governments and public authorities (mainly local, subnational and central governments) to implement the 2030 Agenda. Institutional coordination is a key component of the multilevel governance approach, which entails a decision-making scenario characterized by a plural negotiation of interests that is vertically and horizontally integrated.18

The 2030 Agenda underscores the importance of strengthening institutional frameworks for sustainable development at the national and subnational levels. The chosen institutional design and coordination mechanisms can impact how policy responsibilities are allocated among various levels of government and thus influence the legitimacy and effectiveness of the policy process and accountability for it. In this section, we discuss three main factors relating to institutional coordination and SNGs in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda: (a) policy coherence, (b) institutional change/adaptation and (c) the need to strengthen the institutional relationship between regional and local governments.

Coordination between institutions is vital to achieving policy coherence, which in the field of development policy is an approach seeking to integrate the economic, social, environmental and governance dimensions of sustainable development at every stage of

domestic and international policy processes (OECD, 2014). SDG Target 17.14 explicitly calls for governments to enhance the policy coherence of sustainable development as an essential criterion for implementing all SDGs. The concept of policy coherence includes horizontal and vertical dimensions that are relevant to the 2030 Agenda (O’Connor et al., 2016).

Horizontal policy coherence refers to institutional arrangements that may facilitate integration between policy sectors, which is likely necessary given the integrative nature of the development issues the SDGs entail and the positive and negative cross-sectoral externalities that may occur during their implementation (Stevens and Kanie, 2016; Stevens, 2018). In these institutional arrangements, there is usually greater representation of the ministries of the environment, transportation, natural resources and the planning and finance-related ministries and less representation of ministries associated with social, educational, housing and transversal policy issues (e.g., gender, transparency, and digitalization). Deciding which institution should coordinate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda at the domestic level is an unclear and context-sensitive task. In some countries, the coordination of responsibilities has been assigned to the highest political level (prime ministers’ offices or cabinets) to capitalize on their political power to impose decisions upon line-ministries or sectoral agencies. In other countries, centralized coordination tasks have been delegated to public agencies that are accountable to parliamentary assemblies. Currently, “breaking down the silos” into which administrative bodies are separated is a universally accepted priority in order to modernize public authorities and find the appropriate specific solutions for each country-specific situation. These transformations, however, can lead to ineffectiveness and a loss of transparency and accountability if merging ministries is unjustified or the delegation of powers to public agencies is unclear, especially when the rule of law is weak and the quality of the country’s institutions is low.

Vertical policy coherence refers to the integration of different territorial interests and preferences in the domestic policymaking process. Specific opportunities or barriers to achieving vertical cooperation may be posed by the structure of the state (centralized versus federal), the political culture and climate in a country, and its particular socioeconomic characteristics and organizational factors. There are evidently no unique solutions for fostering collaboration within countries. In federal countries, the second chamber usually guarantees that subnational preferences are represented. In centralized states, the representation of regional/federated units within national policymaking is usually weaker and dependent on the quality of intergovernmental relations.

Some studies have shown that national governments are increasingly recognizing the role of SNGs in implementing development policies (HLFP, 2018). There are a few examples of inclusive, vertically integrated institutions that represent subnational interests in the domestic political arena, mainly the environmental sector and usually in federal states. However, wholeof-government approaches and coordination mechanisms currently function more as interagency or interministerial collaboration than as truly integrated levels of government. In these contexts, vertical relationships are still dominated by the central government, and subnational

governments’ participation is mainly adaptive, if not passive, albeit with some exceptions. After all, experience has shown that multilevel governance mechanisms cannot easily be introduced in national and subnational contexts (HLPF, 2018).

In many countries, the coordination mechanisms created to implement the 2030 Agenda have required institutional change and/or adaptation. Three main trends have been observed (HLFP, 2018):

1. The creation of new institutions such as consultative councils, interministerial committees, technical commissions or agencies (e.g. Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico, Benin, Colombia, Spain, and The Netherlands).

2. The use of pre-existing institutions such as a National Council for Sustainable Development (e.g. Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Moldova, and Moldova) or a similar body such as an Economic and Social Council (Greece), or a State–Regions Committee (Italy).

3. A lack of institutionalization: SNG involvement is channelled through ad hoc meetings or one-off sector consultations.

Regardless of the formal structure that these institutions take, their main goal is to advise central governments on SDG-related issues, coordinate sector-specific ministries and manage the involvement of SNGs and stakeholders in the domestic implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Two major challenges and obstacles to this have been identified. First, in some cases, the national institution responsible for coordination has neither the power nor the legal mandate to impose itself on actors or sanction their misbehaviour. Second, as institutions for coordination are no more than consultative bodies, they usually face difficulties in getting their recommendations accepted or taken seriously by the government. Experience in this regard on the functioning of the National Councils for Sustainable Development advises that the influence of consultative bodies of this sort be strengthened and requires that their recommendations receive a response from the government within a stated period, that they are consulted on certain issues, and that their reports are reviewed by parliamentary committees or similar structures within the legislature (OECD, 2017d; OECD, 2017c).

With nearly 54 percent of the world’s population living in cities – a figure that may potentially increase to two-thirds by 2030 –collaboration mechanisms between regions and cities is fundamental to addressing the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the New Urban Agenda adopted at Habitat III.19 Urban settlements suffer some of the most serious negative impacts of unsustainable human and economic activities, such as stark socioeconomic inequalities, social exclusion, extreme poverty, unemployment, poor environmental conditions and the high production of greenhouse gas emissions.

Urban structures vary notably across the world. Some large global cities are already among the most prominent actors in the localization of SDGs. The size and budget of some cities mean that they resemble national states. However, many municipalities are still rural, underfinanced and often lack the administrative capacities to deliver the SDGs.

The subsidiarity principle can operate in a particularly effective way in these contexts.19

Since Goal 11 directly refers to making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable, many authors have centred exclusively on the role of cities in achieving Goal 11. We adopt in this study a different perspective that highlights the role of regional governments and their relationships with local governments in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

The institutional coordination between regional governments and cities (i.e. local and supralocal governments) can serve multiple valuable policy objectives. Generally, this approach promotes greater territorial cohesion and an integrated perspective on the combined impacts of the different policy actions that different institutions adopt to implement the SDGs (Nrg4SD and University of Strathclyde, 2018). The greater proximity between local and regional governments enables the design of territorially integrated strategies that can capture the interconnected effects that different policies implemented by different administrations may have within a particular geographical area. The linkages between urban and rural areas as well as innovative governance and policy solutions (e.g. metropolitan governance structures and regional funding schemes) are more likely to be established when coordination between regional and local administrations is channelled through formal mechanisms. Regional governments can provide the support that small municipalities need to develop local plans and strategies to implement the SDGs. Regions can promote capacity-building activities, awareness-raising campaign, workshops, training activities, memoranda of understanding and other policy instruments that reach larger audiences than if these actions are solely undertaken by local administrations.20

3.2. Stakeholder participation and the localization of the SDGs

Implementing the 2030 Agenda requires policy support from stakeholders (citizens and public- and private-sector entities) that contribute multiple policy resources (World Bank, 1996; OECD, 2015; Schmidt-Traub and Sachs, 2015).21Researchers and practitioners emphasize the importance of adopting a participatory approach when creating development policies, especially those designed for a transition towards sustainability (Bohunovsky, Jäger and Omann, 2011; Vervoort et al., 2014). Localizing policy processes to implement the SDGs can foster the involvement of stakeholders by increasing their proximity to the policy process, thus facilitating policy consultation and cooperation with SNGs. This, in turn, helps improve the effectiveness of policy processes and the resulting policies.22 Localizing the SDGs along the stages of the policy cycle can favour stakeholders supporting these policies as they are more likely to specifically target local constituencies and communities, which motivates local stakeholders and makes their involvement more visible. The more interested they are in the policy, the more concerned they are about improving the effectiveness of the policy and holding policymakers accountable. These processes would foster stakeholders’ policy support and make the responsible government more attentive to the policy process.

The 2030 Agenda recommends tackling complex development issues by adopting an integrated multisectoral policy approach. This benefits from governments’ cooperation with stakeholders with complementary capabilities and resources (e.g. information on policy preferences, formal knowledge, human capabilities and expertise, technologies and financial contributions).23 Cooperation with resourceful stakeholders is particularly relevant for governments facing outstanding development problems with scarce public resources. SDG 17 (“Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development”) recognizes the importance of multi-stakeholder partnerships to mobilize policy resources. It encourages the creation of integrated coalitions of governments, civil society and the private sector working to implement the 2030 Agenda. Governments should lead these partnerships, coordinating contributions to the action plan, balancing participants’ interests and fostering cooperation to make the partnership more effective at attaining its objectives.

