abstract: 'The expansion of middle-income countries in the global South is now

  widely acknowledged as significant for international development

  research and practice. But, as yet, scholars have not fully considered

  how middle-income countries are responding to the new global goals on

  international development (the Sustainable Development Goals - SDGs)

  outlined in Agenda 2030. Equally, insufficient attention has been paid

  to how - if at all - the SDGs shape domestic development policies and

  practices in middle income countries. We ask these questions in Ecuador,

  a country that recently moved from being a lower middle income and donor

  dependent country to a more autonomous higher middle-income country with

  the capacity to promote its own national domestic development approach,

  Buen Vivir (in English: living well). Deploying a qualitative case study

  methodology and drawing primarily on in-depth semi-structured interviews

  conducted with policy makers working in Ecuador''s national government

  and in the capital Quito, we show that policy makers'' engagement with

  the SDGs is selective, with an emphasis on those goals and targets which

  are considered of domestic importance. Both the national government and

  Quito''s local government are currently focussing mainly on SDGs 10.2

  (breaking inequalities) and 11 (inclusive cities). We demonstrate that,

  in practice, how policy makers understand implementation of these

  ``priority{''''} goals is not consistent; it depends on political

  preferences, where policy makers are located in the architecture of

  decentralised governance and the context-specific challenges they face.

  Evidence from Ecuador suggests that the SDGs cannot be understood as a

  single coherent template for development that states will simply adopt.

  Rather they should be analysed in the context of a rapidly changing

  architecture of global power, shaped by the context-specific nature of

  national development challenges and national political structures,

  including decentralisation. (C) 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier

  Ltd.'
affiliation: 'Horn, P (Corresponding Author), Univ Sheffield, Sheffield, S Yorkshire,
  England.

  Horn, Philipp, Univ Sheffield, Sheffield, S Yorkshire, England.

  Grugel, Jean, Univ York, York, N Yorkshire, England.'
author: Horn, Philipp and Grugel, Jean
author-email: 'p.horn@sheffield.ac.uk

  Jean.grugel@york.ac.uk'
author_list:
- family: Horn
  given: Philipp
- family: Grugel
  given: Jean
da: '2023-09-28'
doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.04.005
files: []
issn: 0305-750X
journal: WORLD DEVELOPMENT
keywords: 'Sustainable Development Goals; Middle-income countries;

  Decentralisation; Ecuador; SDGs 11 \& 10.2; Quito'
keywords-plus: 'SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS; MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS; GLOBAL

  GOVERNANCE; POLITICAL-ECONOMY; POLICY; CHINA; AID; MOVEMENTS; RIGHTS;

  WORLD'
language: English
month: SEP
number-of-cited-references: '91'
orcid-numbers: Horn, Philipp/0000-0002-4122-4866
pages: 73-84
papis_id: 39f42b59da6576c88a6009aadf6000c4
ref: Horn2018sdgsmiddleincome
times-cited: '61'
title: 'The SDGs in middle-income countries: Setting or serving domestic development
  agendas? Evidence from Ecuador'
type: article
unique-id: WOS:000436915700006
usage-count-last-180-days: '0'
usage-count-since-2013: '34'
volume: '109'
web-of-science-categories: Development Studies; Economics
year: '2018'