Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Not Enough Theory (and Not the Right Kind!)

Authors: Adrian Little, University of Melbourne

Mariana Prado has provided a provocative account of theory’s absence in the development of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).^[1] She notes that the SDGs do not  address issues of strategy, action, or change. She also identifies the limitations of traditional economic development theories in facilitating the realization of the SDGs. As we look to 2030 and beyond, we must ask whether the SDGs (and the failure to deliver on most of them) means that theorizing in our universities is irrelevant to this project or if there is still a role for academic theory to play in development agendas.^[2]

Why Do We Need Theory?

While there is clearly a role for development economics in building strategies for sustainable development and the metrics for measuring their progress, a broader theoretical church might enable us to marry these standard approaches with other theoretical traditions. For instance, we might foreground critical development theory — especially more ethnographic variants — as a way of moving beyond the focus on states or international organizations as the agents of change. Or we might look to theories that accept how political concepts are contested and therefore that the territory of what is “sustainable” and what amounts to “development” is inevitably a space of disagreement rather than consensus. 

While we need to recognize the reality of contested political concepts, we should be careful not to completely relinquish one of the SDGs’ strengths — its focus on measurability has laid bare the failure of statist and international organizations to deliver on their promises. Equally though, the focus on hard targets has perhaps obscured where progress has been made and where lessons might be learned. As Freeden would no doubt remind us, the success or failure of political concepts is never a black-and-white matter. ^[3]  Measurability matters, but its standards and methods of evaluation are always loaded with political assumptions. With possibly highly benevolent intentions, states and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) tend to enter these debates with pre-ordained values and intentions about what needs to be achieved. 

Perhaps we should be starting in a different place by asking the people and communities impacted by current socioeconomic inequalities how they understand their major challenges and what they would like to achieve. On the negative side, critical development theories are often accused of telling us everything that is wrong with mainstream international development agendas, but they are not so good at offering alternatives. Perhaps theorists might do better if they spent more time in the field and engaged directly with the kinds of changes that communities themselves want to see. Such engagement might lead to a positive step in the direction of community-led understandings of development, but it also risks criticisms of  being parochial and unable to meet the perennial challenge of how to scale up localized initiatives.

Are We Looking in the Wrong Section of the Library?

In political and social theory, there are also traditions that might ask us to start in very different places and steer us in very different directions. For example, comparative political theory, following on from path-breaking scholars like Edward Said, encourages us to examine different political traditions on their own terms rather than through an Orientalist lens. However, comparative political theory often focuses on “traditions” as if they were hermetically sealed from each other and it is too focused on texts (often treated as sacred) rather than material practices and engagement between them.^[4] As such, comparative political theory often lacks the comparative dimension.^[5] Nonetheless, it does at least invite us to start our theoretical journey in a different place and mindset than the dominant “Western” or modernist political and social theories.  

Dominant approaches and debates in political theory have not helped themselves in demonstrating their relevance to SDG debates. The field has a major schism between analytical and continental approaches. On one hand, analytical traditions have been practising “ivory tower” academia — they see their role as solving philosophical arguments which reflects their roots in modern Anglo-American liberal moralism. Some analytical theorists (“realists”) have pushed back against this abstraction to some effect while others have pressed the case for applied ethics.^[6] The problem with the second group is that it decides the ethical questions that we need to tackle in advance and, having found the philosophical solution, tries to apply it to actual cases. At this point, the world is usually just too messy and complex for abstract ethical solutions to be parachuted in to any great effect.

On the other hand, the continental tradition can be seen as equally flawed. Influenced by a range of critical, poststructural, and postfoundational philosophers, it spends much of its time demonstrating the fallacies of analytical theory and recoils from anything that might be seen as applied or policy focused, in case we become part of the problematic institutional debates that dominate political science. Unsullied by hard material political engagement, continental approaches struggle to show their relevance or, indeed, at times, why they should be considered politicaltheory at all.

On this evidence, it is easy to understand why academic theorizing might be considered too remote from the practicalities of the kinds of problems that the SDGs were designed to address. So what are we to do? Why should we look in this theoretical section of the library at all? Parts of the answer lie on some of the dustier shelves where some theories move outside of the dominant camps and try to engage across them, learning different lessons along the way.

 A Question of Theoretical Method

Although political theorists often neglect methodological questions, method really does matter if we are asking theories to demonstrate their relevance to major socio-political questions like the future of the SDGs. Political philosophers in universities need to relinquish their hubris to engage more with alternative approaches: for example, with the role of context in political theorizing,^[7] or the possibility of “grounding” normative theorization about desirable outcomes in practical and engaged political experiences,^[8] or focusing on the process of political change rather than merely articulating what’s wrong with the present or prefiguring an ideal future,^[9] or coupling globalist, cosmopolitan outlooks with a more bottom-up, localized method of theorizing.^[10]

My point is that if we look carefully in these dusty corners there is a way of pulling together complementary insights into a different approach to the issues that Mariana Prado raised so clearly. We can build theories that recognize how global sustainability issues are experienced locally and use those local experiences to inform our insights.^[11] This requires greater flexibility in our thinking than the simple metrics that the current SDGs framework permits. We need to understand that messy realities mean that different SDGs may be at cross purposes with one another — what helps to alleviate one may have unforeseen consequences exacerbating another area. That is, the goals themselves as well as the problems they purport to measure often intersect with one another in complex ways. These are precisely the kinds of insights that theory can offer to a rethinking of the SDGs in advance of 2030.

