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systems. He acknowledges that agreeing on and measuring goals may be a challenge, but does not offer concrete strategies for overcoming them. The other two chapters are meandering in their focus. It is unclear how these approaches satisfy the institutional fit criterion. Second, Young emphatically states in the introduction that “solving the problems of the Anthropocene will require the creation and operation of innovative steering mechanisms that differ in important respects from those familiar to us from past experience” (p. 3, emphasis in original). Yet it is by no means clear how these approaches are new. The author himself notes that goal setting was successfully used in the Millennium Development Goals. And indeed, this is far from the only case: Campaigns to end infectious diseases like smallpox, or to eradicate the debt of the poorest nations have been around for decades, as has the idea of “good governance.” For instance, the World Bank has been compiling data on governance practices for over two decades. And the 2001 Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters codifies good governance as a right for all European citizens. It is not clear how these approaches meet Young’s own criteria of differing from past practices. Finally, and most importantly, there is an absence of politics throughout the book. While Young cites the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as an example of goal setting as an innovation in governance, they have been roundly criticized as an intractable laundry list of largely unquantifiable wishes. The institutional design may promote “fit,” but the political reality does not. The SDGs are the product of extensive political bargaining among states and many stakeholders, which, at least at this early stage, appear to hinder the likelihood of effectiveness. Other IR scholarship on complexity notes that complex governance further empowers powerful actors. Young’s analysis makes passing references to “actors” but is surprisingly silent on the distribution of interests and the conflicts among them. To its credit, Governing Complex Systems, and indeed, Young’s larger body of scholarship, is dedicated to a very important problem-oriented question: how to create institutions that actually fix environmental problems. But in this instance, the exclusion of politics is likely detrimental to his ultimate goal: to help heal the planet.