TY - JOUR
T1 - Avoidance of conflicts and trade-offs
T2 - A challenge for the policy integration of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
AU - Wong, Ryan
AU - van der Heijden, Jeroen
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment
PY - 2019/9/1
Y1 - 2019/9/1
N2 - The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) agenda compels nations to face challenges, especially interministerial conflicts, in policy integration. This article seeks to understand whether and how conflict avoidance may hamper the implementation of the SDG agenda. Building on 56 interviews with policymakers and bureaucrats in Finland, Germany, and the Czech Republic, we explore how avoidance behaviours preclude the conflicts that are necessary for achieving integration. The findings suggest that avoided conflicts tend to be long-standing issues related to environmental protection. We identify four factors that contribute to conflict avoidance: The issues for deliberation are too political, the actors know too little or too much about the issues, the deliberation is too abstract, and the bar for consensus is too high. These factors filter out many impactful conflicts for deliberation, which partly explains why integration regimes have not produced transformational changes.
AB - The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) agenda compels nations to face challenges, especially interministerial conflicts, in policy integration. This article seeks to understand whether and how conflict avoidance may hamper the implementation of the SDG agenda. Building on 56 interviews with policymakers and bureaucrats in Finland, Germany, and the Czech Republic, we explore how avoidance behaviours preclude the conflicts that are necessary for achieving integration. The findings suggest that avoided conflicts tend to be long-standing issues related to environmental protection. We identify four factors that contribute to conflict avoidance: The issues for deliberation are too political, the actors know too little or too much about the issues, the deliberation is too abstract, and the bar for consensus is too high. These factors filter out many impactful conflicts for deliberation, which partly explains why integration regimes have not produced transformational changes.
KW - collaboration
KW - conflict
KW - policy integration
KW - sustainable development
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85063801860&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/sd.1944
DO - 10.1002/sd.1944
M3 - Article
SN - 0968-0802
VL - 27
SP - 838
EP - 845
JO - Sustainable Development
JF - Sustainable Development
IS - 5
ER -