CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Hoiberg Olsen, Simon |
|---|---|
| Title | Regional Civil Society Engagement and Governance in Agenda 2030: Liberation at last? |
| Summary | This dissertation examines regional civil society engagement with the SDGs to identify current trends in the sustainable development discourse. It uses Foucauldian governmentality as an analytical lens to trace the discourses and narratives that compete, contest and combine in regional SDGs processes in Asia and the Pacific. Based on text analysis, participant observation and interviews, the dissertation compares rationalities and techniques of governing in official global and regional SDG tracks with a regional grassroots civil society engagement platform’s engagement with the process in the period 2014-2018. The dissertation finds that the SDGs continue the sustainable development discourse’s compromise between economic growth and environmental conservation; structural impediments to sustainability largely go unmentioned in favor of promoting advanced liberal and neoliberal approaches to governing for sustainability. But the advanced liberal governmentalities that lay the base for the SDGs’ voluntary ‘governing by goals’ also open the playing field allowing grassroots voices to enter and engage with official SDG processes in the region. Their engagement and resistance to the full SDG narrative legitimize regional SDGs process and the intergovernmental system. The ‘mainstreaming’ of marginalised actors and voices into the SDGs processes compromises their resistance but also contributes important language to the evolving discourse. The dissertation contributes to the field of governmentality studies of international processes and casts light on the power dynamics of multistakeholder engagement in Agenda 2030. |
| Supervisor | Laszlo Pinter |
| Department | Environment Sciences and Policy PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/hoiberg-olsen_simon.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University