The Governance Commons

Quick Tour The Commons is a large-scale, online knowledge base, as well as a network of people and organizations working to improve governance. To meet the challenges of a dynamic internet platform and diverse stakeholder community, TGC will undergo a transformation designed to meet the needs of our expanding reach. More info can be found in our regularly updated System Status page. Tips on how to use many aspects of the system are summarized in a Quick Tour.


 

The Commons, a "CL3" Community 


The Commons is organizing a Challenge-oriented, Large-scale, Long-term,  Learning (CL3) Community.  Through this community, we hope users from myriad backgrounds--civilian government, IGOs and NGOs, business, and the military--from all over the world--will join together to discuss and expand the ideas presented here.  By doing so, we will be able to work together to  improve the knowledge base, while simultaneously learning how to better address governance problems and  intractable conflict at international, national, and local levels.

Governance Failures

Governance failures routinely undermine society’s ability to successfully analyze problems, develop possible solutions, and then select and implement those that are most effective, equitable, and efficient.   More...


Governance Challenges

In addressing governance failures, the Commons focuses on improving our ability to handle nine often unmet challenges:

The Commons examines ways in which civilian government, the military, intergovernmental organizations, the commercial sector, and nonprofits can help meet these challenges.  

For those who approach goveranance in different ways, the Commons offers topic-oriented searching and browsing. More...


Keys to Meeting the Challenges

Human society has been struggling with these challenges for millennia.  While great progress has been made, the difficulties that remain are enormously challenging and require new approaches capable of dealing with complex psychological, economic, social, and political issues.  A number of principles are key to success.    More...
 

Projects

The Commons' new (and still under construction) Projects section highlights the contributions of those who are playing a significant role in developing the Commons. More...

  Our common future depends on fixing the governance problems that undermine society's ability to handle its big (and not so big) problems.
  The Governance Commons provides a  comprehensive knowledge base on strategies for improving those systems with free
 
Commons Portals...
...provide gateways to the system for people interested in:
  The Commons freely provides those working to improve governance with an opportunity to publicize their work through the knowledge base
  The Commons'... 

Participation
Options

... support a virtual community of people working together to improve governance  

 

Commons Services

The Governance Commons supports efforts to improve governance by providing free services in three broad areas:

  • The Knowledge Base of constructive governance-related information, capable of counterbalancing conventional information channels and their overload of destructive-governance-as-usual stories:
  • The Portals provide gateways to the system for people interested in:
    • The Chronicle -- a periodical featuring articles on the nine challenges;
    • Education -- with easy access to basic, "prerequisite" knowledge on the challenges;
    • Practice -- with practical advice for those actually struggling to deal with these challenges; and
    • Research and Development -- with a window into the latest efforts to advance the frontier of the field
  • The Learning Community of people who use the Commons' Participation Tools to improve governance by increasing the utilization of existing knowledge, and by developing improved strategies for meeting unmet challenges
More detailed information about the many ways in which the Commons can support efforts to improve governance is found on on the Commons Services overview page. More...