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In recent years, a relatively new mechanism of global governance has gained prominence: the use of broad global policy goals to orchestrate the activities of governments, international organizations, civil society, the private sector, and eventually all citizens of the world. Global governance through goal-setting works through the joint commitment of all governments to collective policy ambitions. These ambitions are then enshrined in the form of multilaterally agreed goals that are not legally binding but come with more specific targets, indicators and time frames, all of which are expected to steer public and private actors collectively into desired trajectories (Kanie and Biermann 2017). While governance through global goal-setting has featured in global governance since the second half of the twentieth century, its role has become much stronger in the last two decades (Fukuda-Parr 2014). The Millennium Development Goals, agreed by the United Nations in 2000, were a first attempt at comprehensive global steering through goals. But global goal-setting has gained much more importance when the United Nations General Assembly agreed, in 2015, on 17 Sustainable Development Goals to be implemented by 2030. Like other attempts at global governance through goal-setting, the Sustainable Development Goals share four key characteristics (Biermann, Kanie and Kim 2017). First, they are not legally binding and cannot be enforced as law within national or international adjudication. Second, they are marked by weak institutional arrangements that are not supported by international treaty organizations, formal monitoring agencies, strong dispute …