Our analysis focuses on how countries can increase policy support for the 2030 Agenda by capitalizing on SNGs’ potential to (a) adapt the SDGs to local circumstances, (b) understand local stakeholders’ capabilities (through their proximity to them), and (c) encourage and coordinate participation in complex multi-stakeholder partnerships.24 These three factors should promote policy effectiveness: SNGs’ ability to foster the involvement of local stakeholders in the policy process should cultivate the latter’s commitment to the policy their acceptance and sense of ownership of it, which should also increase their concern for policy accountability processes and promote policy legitimacy.

SNGs can also foster greater stakeholder participation than national governments for emotional reasons. Citizens in a region or municipality may feel a close affinity with their subnational government for cultural or political identity reasons and a sense of community and a social bond with those in the subnational territory, or perhaps as a result of participating actively in subnational civil associations. An affinity of this sort can be reinforced by the circumscribed benefits that an SNG’s policies provide those in its territory. It is also confirmed when citizens interpret policy results as a community triumph, despite the universal nature of the 2030 Agenda. In consequence, SDGs that require strong citizen involvement particularly benefit from the implementation process being localized, particularly if the policy impacts are fundamentally local.

Stakeholder participation can also be considered in relation to monitoring and accountability. Aside from the technical challenge of collecting and evaluating monitoring indicators, governments may be reluctant to establish a monitoring system that will be used to keep them accountable. One important form of stakeholder participation therefore consists of public demand for creating effective monitoring systems to assess the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. This demand is more likely to be manifested when the focus is on monitoring SNGs. This is because stakeholders tend to be more motivated to learn about the effectiveness of policies that specifically impact their territory and to hold the SNGs that are responsible for these policies accountable.

If there is no coordination between the territories on how to implement the 2030 Agenda, there is a risk that Localizing SDGs may induce territorial inequalities within countries that are connected with stakeholder participation: subnational territories vary in terms of the policy resource endowments they possess and those that are contributed by their citizens, civil associations, firms, research institutions and the like. These differences could create well-being inequality between citizens from different territories due to cross-regional differences in their progress implementing the SDGs, particularly if these differences are not offset by inter-territorial cooperation and compensatory state mechanisms. Cross-regional inequality in progress on SDGs can also result from differences in leadership and policy resource endowments across SNGs.

SNGs should have enough leadership capability and resources to avoid overdependency on contributions from private stakeholder or powerful social groups. If they do not, the policymaking process may be prone to favour certain interests over others. To avoid subverting 2030 Agenda principles such as “leaving no one behind” and prioritize policies that impact social groups with urgent needs, governments should be able to align private stakeholders’ interests with those of the general public and establish institutional guarantee mechanisms to ensure that politically weak groups are represented, while preventing corruption and government co-option. If this is not in place, Localizing the SDGs may bring negative effects: one example is the risk of disaggregating the political power of the country’s public authorities or civil groups that advocate cross-territorial public interests (e.g. labour rights, environmentalism, and consumer rights), thus weakening their political negotiation capacity vis-à-vis other actors (e.g. large corporations).

The 2030 Agenda contemplates the role of private firms and major stakeholders because of how their activity relates to many SDGs and also because they can potentially contribute resources to implementing the agenda (UNCTAD, 2014), such as by generating tax revenues and job incomes, or through philanthropy, responsible corporate citizenship, or by supplying “bottom of the pyramid” markets (Kolk, Rivera-Santos and Rufin, 2014; Prahalad and Hammond, 2002). Firms can align their corporate social responsibility initiatives with the SDGs, particularly as regards environmental sustainability, social inequalities, and poverty amelioration (UNCG, 2013; Kolk, 2016).25 As SDG 16 indicates, by cooperating with global IGOs and other stakeholders, firms can help strengthen institutions working to promote peace and improve justice and social equality, thus contributing to social stability and the rule of law, both of which are also essential to the progress of the private sector itself. To foster social stability, firms need to reconcile their self-interest with sustainable social institutions and fair economic structures. They should also support good governance mechanisms that aim to prevent corruption, which diverts funds that would otherwise be devoted to inclusive development, poverty amelioration, and other SDGs (SDG Fund, 2017).

SNGs’ proximity to the local communities where firms’ core activities take place within makes them particularly able to manage multi-stakeholder partnerships seeking

to prevent or cope with negative externalities associated with business activities (e.g. environmental damage and the displacement of local populations) and to control selfish corporate actions that may spark distrust, social conflict and unrest in local communities (e.g. abusive labour conditions, discriminatory hiring, occupational risks and diseases and damage to businesses operating in other economic sectors). SNGs can also be instrumental in dealing with the small and medium-sized firms that operate in their territory, particularly if the national government focuses on larger multinationals whose decision-making centres are located in the nation’s capital or abroad. SNGs also play a vital role in connecting firms within their territory (particularly newcomers) with educational and research institutions, thus fostering innovation cooperation, professional synergies and entrepreneurship.

Economic actors that operate under the principles of the social and solidarity economy (SSE) pursue a “transformative localization” of the SDGs that contributes to changing the social, economic and political structures that underpin inequality and poverty.26 The SSE associates the “leave no one behind” principle with localized structural transformations “everywhere and for everyone”. The UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD, 2017) argues that an SSE approach allows three potential mistakes in implementing the SDGs to be avoided: (a) uneven development caused by national strategies that disregard specific local needs and conditions and dismiss local stakeholders; (b) a lack of governance institutions that include a broad representation of social groups and prevent local elites from exerting undue influence on the implementation of the SDGs, be it via formal or informal relationships; and (c) a local development approach that ignores negative externalities for neighbouring territories and disregards the “SDGs for all” solidarity principle that suggests that all territories in a country should benefit from the economic activity that takes place there. SNGs are well suited to preventing the two first pitfalls by implementing inclusive participatory mechanisms. They can address the third by establishing inter-municipal solidarity systems, and national governments can do likewise as regards interregional solidarity (Utting and Morales, 2016).

3.3. Monitoring and the localization of the SDGs

Policy monitoring involves tracking the process of making and implementing a policy to improve this. It also entails assessing whether the expected policy outcomes and impacts have been achieved and thus fosters accountability on the part of policymakers and implementers. The 2030 Agenda defines monitoring layers for global and national SDGs. Global monitoring is based on 232 Global Monitoring Indicators (GMIs) to be tracked in every country and reported at the High-level Political Forum as part of the Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) to assess progress on the SDGs at the national and subnational levels.27 The Global SDG Indicator Framework recognizes the national ownership of the monitoring process. GMIs rely on data produced by national statistical

offices that is harmonized to ensure cross-country comparability and global standards. Global monitoring is key for the “peer-pressure/naming and shaming” mechanism for fostering countries’ commitment to implementing the SDGs through fear of disappointing pears and suffering reputational damage within international society if they do not meet the benchmarks they have pledged to accomplish (Young, 2017; Biermann, Kanie, and Kim, 2017; Kanie and Biermann, 2017).28 National monitoring is based on GMIs, but countries can develop and implement Complementary National Indicators (CNIs) that are adjusted to their particular national needs, priorities and monitoring capability. Countries decide on the number, nature, timing, collection method, international comparability and disaggregation level of their CNIs.

Accountability is a cross-cutting issue in the 2030 Agenda. One target in SDG 16 refers to the creation of effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels. The broad consensus achieved during the negotiation of the 2030 Agenda should help to overcome countries’ potential reluctance to establish effective accountability systems, which should be led by national governments using evidence-based criteria and engaging stakeholders. Specifically, national governments are responsible for providing (voluntary) systematic “follow-up and review” of their progress on the SDGs to provide accountability for citizens (UN-GA 2015, paragraphs 45, 47, 48).29 The 2030 Agenda’s emphasis on multi-stakeholder partnerships also demands forms of “mutual/collective accountability” among partners that are based on peer pressure and reputational damage (rather than enforcement) mechanisms. These operate better in localized policy responsibility contexts than in the more diffuse national context (OECD, 2015, p. 78; Jones, 2017).30 The localization of accountability processes (e.g. policy progress forums, peer reviews and monitoring structures in which civil society can participate) makes democratic control of the policy process more effective because citizens are more receptive to accountability mechanisms and are closer to the policymaking process (Papadopoulos, 2007).

Within political systems, accountability refers to mechanisms that (a) oblige politicians and bureaucrats to inform and publicly justify each decision they adopt and (b) make it possible to sanction them (Przeworski, Stokes and Manin, 1999). Accountability is primarily considered from a vertical perspective, wherein the citizenry holds governments responsible for their actions. It can also be considered horizontally, in the sense of the different institutions and organizations within a political system being accountable to each other (including accountability within government, between decision makers and courts, between companies and regulators, and between bureaucracies and parliament). Accountability is associated with policy (output) legitimacy.

