A principles-based approach for enabling multi-stakeholder collaboration: addressing the elusive quest for sustainable development partnership standards

The proliferation of diverse multi-stakeholder partnering arrangements that seek to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has prompted calls for overarching standards to enhance their governance, legitimacy and effectiveness. This conceptual article critically examines the limitations of applying universal partnership standards across complex and context-sensitive collaborative arrangements. Drawing on a purposive sampling of approximately 115 academic, policy-oriented and practitioner sources, identified through targeted database searches, we explore the historical development of sustainability-related partnership norms and identify some of the tensions in their alignment with socio-historic, institutional and relational dynamics. We examine the concept of partnership meta-governance as a way of both ensuring and enabling effective collaborative initiatives working to meet the targets of the 2030 Agenda’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Using a methodology that combines conceptual analysis with practitioner-tested support mechanisms, we propose a principles-based approach to enrich the enabling dimension of partnership meta-governance by privileging contextual responsiveness, co-creation and relational values over prescriptive compliance. This approach seeks to reinforce the transformational intent of the 2030 Agenda by offering a foundation for more inclusive and adaptive collaboration that supports the long-term aspirations of the United Nations’ Pact for the Future.