Sustainable Development Goals fail to advance policy integration: A large-n text analysis of 159 international organizations

Abstract

While most of today’s global challenges are deeply interconnected, international organizations often operate in silos. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by the United Nations in 2015, have been advanced as a new agenda to break up these silos and to better integrate environmental, social and economic policies. Yet little is known about whether the SDGs had any effects in advancing policy integration. To investigate this, we conducted a quantitative content analysis on the website texts of 159 international organizations. Our study addresses two questions: (1) whether international organizations increasingly engage with the SDGs in their work; and (2) whether this engagement increased their attention for policy integration. Our results show that the SDGs are indeed increasingly used by most international organizations. However, this has not affected policy integration. We conclude with some possible explanations for this lack of effect and propose several research avenues.