The 2030 Agenda has fostered the debate around improving the monitoring of development policies through novel, better-quality forms of data that are disaggregated by vulnerable groups and territories. A “data presentation revolution” (Woodbridge, 2015; see also Persson, Weitz and Nilsson, 2016) consisting of improving the presentation of development data to policymakers and stakeholders – which is easier in localized

monitoring systems – can improve the role of monitoring in policymaking, policy transparency and accountability, understandings of progress on SDGs, and stakeholder participation. “Open data” systems, for instance, allow for monitoring data to be made the publicly available, fostering accountability, policy ownership and stakeholder participation.31

The 2030 Agenda encourages states to lead the territorial disaggregation of SDG monitoring by adjusting indicators to the specific development priorities and policy circumstances of subnational territories.33 Territorially disaggregated data helps SNGs more with policymaking and identifying within-country inequalities and ways to diminish these (an SDG 10 target). The Network of Regional Governments for Sustainable Development (nrg4SD, 2017) recommends that SNGs set up their SDG monitoring system by (a) defining the indicators that are most appropriate to their particular circumstances and (b) ensuring the system is harmonious and coherent with the monitoring undertaken by the national government and other regions so that the data needed to develop the VNRs can be aggregated. Nrg4SD also advocates for UN agencies to include subnational monitoring components in their reporting frameworks, for regional governments to take part in developing VNRs (particularly SNGs with experience collecting data and analysing indicators within their territory), and for subnational statistical offices to be involved in planning and monitoring the national SDG strategy.

Barnett and Parnell (2016) highlight the importance of localized monitoring at the city level because some sustainable development issues are shaped by urban processes that require particularly close scrutiny. Cities are sites of development opportunity because of positive feedback between urban economic competitiveness, social cohesion, environmental sustainability and responsive governance. They are also spaces of specific territorial and relational forms of agency that (a) are available only to place-based embedded actors (e.g. local governments, local businesses and local civil associations) and (b) involve capabilities rooted in sensitive local knowledge that thus vary from place to place and issue to issue (MacLeod and Jones, 2007; Cox, 1997). These variations should be taken into account when defining localized monitoring indicators, which benefit from big data analysis of micro-interactions within city life (Barnett and Parnell, 2016, p. 93).

Subnational monitoring can be inefficient in countries that are small or have limited internal diversity or insufficient resources for establishing a decentralized monitoring system. In these cases, concentrating monitoring resources within national statistical offices can be more efficient, as these can still provide SNGs with territorially disaggregated data. Wherever is appropriate, national governments can foster the territorial disaggregation of monitoring by defining and implementing common protocols around reporting, metrics, and indicators to harmonize and coordinate data across territories, which prevents double-counting and enables data aggregation and comparability.

Policy monitoring and accountability can favour policy effectiveness and legitimacy, particularly if citizens and other stakeholders play an active role in these processes.

Monitoring can generate information on policy results that enhances policy transparency and public accountability if it is made publicly available (e.g. through open data systems). Monitoring can also foster policy effectiveness if the information is presented publicly in a format that enables comparative benchmarking of policy results across a country’s subnational territories and thus allows citizens to assess the performance of their SNGs.33 Citizens could rely on this comparative information to express their (dis)satisfaction with their SNGs’ progress towards the SDGs and can support or penalize this through their electoral decisions or other actions (e.g. demonstrations and survey responses). Consequently, SNGs would be compelled to make their policymaking more effective. Stakeholders other than citizens (e.g. civil associations, firms, business associations and research institutions) can also draw on comparative benchmarking to assess their SNGs’ performances and decide on how to support them. Citizen and stakeholder awareness of this form of comparative benchmarking should increase public demand for monitoring and the attention paid to this, particularly regarding localized policy processes that have a direct impact on their particular territory.

Monitoring can involve examining both policy achievements (outcome/impact monitoring) and the policy process (input/means monitoring). The 2030 Agenda relies on both sorts of monitoring in connection with accountability: assessment of efforts to achieve outcomes (process/means accountability) and of how effective these efforts are at actually delivering outcomes (outcome accountability) (Patil, Vieider and Tetlock, 2014, p. 69).34

Monitoring both outcomes and means complicates accountability because it is unclear as to which benchmark policymakers should be held accountable for. Monitoring indicators can be defined to act either as a management tool for defining and implementing policies or to serve as a report card for policy progress (SDSN, 2015). The latter is more suitable for accountability and comparative benchmarking, and the former usually requires indicators to be adjusted to particular territorial circumstances, their use limited to comparisons across territories, and for them to be harmonized and aggregated so that national and international trends can be analysed.

The complexity that results from multiple stakeholders making diverse resource contributions to SDG policy processes (Schmidt-Traub and Sachs, 2015) can significantly complicate monitoring and may constitute a reason to focus exclusively on policy results monitoring (outcomes/impacts), similarly to the case for development cooperation under the 2030 Agenda (OECD, 2016b).35 The subnational localization of the SDGs can simplify the stakeholder pool involved in a policy process, which makes resource contributions less complex and clarifies policy responsibilities. In this regard, Jones (2017, p. 31) claims that the 2030 Agenda should clarify the responsibilities to be attributed to different types of stakeholders and specify their expected contributions more explicitly.

Policymakers implementing the SDGs may favour simple, single-variable indicators with straightforward policy implications that are easy to compile, interpret, communicate and align with their existing policy and monitoring frameworks (SDSN, 2015; Woodbridge,

2015). One drawback to these particularistic indicators is their emphasis on a specific sector, which is associated with a policymaking style that overlooks how sector-specific policy departments often needed to be integrated to effectively tackle certain complex sustainable development issues. Alternatively, an integrative policymaking style would need to rely on multifunctional indicators that provide information about progress on multiple policy goals all at once. These indicators also entail disadvantages: (a) the information they provide is too generic for policymaking; (b) it is unclear how far each of the different sector-specific departments intervening in the policy should be kept accountable for the policy results; and (c) they can lead to policies being defined with the sole purpose of improving performances against the umbrella indicator, ignoring other aspects that should also be part of reaching the policy target (e.g. citizen participation).

Finally, national governments that delegate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda to SNGs may prefer indicators on policy outcome/impacts in order to fulfil their commitment to presenting the VNRs and holding SNGs accountable. On the contrary, SNGs that are responsible for implementing the SDGs in their territory may prefer to devote their monitoring efforts to indicators that provide them insights for the policymaking process, which would also justify their being in charge of this monitoring task. Separating the roles of implementing a policy and monitoring its outcomes/results at two different levels of government can increase the reliability and integrity of the monitoring process.36 A higher government level monitoring a lower one can also favour the harmonization of the indicators applied within the lower-level territories for comparative benchmarking across territories and to aggregate subnational policy results to develop VNRs.

04. SDGs localization across the policy cycle: gaining legitimacy and effectiveness

This section examines how the localization of the policy processes needed to implement the SDGs can catalyse institutional coordination, stakeholder participation and monitoring, thus strengthening policy support by increasing policy effectiveness and legitimacy. The analysis is divided according to the four stages in the policy cycle: agenda setting, policy formulation, implementation and evaluation.

4.1. Institutional coordination gains

Institutional coordination is a key policy issue throughout the entire policy cycle. Localizing it implies involving SNGs in defining and selecting coordination mechanisms between different levels of governments, public administrative bodies and other policy actors taking part in the policy process. As regards the implementation of the SDGs, the localization of coordination mechanisms facilitates the negotiation and prioritization of territorial preferences and the adjustment and combination of different policy actions. It also helps improve the selection of appropriate strategies and policy instruments, facilitates better implementation and is crucial in the coordination of the monitoring of the country’s overall progress towards the SDGs. This section considers how the localization of institutional coordination at each of the different stages of the policy cycle can result in more effective, legitimate policies for implementing the 2030 Agenda.

At the agenda-setting stage, institutional coordination basically centres on how to frame the national strategy for implementing the SDGs at the territorial level, prioritize multiple goals according to specific contexts and increase public awareness of the SDGs. Localizing institutional coordination makes this stage more effective because it guarantees that policy

issues from the (local) policy agenda that have been set according to local preferences and territorial development needs are present in the national SDG agenda or are at least coherent and aligned with this.37 When framing the national strategy for implementing the SDGs at the domestic level, a coordination model that is attentive to subnational preferences from the beginning of the policy process will support the “leave no one behind” principle by foregrounding the interests of weak territorial actors and SNGs in the national policy negotiation process. For smaller SNGs, coordination with national governments and more active SNGs or national SNG associations is another significant way of prompting action.38

For new development policies to gain public support, the SDG framework must be acknowledged by citizens, policymakers and policy delivers. Awareness-raising campaigns are a powerful instrument for introducing the SDGs into domestic contexts and, particularly, for prioritizing them in a territory’s policy agenda.39 Localizing these campaigns from the initial stages of the policy process helps raise the quality of the debate around the prioritization of contrasting policy goals. Since central governments usually own most budgetary and financial resources, national campaigns seeking to increase awareness among vast, generic audiences can be highly effective or, at least, more effective than smaller local campaigns. Campaigns coordinated by better-endowed SNGs and international associations of SNGs also important in guaranteeing that no one is left behind, especially local governments with scarce resources.40 As regards policy awareness within the administration, close, active collaboration between subnational and central governments appears to be associated with greater awareness of SDGs within public authorities, especially among public servants and technicians involved in SDG-related sectors (PLATFORMA and Council of European Municipalities and Regions, 2018).

