When Goals Collide: Politics of the MDGs and the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals Agenda

This paper examines problematic assumptions underpinning the MDG initiative and the draft post-2015 development agenda. Specifically, the paper argues that the latter’s seventeen goals and targets likely will lead to significant political problems, which will affect their prospects and their legitimacy. Engaging with the politics of disempowerment and exclusion, the paper contends that goals related to the strengthening of governance mechanisms have the potential to be used to justify disciplinary measures aimed at those struggling for fundamental entitlements, rights, and alternative approaches of development. To allow such an outcome, the author argues, would be tantamount to further entrenching a development framework that puts the promises of fundamental entitlements continuously out of reach.