The Idea of Partnership within the Millennium Development Goals: context, instrumentality and the normative demands of partnership

The word’ partnership’ is pervasive within debates about participatory global governance and the idea of partnership acts as an underwriting principle within both the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Paris Declaration. However, there remains general ambiguity about the meaning of the idea of partnership and how its conceptualisation is meant to normatively guide a more co-ordinated move from theory to practice. Indeed, the idea of partnership remains an impoverished theoretical and practical appeal, which is under-defined, poorly scrutinised and unconvincingly utilised as a normative tool in applied practice. This article will provide a more theoretical examination of what an appeal to ideas of partnership means and explore what a normative commitment to a robust conceptualisation of partnership might look like within the MDGs. To do so, it will examine the underwriting normative language of partnership as it is found within the MDGs, theoretically explore the principles inherent within this normative language, and locate present gaps within the MDGs between its normative theory and applied practice. By doing so, it will be possible to outline some additional principles and commitments that are normatively required to satisfy the underwriting spirit of the MDGs in order to bring them in line with said spirit's own normative values.