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Sustainable Governance

CC-BY-4.0: SDGs next to the Octagon building in Accra, photo: Susann Baller, March 2022

MIASA’s overarching topic considers the thematic field of “Sustainbale governace”. The landmark decision within the UN system to pursue global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has put the concept of sustainability firmly on the agenda. The SDGs cover a wide range of thematic issues translated into political objectives for social, economic and economic transformation in the world. While most African governments have rhetorically taken on board the new goal system, such policy-driven agendas, however, often appear imposed from Northern-dominated institutions based in New York or Brussels, and are often met with scepticism in Africa. As yet, there has scarcely been a broader debate on a viable process of sustainability transformation and its deeper meanings.

The Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA) aims at debating critically some of the conceptual “black boxes” (Macamo 2018) which fall under the thematic umbrella of “sustainable governance”, encouraging an epistemological reflection about terms and concepts used. Research at MIASA is guided by the question of how the practice of historically grounded social sciences and humanities in Africa can address sustainable governance as a theoretical and conceptual challenge likely to yield new answers to problems of conflict, democracy and environment. For this purpose, MIASA embraces a broad range of disciplines which allow for developing innovative and original research questions on MIASA’s main and sub-themes. The idea of “sustainability” implies an implicit search for some kind of “better future”. MIASA, however, questions the normative bagage coming along with this claim. The institute invites scholars to reflect about the epistemological meanings of “sustainable governance” and to think about “sustainability” outside the box, demonstrating how “sustainable governance” is used, contested and negotiated in concrete historical concexts and debates in the past and present.

CC-BY-4.0: SDGs at Jamestown Community Theatre, Accra, photo: Susann Baller, October 2021

Aiming at a profoundly interdisciplinary and critical approach to “sustainability”, MIASA’s research agenda focuses on “governance”. According to Hyden at al. (2004: 16), “governance refers to the foundation and stewardship of the formal and informal rules that regulate the public realm, the arenas in which states as well as economic and social actors interact to make decisions”. The concept of governance acknowledges different historical trajectories of state formation in a longue durée perspective, but it is also embedded in social, material and cultural practices of everyday life and therefore heavily relies on the particular regional context.

Today’s formal institutions were often built on institutions created by colonial regimes (e.g. borders, bureaucracies, security bodies), and they took over a colonial project, called ‘development’, which by the 1970s had become “either tragedy or farce” (Cooper 2002: 156). Research at MIASA embraces an academic understanding of governance that inspects the complex processes of decision-making, the interplay of actors as well as the transformation of governance over time. It underlines the large variety of actors, and it considers the dynamics of how actors’ constellations have changed and how technological innovations have impacted the way actors are related to each other.

CC-BY-4.0: SDGs at Jamestown Community Theatre, Accra, photo: Susann Baller, October 2021

Critically reflecting about “sustainability” requires to be grounded in concrete contexts and historical experiences, both on the local level as well as by considering Africa’s global connections. Bottom-up processes from seemingly isolated places to supra-state configurations of actors and two-down processes, i.e. the local effect of decisions taken elsewhere, are examined. MIASA’s research agenda translates this into three thematic corridors: (i) democracy, (ii) conflict and peace, and (iii) sustainability transformation, as well as five intersectional topics: (i) landownership and acquisition, (ii) migration and mobility, (iii) restitution of colonially acquired objects, (iv) African cities, (v) Human rights. However, none of these concepts are taken for granted. MIASA is rather embedding research on these thematic flieds in a broader reflection on epistemologies and knowledge production, encouraging scholars to think about the deeper power dynamics in knowledge making about “sustainable governance”.

Quoted literature

Cooper, Frederick, Africa since 1940, Cambridge 2002.
Hyden, Goran et al., Making Sense of Governance: Empirical Evidence from 16 Developing Countries, Boulder 2004.
Macamo, Elisio, Translating Black-Boxes: The Social sciences and Africa, in: Ouédraogo, Jean-Bernard et al., Translation Revisited: Contesting the Sense of African Social Realities, Newcastle 2018, p.335-352.