Government Metagovernance and Sustainable Development Goal Localization Across Political Systems: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) localization requires governments to translate global goals into locally meaningful policies, institutions, implementation, and learning. Governments therefore act not only as hierarchical implementers but also as metagovernors that steer, coordinate, mobilize resources, facilitate participation, and organize accountability. This study examines how government metagovernance operates in SDG norm localization, how its mechanisms relate to localization effectiveness, and how these relationships vary across democratic, non-democratic, and hybrid contexts. A qualitative-comparative Systematic Literature Review was conducted using PRISMA 2020-informed procedures. The final corpus comprised 69 publications identified through a primary Scopus search restricted to 2016-2026 and supplementary discovery, with relevant studies outside the primary period retained where substantively relevant. Publications were included when they addressed government/metagovernance, SDG localization, governance capacity, political-system context, or localization effectiveness and provided sufficient evidence for extraction. Four metagovernance categories were coded: steering and coordination; intermediation and participation; resource and information mobilization; and accountability and learning. Localization effectiveness was coded through policy and institutional integration, participation and local ownership, accountability and transparency, and implementation, adaptation, and learning. The synthesis indicates that political systems do not mechanically determine localization effectiveness; political context and government capacity shape how metagovernance is configured and translated into substantive localization.