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Non-Technical SummaryThis article takes stock of the 2030 Agenda and focuses on five governance areas. In a nutshell, we see a quite patchy and often primarily symbolic uptake of the global goals. Although some studies highlight individual success stories of actors and institutions to implement the goals, it remains unclear how such cases can be upscaled and develop a broader political impact to accelerate the global endeavor to achieve sustainable development. We hence raise concerns about the overall effectiveness of governance by goal-setting and raise the question of how we can make this mode of governance more effective.Technical SummaryA recent meta-analysis on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has shown that these global goals are moving political processes forward only incrementally, with much variation across countries, sectors, and governance levels …