The Potentials of Normative Sustainability: An Analysis of Sustainable Development Strategies on Global, Supranational and National Levels

Abstract

The paper discusses the degree of normative sustainability achieved by selected regimes according to their sustainable development strategies. Focussing on Agenda 21, the Mediterranean Strategy of Sustainable Development, the European Union’s renewed Sustainable Development Strategy and Slovenia’s Development Strategy, the paper draws on Becker et al.’s cross-disciplinary concept of sustainability and the operationalisation of normative sustainability. On the basis of the analysis of objectives and rationales behind the investigated strategies as well as examination of the general context, the paper puts forward the differences between the examined regimes and explores the possible factors inducing them. The paper concludes with a general observation that the analyzed regimes reflect a fair degree of normative sustainability.