On the matter of policy legitimacy, a political system performs better if citizens engage in localized public debate and different levels of government and constituencies can openly negotiate based on the “debated” preferences (Dahl, 1989). Multilevel negotiations that taken local and national preferences into consideration are usually costly and depend on institutional aspects such as the nature of intergovernmental relations and the political culture. As the debate on the SDGs becomes more concerned with territorial priorities, localizing coordination mechanisms within public authorities makes the negotiation process more inclusive. The more local and regional governments participate in these negotiations and see their demands being met (or at least debated), the more their sense of ownership of and commitment to policies is expected to increase. Localizing the debate on domestic policy priorities by involving local politicians and/or regional and local assemblies can result in more plural policy debates, which also confers greater democratic legitimacy on the resulting policy agenda.

The policy formulation stage focuses on defining the policy instruments and institutions that will be responsible for the domestic implementation of the SDGs on the ground. Policy formulation is context-sensitive and its localization guarantees that governance styles, institutions and instruments fit into the particular administrative and political

culture of a territory. According to the concept of metagovernance (Meulemen, 2018), factors such as the degree of decentralization, asymmetries in political responsibilities, the characteristics of SNGs and the partisan politics of opposing political majorities may all play a part in selecting preferred governance styles and identifying the actor in the best position to lead the implementation of SDGs at the domestic level.

By enhancing coordination between levels of government, the localization of institutional mechanisms allows policy formulation issues to be disaggregated by territorial preferences and demands.41 Downstreaming the deliberative phase to the subnational level guarantees that more appropriate institutional design and policy instruments are selected and that these can function effectively in each specific territorial context. According to this perspective, national strategies are likely to be more effective if they include subnational policy preferences in their organizational design for achieving the SDGs. Top-down approaches are more commonplace in highly centralized countries, and more participatory, bottom-up coordination mechanisms can be established in decentralized and federal institutional settings.42 The relevant applied literature on European Union Cohesion policy claims, for example, that SNG involvement in defining long-term planning strategies (e.g. European Regional Development Fund and European Social Fund Operational Programmes) had a positive effect on policy deliberation and implementation. For example, the development of the European Union’s partnership principle and the establishment of decentralized Managing Authorities are two of the main policy instruments that public authorities and different levels of government have used to jointly define strategic development plans and draft operational programmes on the basis of participatory and consensual policymaking procedures (Bauer, 2002; Thielemann, 1999 Jordana, Mota and Noferini, 2012).

Localizing policy formulation also enhances the legitimacy of the selected institutional design and policy instruments. By reducing the political space from the national to the subnational level, localization improves the deliberative phase of the policymaking process. The more delegation that takes place, the greater the potential problems of democratic legitimacy associated with the loss of citizens’ authority and control over the issues that have been delegated (Dahl, 1998). As autonomous political systems within the state structure, subnational political arenas constitute deliberative spaces to which local constituencies can attach their preferences regarding policy instruments and institutional coordination mechanisms. SNG participation in formulating multilevel policies contributes to a wellgrounded, decentralized policy approach that can enhance the legitimacy of multilevel policymaking scenarios.43

Coordination systems that understand specific subnational scenarios are key to enhancing effectiveness and legitimacy during the implementation stage of the policy cycle. Implementing the 2030 Agenda relies upon many diverse actors, making coordination between public authorities a necessary condition for reducing implementation failures. Localizing coordination mechanisms at the implementation stage enables the actors

(policy deliverers) across the national territory to be evaluated more effectively and contributes to creating a knowledge base that provides guidance for executing policy interventions across the country and locally. SNGs are policymakers with extensive experience and significant capabilities for executing complex programmes, plans and policies. They can mobilize local resources and build capacities for effective, responsive policy implementation in partnership with local governments and stakeholders. When sufficiently endowed, regional or supramunicipal governments can, for example, attain greater economies of scale, exploit informational advantages and reach an “effective size” for relevant investment with local impacts. Regional governments are in a good position to regulate sectors that are characterized by market failure (e.g. public utilities, health, and education) and can implement SDG-related policies in basic policy areas such as education, tourism and culture, reaching large audiences at relatively low marginal cost.44 Localizing coordination mechanisms when implementing the SDGs can foster policy innovation at the subnational level, where it tends to be easier to implement pilot policy projects than at the national level (UNCTAD, 2017).45 Contracts or agreements based on common priorities and co-financing schemes have been successfully introduced into specific geographic areas to improve cooperation and coordination between levels of government.46

Institutional coordination during the implementation stage of the policy cycle can also confer greater legitimacy on the resulting policies. Institutional coordination may capitalize on how embedded SNGs are in the territory where most policy outcomes are expected to have an impact. This puts them in a good position to enable territorial and actor-centred policy approaches for implementing SDG-related policies, both of which are associated with fostering democratic legitimacy. Localizing the implementation of multiactor policies can enhance policy co-ownership, co-production and co-responsibility, therefore strengthening policy legitimacy and fostering support for (sometimes difficult and costly) implementation processes that may require the policy status quo to be reformed. The proximity of SNGs to policy deliverers and local (public) actors makes it easier to combine resources for implementing policies at the territorial level and facilitates a common understanding of the SDGs. Existing administrative relationships between SNGs and implementers (which are more common at the local level) likely increase their reciprocal commitment to implementing policies.

The evaluation stage in the policy cycle consists of learning whether a policy has achieved its expected outcomes and impacts. Evaluation relies upon a monitoring system for collecting relevant policy data, which should be specific to the area if this is the level at which policy results emerge. Basically, when SNGs acting as primary policy providers are involved in policy monitoring and evaluation (e.g. of local social services), the evaluation of multilevel and multi-actor policies becomes more effective. To achieve this, the role of SNGs’ should be coordinated with institutions operating at other levels and with other actors who are relevant to the policies being evaluated. Coordination between public

authorities that are involved in policy evaluation processes increases policy effectiveness because it clarifies and homologizes their tasks and contributes to institutionalizing evaluation as a good practice that is necessary at all levels of government.

Some SNGs have set up their own comprehensive monitoring systems, often by relying upon the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) framework.47 In these institutionally endowed contexts (e.g. ones with functioning subnational statistical offices), SNGs undertake some evaluation of local policies and development progress. In contrast, SNGs with weaker institutional characteristics are unable to collect local data for policy evaluation. Localizing institutional coordination with regard to policy evaluation can generate positive spillovers, which would enable smaller SNGs to improve their monitoring and evaluation tasks, thus contributing to the overall national monitoring of the SDGs. In this sense, localizing monitoring activities and involving SNGs in defining local indicators can strengthen the institutionalization of monitoring and evaluation tasks and lay the groundwork for making SDG monitoring more effective. Coordination can indeed secure significant political commitment and provide incentives for collaboration between the different governments’ data-producing institutions by preventing resistance to datasharing, for example. In contrast, the lack of coordination between levels of government can result in the information gathered by local and regional governments not being used in (or being inappropriate for) national monitoring and reporting.

Finally, localizing policy monitoring and evaluation activities and coordinating these across public institutions confers greater legitimacy on local monitoring activities. When SNGs take part in creating National Voluntary Reports, it helps keep local authorities committed to gathering and publishing local data correctly. SNGs may consider evaluations of the SDGs and how they are implemented in their territory to be more legitimate if they see the results for their territory disaggregated into the monitoring indicators used for the national evaluation process.

4.2. Stakeholder participation gains

Stakeholder participation can result in policy effectiveness benefits associated with improving policy design and better understandings of implementation and the optimization this using local knowledge (Irvin and Stansbury, 2004) and contextualized social learning (Blackstock, Kelly and Horsey, 2007; Kő, Gábor and Szabó, 2013; Muro and Jeffrey, 2008). Kanter et al. (2016) discuss the integration of academic knowledge with the knowledge and expertise of the local industry and farmer actors in creating sustainability policies. The stakeholder participation literature also points to policy legitimacy benefits in the form of greater trust in the policy decisions (OECD, 2001), the consideration of diverse interests and opinions (Luyet et al., 2012), and increasing public acceptance of policy decisions by combining local and scientific knowledge (Reed, 2008; Tippett, Handley and Ravetz, 2007). Scharpf (1999) indicates that the participatory openness that characterizes network

governance fosters policy decisions that enjoy strong output legitimacy and greater public acceptance because the resulting policies tend to be more in line with the interests of the target stakeholders (although they may be called into question by stakeholders who were absent from the policy process).

