Policy fashions Policies and issues move into and out of fashion according to the vagaries of the political process and the priorities of the moment. This is true even within the international community, as noted by Johan Galtung.
Governance suffers in consequence through lack of any conceptual continuity.
The current flavour is sustainable development. It is useful to ask how sustainable is the concept of sustainable development, and what dimensions does it fail to take into account. In any policy forum, such differences are immediately apparent through the factions and coalitions to which they give rise. Johan Galtung has described the life cycle of such concepts in relation to the international community. The position in the life cycle determines how themes are handled by policy agendas.