Benchmarking and Blame Games:Exploring the Contestation of the Millennium Development Goals

Benchmarking has long been a central component of the global development industry, with the most prominent recent initiative being the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) framework. However, within existing scholarship, the agent-level interactions surrounding the MDG framework remain under-explored. Here, on the back of an analysis of interactions that took place within and around key MDG review summits, I develop a typology to clarify the intersection of benchmarking and blame games. Overall, I demonstrate that despite the efforts of the MDG architects to insulate the initiative, blame games have permeated policymakers’ engagements with the framework. Moreover, the content of these blame games have been carried over into the recently outlined Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A pattern of strategic clarification has seen the emergence within this follow-on SDG framework of more precise responsibilities on higher-income states to meet aid targets, and on lower-income states to meet governance reform targets. Given the deeply-embedded cleavages that were evident in UN review summits, similar blame games seem likely to follow the periodic evaluations within the SDGs’ lifespan.