The sustainability agenda has evolved around a set of interconnected dilemmas regarding economic, social, and environmental goals. Progress has been made in establishing thresholds and targets that must be achieved to enable life to continue to thrive on the planet. However, much work remains to be done in articulating coherent theoretical frameworks that adequately describe the mechanisms through which sustainability outcomes are achieved. This paper reviews core concepts in the sustainability agenda to develop four propositions on integrated sustainability that collectively describe the underlying mechanisms of sustainable development. We then advance a framework for integrated sustainability and assess its viability through linear regression and principal components analysis of key selected indicators. The results provide preliminary evidence that countries with institutions that enable cooperation and regulate competition perform better in attaining integrated sustainability indicators. Our findings suggest that institutional design is important to sustainability outcomes and that further research into process-oriented mechanisms and institutional characteristics can yield substantial dividends in enabling effective sustainability policy.

可持续发展议程围绕着一系列与经济、社会和环境目标相关的相互关联的困境而演变。在确定必须实现的阈值和目标方面已经取得了进展，以使生命能够继续在地球上繁衍生息。然而，在阐明能够充分描述实现可持续性成果的机制的连贯理论框架方面仍有许多工作要做。本文回顾了可持续发展议程中的核心概念，提出了四个关于综合可持续性的命题，这些命题共同描述了可持续发展的基本机制。然后，我们推进了一个综合可持续性框架，并通过对关键选定指标的线性回归和主成分分析来评估其可行性。结果提供了初步证据，表明具有能够促进合作和规范竞争的机构的国家在实现综合可持续性指标方面表现更好。我们的研究结果表明，制度设计对可持续发展成果很重要，进一步研究以过程为导向的机制和制度特征可以在实现有效的可持续发展政策方面产生巨大的红利。