Localizing SDGs brings local stakeholders closer to the policy process, thus facilitating the inclusion of local knowledge, social learning and complex multiple interests in this process. It also improves coordination between cooperative stakeholders by encouraging dialogue and reciprocal learning (Jones, 2017). Localization allows specific subnational cultural, political, legal and historical contexts to be taken into account – these may influence the success of the stakeholder participation process (Stenseke, 2009; Abelson et al., 2007; Irvin and Stansbury, 2004). This implies, though, that using best stakeholder participation practices to guide policies in different sociopolitical contexts does not guarantee success because the local characteristics of the best practice cases might not be replicated elsewhere (Luyet et al., 2012; Kanter et al., 2016).48

Implementing public participation in the policy process requires that we identify and characterize stakeholders in terms of their power relations, resources, political influence, implication, interests, salience and legitimacy (Luyet et al., 2012). Stakeholders must be organized into homogeneous groups and assigned specific degrees of participation that take into account which phase the policy project is in and what resources are available for managing stakeholder participation. Involving all possible stakeholders in a participatory process increases the complexity and cost of this, but when stakeholders are not identified or ignored, they may jeopardize the policy project later on. Stakeholder involvement should start in the early stages of the policy process and remain active throughout it. Offering stakeholders sufficient information about the participatory process helps to maintain their levels of motivation and prevent mistrust and frustration that could result in a failed participatory process. Evaluating stakeholder participation leads to learning that may improve future processes and helps various aspects of the process to be evaluated (e.g. transparency, representativeness, and inclusiveness), along with its impact and accountability factors (Asthana, Richardson and Halliday, 2002; Blackstock, Kelly and Horsey, 2007).

Luyet et al. (2012, p. 215; see also Arnstein, 1969; Vroom, 2003; Van Asselt et al., 2001) presents several participatory techniques that are associated with different degrees of involvement: information, consultation, collaboration, co-decision and empowerment, which consists of delegating decision-making around how the project is developed and implemented to stakeholders. Localizing the policy process facilitates the task of attributing a level of involvement to different stakeholders, which should take into account how much trust is placed in them, that of selecting which participatory techniques should be used, which depends on the local cultural and social norms associated with stakeholder participation and the stage in the policy cycle. Early stakeholder involvement in a localized policy process aims to achieve three goals: (a) the inclusion of local data

and knowledge from local experts and practitioners; (b) fostering policy debate among stakeholders; and (c) generating stakeholder buy-in, which is crucial to overcoming social and political roadblocks during implementation (Kanter et al., 2016). One form of early citizen participation in the policy process is the participatory approach to budgeting that was introduced by some countries’ municipal governments in the 1990s. This allows citizens to be directly involved in discussing and deciding on the policy issues to be included and prioritized in the public budget and also in following up on the execution of this, which fosters accountability for the whole policy process (Sintomer et al., 2013).

The effectiveness and legitimacy gains associated with localizing stakeholder participation in SNGs’ implementation of the SDGs can strengthen policy support. These effects can be specified for each stage of the policy cycle. Regarding agenda setting, local stakeholder participation can enhance policy effectiveness by providing relevant contextual information on which SDG targets should be included in the policy agenda and how they should be prioritized within the agenda. Stakeholders representing the interests of social groups that are defined as policy targets (e.g. immigrants associations, women’s advocacy groups and labour unions) can gain easier access to the subnational policymaking process, provide this information and increase their commitment to the eventual process for implementing the SDG targets they favour. Stakeholders that participate in implementing SDGs by contributing policy information on development issues (e.g. academic and research institutions, environmental groups and health professional associations) can provide policymakers with objective reasons concerning particular aspects of the territory that would justify including certain SDG targets in the policy agenda and prioritizing them. They can also suggest how these targets could be adapted to the territory’s needs based on the local data and information they manage or have access to.

If SNGs take into account the suggestions they receive from local stakeholders when defining the policy agenda, the latter should express greater support for the resulting agenda, especially if their claims and demands are included and prioritized but also they merely believe their suggestions were duly considered. Aligning the implementation of the SDGs with local stakeholders’ policy goals and interests can also encourage them to take part in implementing the 2030 Agenda and thus fosters their sense of ownership of it and the subnational policies to put it in place. Honest consideration of local stakeholders’ demands in the process of deciding on the SDG targets that are included and prioritized in the policy agenda legitimizes the implementation process. This adds to the overall legitimacy of the 2030 Agenda and increases the support for the SNG’s implementation of the policy among the local stakeholders who were consulted during the agenda-setting stage.

Local stakeholders taking part in implementing the 2030 Agenda can also help increase the effectiveness of the policy formulation stage. SNGs can use the information they have on stakeholders within their territory to assess the resources the latter might potentially contribute and the support they might provide during the implementation process. SNGs can then adjust the policy to favour greater support by increasing stakeholder

participation. The effectiveness of the policy design can also be improved by adjusting it in response to the preferences and suggestions provided by local stakeholders during both the agenda-setting and policy formulation stages. When it comes to the agendasetting stage, preferences and suggestions should be considered with the higher level of specificity that is required to formulate the policy. The greater proximity between government and stakeholders in subnational policy context allows a higher involvement of local stakeholders in the policy formulation, hence, improving the quality of the policy deliberation, strengthening their policy ownership sense and, therefore, conferring more legitimacy and stakeholders’ policy support to resulting formulation of the policies.

Local stakeholder participation can improve the effectiveness of the implementation of subnational SDG policies by contributing policy assets as was originally defined during the policy formulation stage, which they participated in, or by responding to additional requests for resources and cooperation from SNGs when a policy needs to be reformulated due to a change in local circumstances (e.g. unemployment growth, a refugee crisis or a drought that worsens famine). Local stakeholders have a key role to play in providing information about the ongoing policy implementation process due to how close they are to the territory and target communities. They can propose the implementation process be modified to correct shortcomings and deviations from the agreed policy goals and the implementation plan, or to address unforeseen side-effects and externalities that arise when the policy is implemented. The ongoing involvement of local stakeholders in the implementation of SDG policies enhances their legitimacy and increases support for these. Policy legitimacy can also be increased through the higher-quality information that SNGs have in comparison with national governments on local stakeholders’ policy preferences, which they can use during the dynamic policy implementation stage.

The participation of local stakeholders in SDG policies can increase the effectiveness of the evaluation of the resulting policies and the policy process itself. Local stakeholders are particularly interested in the evaluation of policies that specifically target them or their territory. They are motivated to demand monitoring mechanisms, participate in the evaluation process and use the results of this to hold the SNG responsible for the policy accountable. Local stakeholders can take part in defining monitoring indicators that are appropriate to the particular circumstances of the subnational territory in question and can contribute to the data-collection process. They can improve the effectiveness of policy evaluation by making the evaluation process more rigorous and increasing the consequences of the accountability process. SNGs should be thus focused particularly on delivering policies that effectively satisfy the policy demands of their electoral constituencies. Finally, the involvement of local stakeholders in the policy evaluation stage plays a fundamental part in conferring legitimacy on the policy process because it shows there is a healthy openness towards local policy actors outside of the government, which helps to control the policy process and strengthens accountability for it.

4.3. Monitoring gains

Localizing policy monitoring can increase the effectiveness and legitimacy of subnational SDG policies, resulting in greater policy support for the 2030 Agenda. It can increase policy effectiveness by generating information that helps create policies that are appropriate to the particular circumstances and characteristics of a territory. Policy legitimacy increases when local stakeholders are informed about both the policy process and the results of this. The fact that SNGs are closer to the constituencies targeted by localized policies can make accountability mechanisms more effective because it is easier for local stakeholders to get involved in evaluating the policy process and assess results and because they are more interested in evaluating localized policies and SNGs than nationallevel policies aimed at broader territorial constituencies. The effectiveness and legitimacy advantages that come with localizing policy monitoring should be more significant when all stages of the policy cycle are localized, as this allows the potential benefits of localization to accrue throughout the different stages (as compared to a territorially disaggregated evaluation of the impact of a national policy). Given the human and technical resources needed to establish a monitoring system, localizing this is also more cost-efficient when SNGs take on a significant number of SDG policies that can before more effective through a localized monitoring system.

