ABSTRACT
This final thematic chapter testifies to the rapidly increasing role of follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda, nationally as well as internationally. It deals first with vertical political accountability, finding that parliamentary involvement is viewed as key for holding governments accountable in the long run, even if parliamentary involvement was low until 2020. There was also broad agreement among interviewees across all three countries that civil society has a central role in monitoring political institutions’ achievements towards the SDGs. Yet vertical accountability differs much between countries, depending on the broader domestic democratic space. The second part of the chapter finds that, thus far, horizontal accountability relations have prevailed, in the form of government peer-review during the UN High-level Political Forum. Overall, the SDGs reinforce a societal trend of governance by numbers, implying that “count-ability” steers the selection of problems to be addressed. We note an increasing concern with measuring inequalities that may underpin future accountability attempts.
