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Norichika Kanie, Steven Bernstein, Frank Biermann, and Peter M. Haas
To some extent, the dichotomy between goals as standalone aspirations and goals as the foundations for longer-term commitments and meaningful action is false. Some goals initially embraced on their own terms have later had institutional structures attached (Szasz 1992). For example, the initial common goals expressed in the brief Atlantic Charter were later supplemented with formal institutional instruments at Dumbarton Oaks that created the United Nations. The pursuit of international human rights follows a similar evolutionary logic as states are increasingly caught up in a dense network of nongovernmental organizations and international institutions that are monitoring and advocating for stronger compliance (Simmons 2009; Hafner-Burton 2013; Sikkink 2011). Broadly speaking, there are three types of international goal setting. First, some goals are solely aspirational. They may be presented by a small number of states hoping to catalyze longer-term support, or they may reflect a more general consensus regarding common aspirations for which governments may be held accountable. Examples include slavery prevention in the nineteenth century, human rights (Sandholtz and Stiles 2009), or the so-called “20/20” bargain put on the table for the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro (Speth 1992), which suggested that the developing countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 20% and the industrialized countries increase foreign aid by 20%. Ultimately, aspirational goals may have unilateral effects, as governments choose to comply for reasons of belief. The ambition to limit global warming by 2°C above preindustrial levels is an example of such an aspirational goal. It was inscribed first into an EU agreement, then in a declaration of the Group of Eight major economies, and finally in the 2009 Copenhagen Accord of the parties to the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. It made more concrete the abstract objective of the climate convention embedded in its article 2—“stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”— in the form of a numerical target. A second type of goal setting consists of goals that start as aspirational but later acquire consensus and support through formal institutions that become attached to them for their enforcement and institutionalization. Once such goals are established, efforts to attain them proceed in a campaign mode and associated institutional development normally follows (Young, this volume, chapter 2). The Millennium Development Goals are an example. While originally devised as aspirational goals, the UN Secretariat subsequently devised a set of metrics to measure their achievement.