Conclusion: Toward a CLEAR Theoretical Framework for Rethinking the SDGs 

By bringing together some of the insights from different theories (in what might be considered controversial ways), I outline what I think are the necessary elements of a relevant theoretical approach. I use the acronym CLEAR.

• Contextual — We need a theoretical method based in context so that we can understand how socioeconomic inequalities play out in different communities in different parts of the world.
• Local — We need to understand that most of the issues the SDGs are trying to address are experienced in deeply localized ways and build theories from below based on these local experiences.
• Experiential — Lived experience is vital in understanding how social-economic inequalities manifest in different contexts. We need to start from actual experiences rather than preconceived assumptions about them.
• Actionable — We have to be capable of explaining how our theoretical insights can develop into action and change (even if it fails) rather than stopping at critical problem diagnosis.
• Relational — We need to understand the inter-related nature of the issues the SDGs address and the interconnectedness of the peoples who experience these inequalities and those who create them. This approach reflects the insights of Indigenous philosophies.^[12]

Theory remains deeply relevant to tackling the challenges of sustainable development, but it requires moving beyond the orthodox approaches of development economics as well as challenging the major fields of political theory including the analytical, continental, and comparative perspectives. This task is urgent for theorists seeking to demonstrate their relevance outside of universities. But, more importantly, it’s also urgent to enhance the philosophical basis upon which the challenges of sustainable development can be addressed afresh.

“We can build theories that recognize how global sustainability issues are experienced locally and use those local experiences to inform our insights. This requires greater flexibility in our thinking than the simple metrics that the current SDGs framework permits. We need to understand that messy realities mean that different SDGs may be at cross purposes with one another — what helps to alleviate one may have unforeseen consequences exacerbating another area.” – Adrian Little, University of Melbourne

References

^[1] Mariana Mota Prado, “Sustainable Development Goals: The End of Theory?” Reach Faculty Reflections, Reach Alliance, Toronto, 2025. <https://reachalliance.org/commentary/sustainable-development-goals-sdgs-the-end-of-theory/>

^[2] Joseph Wong, ‘“A Seat at the Table’: Universities Are Essential for Progress on the SDGs and Shaping the Post-2030 Agenda Locally and Globally,” Blog, 25 January 2024. https://sdg.utoronto.ca/a-seat-at-the-table-universities-are-essential-to-advancing-progress-on-the-sdgs-and-shaping-the-post-2030-agenda-locally-and-globally/

^[3] Michael Freeden, The Political Theory of Political Thinking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022).

^[4] Humeira Iqtidar, “Redefining ‘Tradition’ in Political Thought,” European Journal of Political Theory 15, no. 4 (2016): 424–44.

^[5] Adrian Little, “Contextualizing Concepts: The Methodology of Comparative Political Theory,” The Review of Politics 76, no. 1 (2018): 87–113.

^[6] Raymond Geuss, Philosophy and Real Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Bernard Williams, In the Beginning was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).

^[7] Robert Goodin and Charles Tilly (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

^[8] Brooke Ackerly, Luis Cabrera, Fonna Forman, et al. “Unearthing Grounded Normative Theory: Practices and Commitments of Empirical Research in Political Theory,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 27, no. 2 (2024):156–82.

^[9] Adrian Little, Temporal Politics: Contested Pasts, Uncertain Futures (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022).

^[10] Marlon Barbehön, “Where to When Going Local? Notes on the Research Agenda for ‘Local Political Theory,’” European Journal of Political Theory (2025) https://doi.org/10.1177/14748851251378930; Marta Wojciechowska and James Hickson, “Why Go Local? Developing the Research Agenda for ‘Local Political Theory,’” European Journal of Political Theory (2025).  https://doi.org/10.1177/14748851251339145

^[11] James Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key: Democracy and Civic Freedom, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

^[12] Adrian Little, “Indigenous Philosophy and the Politics of Ontology,” Journal of Social and Political Philosophy 3, no. 2 (2024): 125–44.

About the Faculty Mentor Paper Series

This paper is part of the Reach Alliance faculty reflection series, Reimagining the Future of Sustainable Development, in response to Mariana Prado’s Sustainable Development Goals:The End of Theory? Featuring contributions from leading scholars across the Reach Alliance global academic consortium, the series opens a timely dialogue on the evolving role of universities in shaping the future of sustainable development theory and practice. Developed as part of Reach’s commitment to advancing research-to-impact and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, these reflections aim to engage higher education professionals in shaping the future of the Sustainable Development Goals.