Meta‐Governance of Partnerships for Sustainable Development: Actors' Perspectives from Kenya
| Date | 01 August 2018 |
| Author | Marianne Beisheim,Pauline Kiamba,Lukas Goltermann,Anne Ellersiek |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.1810 |
| Published date | 01 August 2018 |
META-GOVERNANCE OF PARTNERSHIPS FOR SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT: ACTORS’PERSPECTIVES FROM KENYA
MARIANNE BEISHEIM
1
*, ANNE ELLERSIEK
1
, LUKAS GOLTERMANN
2
AND PAULINE KIAMBA
3
1
Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Germany
2
Civil society and partnership consultant, Germany
3
Water resources management professional, Kenya
SUMMARY
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development promotes multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs) as a means of implementation
while at the same time putting renewed focus on the need for national-level ownership and implementation. Despite the fact that
an ever growing body of literature on the merits and drawbacks of MSPs delineates several success conditions for partnerships,
efforts to translate this knowledge into national-level meta-governance for MSPs remain marginal to date. This study outlines
the benefits the literature alleges for such “meta-governance”frameworks, before it uses a country-level study with a series
of stakeholder interviews to take a closer look at national-level context conditions and lessons learned with regard to two water
partnerships in Kenya. Our findings suggest that to date the existing meta-governance for partnerships in Kenya is rather weak
and fragmented. Yet respondents support the view that MSPs could benefit from such a framework, in particular regarding local
ownership of MSPs and the potential to scale successful cases. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
key words—multi-stakeholder partnerships; meta-governance; 2030 Agenda; Kenya; water; SDGs
INTRODUCTION
At the Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015, the heads of state and government of all the UN
member states adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs). As for the previous Millennium Development Goals, this agenda promotes multi-stakeholder partnerships
(MSPs) as one key instrument for delivering on the SDGs (UNGA, 2015b) based on the argument that successful
implementation requires engagement of a wide range of stakeholders in partnerships (OECD, 2015). Actors, how-
ever, differ in their assessment of MSPs’past performance, and the literature continues to fuel debate about their
legitimacy, effectiveness, and overall desirability (Bäckstrand, 2006; Biermann et al., 2007; Newell et al., 2012;
Adams and Martens, 2015; Dodds, 2015; Moog et al., 2015). Research has shown that transnational MSPs are most
effective if they built on local ownership and benefit from a conducive institutional and policy framework. We pro-
pose that national-level meta-governance frameworks—defined as principles, rules, and institutions that guide
transnational MSPs in a specific country—can be beneficial for both, national authorities and partnerships, through
supporting and reviewing MSPs’contribution to national development priorities.
Drawing upon previous empirical research (Beisheim & Campe, 2012; Beisheim et al., 2014a; Beisheim et al.,
2014b; Liese et al., 2014), we analyze this assumption in the Kenyan context. We first examine the national-level
institutional set-up for MSPs, both in general and specifically in the water sector. Next, we investigate stakeholder
views and ask practitioners what they think about the existing and a possible future national-level meta-governance
framework and how it could foster transnational MSPs’contribution to implementing the SDGs. We ask how ac-
tors view the interplay between national-level institutions and the operations of two selected water MSPs in Kenya.
*Correspondence to: M. Beisheim, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Germany. E-mail: marianne.beisheim@swp-berlin.org
public administration and development
Public Admin. Dev. 38, 105–119 (2018)
Published online 25 September 2017 in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pad.1810
Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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