The monitoring and evaluation challenges of the sustainable development goals: An assessment in three European countries

While discourse about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has primarily focused on ‘whether the goals’ are achieved, there remains limited understanding of how developed countries organize their monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems, which play a crucial role in tracking progress towards the SDGs. In this contribution, we unpack the M&E frameworks of Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. To do so, we have devised an analytical heuristic that combines insights from the literature on policy performance measurement and measurement infrastructures with the more specific literature on SDG governance. Through document analysis and elite interviews conducted in 2021, our findings highlight similarity in underdeveloped M&E frameworks, rather than significant variation across the three case studies. The results do not suggest a linkage between SDG performance and the development of M&E frameworks.