Governmental Sustainability Strategies and Policies: More Than a Toothless Tiger?

Since its beginnings in 1992 the (mainstream) discourse on sustainable development and sustainability transition has strongly focused on the paradigm of multi-stakeholder governance. This guiding vision of sustainability governance has its roots in the age of neoliberalization, deregulation and globalization at the end of the 1980ties and the beginning of the 1990ties after the breakdown of the Sovjet Union. Apparent limits of state-led political steering where diagnosed and the power of societal (self-)governance beyond and even without the state were propagated. However, this approach itself has obviously limits in driving the sustainability transition: planetary boundaries keep on being transgressed and social sustainability, especially concerning social inequality, has increased in many regions around the world. In recent years the importance of state institutions for copying with societal crisis and driving societal transformation has been proven, for example in the aftermath of the global financial crises, in energy and electric mobility transition policies up to the transformative power of environmental policies in China - even though critically discussed. And the global adoption of the Transformation Agenda 2030 of the United Nations including the call for national sustainability strategies point to the key role of state institutions for leading and guiding sustainability transitions. Against this re-newed focus on the role of state institutions for sustainable development this paper takes a critical look at the practice and potential of governmental sustainability strategies. Based on conceptual approaches of institutional theory and practice theory as well as on empirical findings from German case studies at the local, regional and national level it will be discussed, to what extent governmental sustainability strategies and policies are more than a toothless tiger and what it needs to become practically relevant and effective.