The Governance Gauge: Governing Through Goals
We hope you enjoy this Wednesday’s Governance Gauge: for more reading material, you can always visit our reading list for more on governance, special economic zones, best practices and studies!
“Governing through goals” is a recent 2017 vintage from MIT’s Kanie & Biermann. It explains the approach that the UN has adopted for its achieving of the Sustainable Development Goals program — the Earth System Governance Project. The work focuses on the supra-governmental organisational point of view with the goal of achieving SMART goals. The book denies the advent of competitive governance in its true form, but opts rather for a controlled market for governance in which best practices can be implemented into local governments through various programs sponsored by supra-governmentalorganisations.
The book is made up of 13 chapters, with the first 3 focusing on the theory behind the work and the rest of the read primarily resting on the SDG achievement mechanisms put in place at the UN level.
Creators of zones and societies will find chapters 1, 5, and 12 which primarily focus on local governance practices in goal-setting, with some attention given to negotiating larger local autonomy.
Policymakers and analysts can take a look at chapters 7, 10, and 11 — which focus on the financing and planning side of the SDG project of the UN, with plenty of insight on political trends regarding the SDGs.
Scholars and experts might appreciate chapters 4, 6, and 8: case studies of economic and meta-political solutions are given here that aren’t applicable in a business environment, but offer valuable insight to governance metrics.
The book can be purchased here.