Hák, Janoušková and Moldan (2016) argue that there needs to be expert, scientific conceptual follow-up on the SDG targets to operationalize these properly and enable an appropriate framework to be defined for monitoring them. According to these authors, credibility, relevance and legitimacy (CRELE) are the key determining factors for monitoring indicator quality. They stress that indicators should be defined on the basis of a strong “indicator-indicated fact” relationship (see also Heink et al., 2015) to prevent incorrect information being obtained regarding target achievement that might erode the legitimacy of the SDGs. The indicators that are defined should convey clear, unambiguous messages to policymakers as well as to the lay public. The scientific knowledge used to define the indicators and the information that these provide should contribute to the policy process from the earliest stages in the policy cycle to maximize the effectiveness of the resulting policies.49 During the agenda-setting and policy formulation stages, indicator frameworks can help with identifying and formulating issues and setting policy objectives that reflect sustainable development ideas, while also making it easier to operationalize SDG targets effectively. Indicators can also help the desired effects to be obtained during the implementation stage of the policy cycle and also to evaluate how successful the policy has been and to revise it, which is how they are most commonly used (Eurostat, 2014).

Indicator frameworks that draw on expert scientific knowledge – with contributions from academics, indicator providers and statisticians – can support policy instruments and thus foster policy legitimacy (Glaser, 2012). This sort of scientific and evidence-

based legitimacy adds to forms of representative legitimacy (e.g. legislative and executive approval, stakeholder interest consultation). It is not common because decision makers tend to apply salience criteria when choosing which specific or short-term strategic policy objectives to adopt (Hák, Janoušková and Moldan, 2016). Expert participation in defining sustainability indicators should follow current trends and combine top-down and bottomup approaches – in other words, indicators that are defined, constructed and evaluated by experts should take political and social preferences into account (Pissourios, 2013). A monitoring framework gains legitimacy when it respects stakeholders’ divergent values and beliefs, is unbiased and treats opposing views and interests fairly, and thus meets the credibility criterion (Cash et al., 2003; Parris and Kates, 2003).

The effectiveness and legitimacy gains associated with localizing policy monitoring when SNGs implement the SDGs can strengthen support for such policies. There are specific effects at each stage of the policy cycle. Localized monitoring can favour policy effectiveness during the agenda-setting stage because the local choice of indicators that defined and implemented in a specific territory provide better information about the existing circumstances there: the policy issues to be addressed (e.g. the extent and urgency of development needs, the number of people affected and local sociopolitical particularities) and the particular actions that could be implemented (e.g. the suitability of alternative policy interventions and the policy resources available for undertaking different actions). Localized monitoring information can therefore help subnational policymakers to make better decisions about the policy issues that need to be included in the policy agenda, prioritize these in terms of importance and urgency, and define what public resources will be devoted to addressing them. The narrower territorial scope of localized monitoring can also facilitate data disaggregation by vulnerable groups within the territory, which provides better information for addressing their specific development needs.

Taking quality data evidence from localized monitoring into account when setting the policy agenda makes decision-making at this stage in the policy cycle more objective, which enhances the legitimacy of the agenda and the policies to be pursued. Using locally specific data evidence should favour the consensus among subnational policymakers and stakeholders as to which policy targets should be included in the agenda and how they should be prioritized. By localizing monitoring, policy makers can obtain monitoring indicators with greater empirical validity: both the definition of the indicators and the data collection process can be better adjusted to the territory’s sociopolitical circumstances than in the case of monitoring of a wider (national) analytical scope. This methodological advantage and the resulting greater precision in policy decisions can protect policymakers from stakeholder criticism of how the policy agenda is defined.

Localized monitoring can also improve the effectiveness of the policy formulation stage because indicators that have been adjusted to monitor a subnational territory provide better information for defining appropriate development policies than if these are formulated using generic indicators for monitoring the diverse development circumstances and

capabilities found in different regions in a country. Localized monitoring not only examines a given territory’s development needs but also the resources and instruments available therein, which need to be considered when policies are being formulated. Subnational policymakers should design localized monitoring systems taking context-specific factors that are relevant for policy formulation into account, such as the policy expertise, resources and capabilities available in the territory and local stakeholders preferences for a particular policy approach for dealing with development issues. As in the agenda-setting stage, the legitimacy of the policy formulation process and the resulting policies can be strengthened if the policy design draws on localized monitoring indicators that are deemed particularly appropriate for understanding the specific policy and socioeconomic circumstances of a subnational territory. These indicators confer objectiveness on the decisions reached during the formulation process, therefore fostering consensus among stakeholders as to whether the resulting policies are appropriate for dealing with the development issues in question.

The implementation stage of the policy cycle can become more effective when monitoring focuses on a specific subnational territory, which allows for relevant changes on the ground to be detected quickly and accurately while the policy is being implemented (e.g. an economic or humanitarian crisis, significant factors that were not anticipated during the policy formulation stage, an increase in the target population or shortfalls in the planned stakeholder contributions). Changes of this sort would jeopardize the effectiveness of the policy if it were implemented in its original form. When such changes are detected, updated information from the localized monitoring process would allow the policy parameters to be adjusted or the policy to be thoroughly reformulated to adapt it to the new context. Close monitoring of policy implementation also allows the following factors to be detected: (a) deviations from the goals that were agreed on by the government and stakeholders during the formulation stage and (b) negative side-effects. Protecting the consensus over the policy’s suitability is crucial to maintaining its legitimacy, while noticing and correcting deviations and potential side-effects reduces the risk of losing stakeholder policy support. Closely monitoring policy implementation can help policy makers find evidence of positive progress and impacts, which can increase stakeholder support and thus strengthen policy legitimacy.

Finally, localizing monitoring can increase the effectiveness of the evaluation of policies to implement the SDGs. A monitoring system that is specifically designed to obtain development and policy-related information from a particular territory can contribute better to assessing policymaking processes and policy results. Localized monitoring also improves accountability on the part of the government responsible for the policymaking process or other actors involved in this. Monitoring indicators that are designed to evaluate a given territory can evaluate the impact of policies targeting local communities and groups accurately, which is a fundamental component in the accountability of the SNG responsible for the policies in question. Effective accountability processes that are grounded in localized monitoring and the participation of local stakeholders can strengthen the legitimacy of the policy process.

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07. Notes

1. This document is a summary version of the study by the same authors titled “Subnational governments and the 2030 Agenda: Strengthening policy effectiveness and legitimacy with the localization of the Sustainable Development Goals” (UNDP and Generalitat de Catalunya, 2019).

2. Unlike the loose international institutional framework described, national political systems present formal intergovernmental and legal structures that must be considered in regards to within-country policy support to implement the 2030 Agenda.

3. Output legitimacy relates to Beetham and Lord’s (1998) definition of efficacy-based legitimacy, which results from how capable a political system is of obtaining policy results that are aligned with the demands of the citizenry and the average voter (i.e. it adopts Hume’s approach to government legitimacy based on its efficacy at generating good political and economic performance). Beetham and Lord (1998) define two other forms of legitimacy: procedural legitimacy, which refers to the methods used to select or elect the main political actors, whereby the greater the freedom and the more direct these methods are, the greater the legitimacy; and social legitimacy, referring to the citizenry’s feeling of belonging to a political community, which affects its moral-based obedience, norm accomplishment and willingness to participate and get involved in political processes.

4. This heterogeneity in governance is defined as “metagovernance” in works like Meuleman (2018) and Meuleman and Niestroy (2015). The European Union is characterized as a major supranational instance of multilevel metagovernance over a wide range of complex, interrelated problems.

5. Formally, governance is a method/mechanism for dealing with a broad range of problems/conflicts in which actors regularly arrive at mutually satisfactory and binding decisions by negotiating with each other and cooperating to implement these decisions (Schmitter, 1997). Governance styles can be defined through the processes of decision-making and implementation, including the manner in which the organizations involved relate to one other. Governance styles are usually described using three ideal types (in the Weberian sense): hierarchical, network and market governance.

6. Here, a public policy is a process by which a government assumes the control over a policy issue in a defined territory (e.g.,

village, township, province, region) and in relation to specific social groups and stakeholders (e.g., consumers, families, companies) applying different instruments (e.g., public funds, public-private partnership, service-contracts) to achieve some expected goals.

7. The policy-cycle approach presents obvious limitation in regards to its validity. This is particularly the case in the lesser developed and endowed policy environments usually found in weak democratic systems and low-income economies, in which political and economic elites usually adopt a dominant position in the policymaking process.

8. “Report of Results; Global Survey on Sustainability and the SDGs: Awareness, Priorities, Need for Action” (January 2020) available at https://www.globalsurvey-sdgs.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/20200205_SC_Global_Survey_Result-Report_english_final.pdf. For a previous survey on SDG awareness see OECD (2017a).

