Transformative institutions? Findings from a case study on the impact of national sustainability institutions in Germany

Beginning with the UN Rio process on sustainable development and reinforced by the adoption of the Agenda 2030 and the Paris Climate Agreement, national governments around the world have established specialized political bodies for sustainability as part of their polities. These bodies range from governmental commissions, advisory councils, ombudspersons to parliamentary committees. They share, in substantial terms, an orientation towards sustainability, which I understand as socio-ecological well-being with a global and future-sensitive perspective. In structural terms, these bodies have in common a public mandate, a trans-departmental set-up, and a permanent place in the national polity. This is why I call such specialized political bodies sustainability institutions. And, although we know that they exist in the majority of countries in the world (as shown elsewhere by the author, article under review), there is surprisingly little academic knowledge about whether and how they actually have an impact on promoting sustainability in policy-making. In the proposed paper, I will shed light on how sustainability institutions in practice influence political decision-making (or not), drawing on findings from a case study on Germany. I selected Germany as a case because it has several sustainability institutions that exist alongside and possibly complement each other: the Council for Sustainable Development, the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Sustainable Development, and the State Secretary Committee for Sustainable Development. The case study rests on a qualitative data analysis based on interviews with office-holders in sustainability institutions, government officials, parliamentarians, experts, civil society as well as business actors. The research design follows a deductive approach: I draw upon a previously created multi-dimensional analytical framework on sustainability institutions and conducive conditions as well as possible pathways to influence the stages in the policy cycle, developed based on existing literature in the field (article under review). The analytical framework facilitates the comprehensive assessment of sustainability institutions and thus informs the coding scheme for the qualitative data analysis. With the case study, I contribute to a better understanding of the phenomenon of sustainability institutions and their impact in practice. At the same time, the case study serves as a reality check for many of the assumptions underlying the conceptual framework, improving the framework for further empirical studies on sustainability institutions and their impact. Finally, the case study may also be useful as a basis for reforms of the institutional design of individual sustainability institutions in order to make these political bodies more meaningful.