Paper short abstract:

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Fairclough 2012) is employed to consider discourses of the private sector in the key documents of the MDGs and the SDGs in order to examine the extent to which the international discourse has evolved in the 2000-2015 period.

Paper long abstract:

The private sector as a development actor has received considerable attention in Agenda 2030 and the SDGs, probably the most influential international development policy of the current period until the year 2030. This paper employs a genealogical approach to discourse which locates discourses on the private sector in the field of prior discourses in order to consider which discourses are evident in both the SDGs and MDGs. Two prior meta-discourses of the private sector are identified in the literature: one in which the private sector is seen to be a development actor which can support a pro-poor development agenda proposed by many international organisations and developed countries (Langan, 2009); and a second where the private sector is considered to have conflicting interests with development, largely proposed by some civil society actors and academics (Scheyvens et al 2016). In general, the former discourse of the private sector was found to be dominant in both the key texts of the MDGs and the SDGs. Evidence from civil society (Pingeot, 2014) and academics (Scheyvens et al 2016) indicates that private sector actors were influential in determining the final text of both the MDGs and the SDGs. However, their influence was greater in the case of the SDGs which probably accounts for the fact that the private sector appears to receive primary rather than secondary emphasis. Although other articles have used CDA to consider the MDGs and the SDGs (Briant Carant 2017, Cummings et al 2017), the focus on the private sector is novel.