9. “Internalizing” the SDGs within governments’ administrative and political structures is important for two reasons: (a) the SDG framework is usually introduced into the country’s administration via the department in charge of regional external relations or international affairs, and sometimes these departments encounter serious obstacles to mainstreaming the SDGs across sectoral departments; (b) the SDGs must be explained to civil servants because, as indicated by analyses of EU Cohesion policy, training and information-sharing activities among civil servants increase public officials’ ownership of and commitment to policies and thus improve their attitude towards administrative change.

10. “For a review of the role of parliaments in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, see “Parliaments’ Role in Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals: A Parliamentary Handbook” (edited by GOPAC and UNDP). Available at: https://www.undp.org/ content/dam/undp/library/Democratic%20Governance/Parliamentary%20Development/parliaments%20role%20in%20implementing%20the%20SDGs.pdf

11. The specialist public policy analysis literature differentiates between policy outcomes and impacts. (Meny and Thoening, 1992).

12. The UN General Assembly (2010, p. 5) defines accountability as “the obligation of the Organization and its staff members to be answerable for delivering specific results that have been determined through a clear and transparent assignment of responsibility, subject to the availability of resources and the constraints posed by external factors. Accountability includes achieving objectives and results in response to mandates, fair and accurate reporting on performance results, stewardship of funds, and all aspects of

Policy support, effectiveness and legitimacy in the localization of Sustainable Development Goals performance in accordance with regulations, rules and standards, including a clearly defined system of rewards and sanctions.” Accountability mechanisms range from those that incentivize compliance (e.g. peer-pressure, reputation loss, and dispute arbitrations) to the sanctioning of failure according to regulated sanctions or vote losses in electoral processes (Jones, 2017).

13. Statement adopted by the Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments at the Local and Regional Authorities Forum in the HLPF of June 2018. See also UN Habitat (2016). Nevertheless, there is no single definition of the term ‘localization of the SDGs’. The European Parliament, for example, refers to the term “localization” as a key facet of multilevel governance, and uses it to mean the process of defining, bringing about and overseeing local strategies to achieve the SDGs at the local, national and global levels (European Parliamentary Research Service, Decentralised Cooperation in the Context of the 2030 Agenda, PE 607.258, available at http:// www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/IDAN/2017/607258/ EPRS_IDA(2017)607258_EN.pdf)

The OECD (2018) links localization to the territorial dimension of the SDGs and discusses how to transform and adapt the general SDG framework to the preferences of local constituencies and to the policy capabilities of public authorities and other stakeholders who are involved (OECD Programme on a Territorial Approach to the SDGs, available at http://www.oecd.org/cfe/territorial-approach-sdgs.htm). An exhaustive exploration of the term is beyond the scope of this report.

14. Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development (European Commission), 2016, Supporting Decentralization, Local Governance and Local Development Through a Territorial Approach.

15. This report relies on the definition of subnational governments provided by Hooghe, Marks and Schakel (2010). For a more detailed definition based on the notion of autonomy see Boex and Yilmaz (2010) and Eaton and Schroeder (2010).

16. The breakdown of the SNGs’ expenditure on economic functions confirms the close relationship between the responsibilities assigned to SNGs and SDGs. Education, which is a major area of human development, represents nearly 22 percent of SNGs’ total spending. Economic affairs and transportation accounts for 13.8 percent, social protection for 12.5 percent, and health for 9.4 percent (OECD, 2016a).

17. See, for example, the Rapid Integrated Assessment (RIA) supported by the UNDP (2017) and the roadmap provided by the Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments (2018).

18. The original concept of multilevel governance has been used by scholars in diverse ways (Hooghe and Marks, 2001; 2003). For a review of the literature see Stephenson (2013) and Piattoni (2009).

19. A generic definition of the principle of subsidiarity suggests that a policy should be planned and implemented at the action level that is closest to the problem being tackled. Therefore, supra-national and national governments should only address issues that cannot be best addressed by a local government or community or at the individual level.

20. The following examples of regional cooperation with local governments are illustrative. The provincial government of Santa Fe in Argentina developed a strategic plan in partnership with cities to promote instruments for local planning that are aligned to those included in the regional policy. In developing its urban agenda, the regional government of Catalonia has recently started to define a participatory framework for the inclusion of local governments. To achieve this objective, a multisector, multi-actor collegial body known as the Urban Assembly has been created in which all levels of government and representatives of civil society and the private sector participate. The government of the Basque Country has established an official network (Udalsarea 21) that brings together 183 municipalities in the region in pursuit of sustainable solutions for common goals. In Brazil, the state of Paraná supported nearly 400 municipalities by providing organized training sessions for including the SDG framework in local public authorities.

21. Although the citizenry in the sense of the general public often refers to an unorganized, unstructured collection of individuals, some authors consider them to be a particular kind of stakeholder (Luyet et al., 2012).

22. For example, the Barcelona Provincial Council has designed the Municipal Libraries Network Supporting SDGs program to support the local implementation of SDGs using its municipal libraries network. The program aims to raise public awareness of the SDGs and, more significantly, to promote the role of libraries and librarians as local agents of cultural, educational and economic transformation in their community who have a direct impact on people’s lives due to how their proximity to them. The SDG targets considered in the program refer to lifelong learning opportunities, gender equality and women’s empowerment, job creation and entrepreneurship, and the fostering of effective, accountable, inclusive and participatory policy decision-making. The program was developed as part of the International Advocacy Program (IAP) of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). More infor-

mation at https://www.diba.cat/documents/16060163/189231108/ The+Municipal+Libraries+Network+Supporting

23. Specific programs in which SNGs have implemented the SDGs with outstanding stakeholder participation can be found in: Trento, Italy (www.provincia.tn.it); Antioquia, Colombia (www.antioquia.gov. co); Nariño, Colombia (www.gana.nariño.gov.co); Valencia, Spain (www.cooperaciovalenciana.gva.es); Colonia, Uruguay (www.colonia.gub.uy); Basque Country, Spain (www.irekia.euskadi.eus/es/ debates/946?stage=presentation). See also http://www.regionsunies-fogar.org/en/activities/regional-best-practices-database

24. Certain structural factors favor regions’ capability to create and manage multi-stakeholder partnerships with local stakeholders: (a) regions’ administrative relations with and knowledge of local stakeholders allows them to choose the most appropriate ones for each policy (mapping stakeholders and learning about their policy assets and relationship networks can foster that knowledge); (b) the fact that regions occupy an intermediate position between country- and municipal-level governance allows regional governments to deal efficiently with a significant pool of policy actors; (c) the intermediate position of regional governments in the institutional structure of states (between national and local governments) is appropriate for coordinating partnerships with a multilevel set of policy actors (e.g. national ministries and research institutions, regional hospitals and business associations, local advocacy groups and governments).

25. The SDG Fund (2017) describes cases of multinational corporations that align their CSR initiatives with the SDGs (particularly SDG 16, but also with many others), support international CSR initiatives (e.g. the ILO Tripartite Declaration and the UN Global Compact) and collaborate with SDG foundations (e.g. SERES, PVBLIC Foundation or Forética). The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the UN Global Compact and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) have created the SDG Compass, a guide for business action around the SDGs. Forética has created a guide for how state-owned enterprises can contribute to achieving the SDGs.

26. The social and solidarity economy refers to “economic activities guided by principles of cooperation, solidarity, self-management, and which prioritize social and, often, environmental objectives beyond the profit motive” (UNRISD, 2017, p. 1).

27. GMIs were developed by the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG indicators (IAEG-SDGs). They officially came into effect in July 2017, are refined yearly, and were due to be comprehensively

reviewed by the UN Statistical Commission in 2020 and 2025. The Cape Town Global Action Plan for Sustainable Development Data has set a framework to discuss, plan and implement statistical capacity-building through national statistical systems for SDG monitoring.

28. SDGs can be understood as a set of norms at the softest end of a hard-to-soft continuum due to their limited legalization – in other words, the low levels of obligation, precision and delegation; the fact that no hard achievement obligations have been enacted as rules and commitments bound to international or domestic law; the fact that the 17 SDGs and many of the 169 targets are specified in rather vague terms, using aspirational outcomes; the lack of delegation of authority over the implementation of agreements to third parties, including courts, arbitrators, and administrative organizations (Persson, Weitz and Nilsson, 2016; Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen & Vihma, 2009). Because the responsibility, answerability and enforceability aspects of global peer-based accountability mechanisms are weak, they should be strengthened within the EU, G20 and other supranational organizations.

29. Established SDG accountability practices are reviewed in Espey, Walscik, and Kühner (2015) and O’Connor et al. (2016). Jones (2017) considers SDG accountability referred to development cooperation. Beisheim (2015) argues that global accountability mechanisms are important because domestic parliaments and civil society organizations may lack sufficient political capability to hold national governments accountable. The author also indicates that the mutual obligation that states have to each other regarding universal goals with global effects (as is the case with many SDGs) results in their self-interested pursuit of reciprocal monitoring and accountability processes to avoid shared negative consequences (see also de Renzio, 2006, regarding international aid accountability).

30. Collective action theory suggests that the diluted responsibility of broad coalitions of multiple stakeholders may lower policy effectiveness. Benner, Reinicke and Witte (2004) argue that multisectoral public policy networks of stakeholders from public, private and civil contexts must rely on well-defined issue-specific accountability mechanisms (professional/peer accountability, public reputational accountability, market accountability, and fiscal and legal accountability).

31. The strategy of the State of Jalisco, Mexico for publicly defining and following up on monitoring indicators is innovative as regards open data, specialized citizen participation and accountability at the

subnational level (see Monitoreo de Indicadores del Desarrollo de Jalisco, available at https://seplan.app.jalisco.gob.mx/mide/panelCiudadano/inicio).

32. The 2030 Agenda’s support for territorial monitoring – including broad, regular multi-stakeholder participation that builds on existing national and local follow-up and review processes – is stated in its foundational documents Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN-GA, 2015, Follow-up and Review chapter, points 77 and 79) and The Road to Dignity by 2030 (UN-SG, 2014).

33. Comparative benchmarking should be easier for citizens in comparisons across subnational territories (regions and municipalities) than across countries because they are likely more knowledgeable about political and socioeconomic differences within their own country than about cross-country differences that must be factored in to assess correctly the progress achieved in their own territory relative to others.

34. Most SDGs refer to achievement monitoring, and the monitoring of implementation is considered (particularly in SDG 17 but also in others) with reference to measuring policy inputs from stakeholders (Jones, 2017; Elder, Bengtsson and Akenji, 2016). Some SDGs can be understood as means to achieve higher goals of universal wellbeing (Elder, Bengtsson and Akenji, 2016, p.2). Persson, Weitz and Nilsson (2016) suggest that behaviour-based monitoring reporting (i.e. policy effort around SDGs) should be emphasized over outcome-based monitoring reporting (i.e. progress on SDGs) because of the limited effectiveness of the latter regarding development issues for which changes in outcome indicators are not observable from year to year or other (insufficient) intervals. Evaluating the attribution of outcomes/impacts to particular means contributions is also a difficult methodological endeavour.

35. Jones (2007) provides a detailed analysis of development cooperation accountability in the context of the 2030 Agenda, indicating that emphasis on outcome accountability at the expense of accountability for means contributions may result in institutionalized cooperation commitments being disregarded (e.g. 0.7 percent of GNI for aid cooperation). The OECD’s results-based decision-making approach to development cooperation (OECD, 2016b) emphasizes that recipient countries present SDG results based on the inputs received from provider countries and their role of these in achieving those results. Ideally, outcome achievement and input provision should be considered a joint responsibility for which

both recipient and provider countries should be accountable. 36. Research suggests that outcome accountability is often associated with agent mistrust and perceived opportunism, and process accountability is more prone to conformity at the cost of policy impact achievement (Jones, 2017, p. 29; Patil, Vieider and Tetlock, 2014, p. 74)

37. Belgium is usually considered the most advanced example of vertical integration within a highly decentralized institutional setting. Belgium’s national SDGs strategy fully incorporates all three levels of government: for example, in defining Vizier 2030, the Flemish government has contributed directly to creating the country’s federal strategy (OECD Skills Strategy Flanders, Assessment and Recommendations, available at http://www.oecd.org/publications/oecd-skills-strategy-flanders-9789264309791-en.htm). The Association of Flemish Cities and Municipalities has assembled 50 practical awareness-raising examples to introduce the SDGs to a wider audience at the municipal level (SDGs in Your Municipality. 50 Practical Awareness-Raising Examples, available at https://acor. ro/files/SDGs-in-your-municipality-50-practical-awareness-raising-examples-.pdf).

38. The Government of Nepal notes in a report on SDG implementation that “as the localization of SDGs at the subnational and local levels is critical for universal, equitable and inclusive outcomes, it is equally important to have political setups at these levels that are willing and capable of handling the development agenda”. (Sustainable Development Goals 2016–2030. National (Preliminary) Report, available at: https://www.undp.org/content/dam/nepal/docs/reports/SDG%20final%20report-nepal.pdf).

39. Depending on the targets selected in these campaigns (e.g. citizens, politicians and civil servants), a vast array of tool options exist, including engagement with the media (TV, radio, newspapers), cultural events, the appointment of eminent individuals as SDG ambassadors or Champion Majors, conducting intensive SDG training for government officials, social media campaigns and the production and distribution of SDG-related materials in national and local languages and for specific demographic groups.

40. For example, the Global Goals Municipal Campaign in the Netherlands has managed to get half of the country’s municipalities to provide information about the SDGs, exchange policy practices and participate in negotiations with national ministries.

41. For example, municipalities in South Africa participated in the design of the Integrated Urban Development Framework, which seeks to unlock the potential of South African cities, in consulta-

tion with their national association (SALGA) under the supervision of the National Ministry for Human Settlements. In Italy, as part of the Italian National Strategy for Sustainable Development, regions are invited to contribute to defining the national strategy for sustainable development and to report to the National Ministry of Environment which, in turn, reports to the Presidency of the Council of Ministries. 42. Ecuador’s ambitions at the subnational level are noteworthy, with a focus on creating a decentralized national participatory planning system of to move towards an intercultural, plurinational state (Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2012). The government of Esmeraldas used this approach to develop its Provincial Climate Change Plan with advice from the central government. Equally relevant, the localization of SDGs in Cabo Verde focuses on the most vulnerable social groups as a key integrated strategy to ensure the “no one left behind” principle is met. Developed in collaboration with the central government, Municipal Strategic Sustainable Development Plans (PEMDS) are an example of a bottom-up instrument for promoting SDGs locally.

43. In this regard, the experience of the Provincial Government of Azuay, Ecuador illustrates how coordinated planning can be achieved by involving representative provincial and local institutions. In its Territory Vision 2019, the government of Azuay relied on the People’s Provincial Parliament and the Canton and Community Assemblies playing an active role in bringing together different levels of government and a wide range of sectors.

44. For example, the region of Valencia, Spain has included the SDG framework in educational and teaching materials that are widely distributed at schools, libraries and other public venues. A similar approach has been taken by the state of São Paulo, Brazil, where the Secretariat of Education has partnered with social enterprises to produce e-books with a focus on the SDGs.

45. Some best practices can be found in New Innovation Approaches to Support the Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, available at https://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/dtlstict2017d4_en.pdf

46. For example, the Australian federal government is using City Deals to bring together their three levels of government and deliver long-term policy outcomes in cities and regions. Likewise, Colombia is promoting contracts between cities/regions and the national government to align national and local priorities and improve implementation. In Spain, the Basque Government has developed a framework for bonds linked to both green and social projects that

allows these financial instruments to be linked to sustainability and social policy interventions.

47. Many countries have community-based monitoring systems (CBMS) to support the decentralization process, improve local governance, enable better targeting of policy programs and beneficiaries and empower local communities to participate in the policy process. CBMS have been used to monitor the achievement of MDG targets at the municipal and district levels. In the Philippines, for example, the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) developed the MDG Monitoring System to monitor the development projects being implemented and progress on the localization of the MDGs. For more information, see Institutional and Coordination Mechanisms: Guidance Note on Facilitating Integration and Coherence For SDG Implementation, available at https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/2478Institutional_Coordination_Mechanisms_GuidanceNote.pdf

48. Kanter et al. (2016) examine the successful multi-stakeholder participation in defining and implementing productivity and environmental policy targets in the Uruguayan beef sector. They conclude that replicating this example elsewhere may be challenging because of how unique some of its features were: economic and environmental incentives that made sustainable development a top government priority, a tight-knit group of well-coordinated stakeholders, and a strong stakeholder culture of collaboration and coordination.

49. The approaches to developing indicator frameworks can be classified into policy-based approaches and conceptual approaches (Eurostat, 2014). Policy-based approaches use sustainable development strategies and other policy documents as their frame of reference, and are organized into strategic issues with an emphasis on how salient the policy decision makers deem each topic to be. The frame of reference for conceptual approaches is independent from political priorities and is based on a model of sustainable development. A rigorous indicator framework should the two approaches, as both can be helpful for the different policy cycle stages. Singh et al. (2009) examine methods that have already been developed, tested and used to assess sustainable development.

Policy support, effectiveness and legitimacy in the localization of Sustainable Development Goals

Policy support, effectiveness and legitimacy in the localization of Sustainable Development Goals