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Governance Challenges

The Governance Commons is organized around a series of "frontier-of-the-field" challenges, which we believe must be considered as part of any comprehensive effort to address the inadequacies of governance processes.  While others might conceptualize the governance problem in different ways, we have found this approach, which is built around three major challenges and nine subsidiary challenges, to be especially useful. (Each challenge is accompanied with links to available resources.) ** Indicates not yet available, but under construction.

Challenge #1: Improving Security Good governance requires basic security. It is very difficult for people to engage in peaceful problem-solving when their security is constantly threatened. Therefore, the Commons supports efforts to promote security in three key areas:
	Challenge #1a: Limiting Violence and Intimidation by strengthening the ability of police and military forces to protect the public from inter- and intra-state violence, while, at the same time, not taking unfair advantage of their powerful positions within a society.  Portals: Chronicle, Practice, Research, Education, More Information
	Challenge #1b: Protecting Individual and Group Rights from illegitimate uses of state power and from structural violence through effective national and international judicial, political, and social mechanisms.  Portals: Chronicle, Practice, Research, Education, More Information
	Challenge #1c: Providing Basic Human Needs by promoting sustainable economies capable of limiting both the humanitarian tragedies of hopeless poverty and the security threats which can arise when people become truly desperate.  Portals: Chronicle, **Practice, **Research, **Education, More Information
Challenge #2: Promoting Cooperative Relationships For governance to work, inevitable and, in many ways, constructive intergroup competition must be tempered by a willingness to work together to advance mutual interests. This is why the Commons supports relationship-building efforts in three areas:
	Challenge #2a: Broadening the Sense of Community by overcoming hateful divisions and histories of unrightable wrongs that often prevent communities from recognizing their common interests. In short, we seek to reframe relationships from "us versus them" to "we." Portals: Chronicle, **Practice, **Research, **Education, More Information
	Challenge #2b: Fostering a Sense of Fairness by encouraging development of a moral basis for balancing individual freedom and the pursuit of self-interest with reasonable obligations to others and to future generations. Portals: Chronicle, **Practice, **Research, Education, More Information
	Challenge #2c: Encouraging Agreement-based Problem Solving  through public- and private-sector approaches that focus on identifying and then pursuing mutually beneficial solutions. Portals: Chronicle, **Practice, **Research, **Education, More Information
Challenge #3: Assuring Efficiency and Effectiveness Good governance requires more than security and the willingness to work together. It requires effective decision-making processes as well.  Effectiveness has at least three components:
	Challenge #3a: Dealing Wisely with Technical Issues by mobilizing available scientific expertise to effectively identify and assess options for dealing with complex contemporary problems. Portals: Chronicle, **Practice, **Research, **Education, More Information
	Challenge #3b: Making Politics Work through institutions that are capable of making tough but equitable decisions in complex political environments and in cases where consensus is impossible. Portals: Chronicle, **Practice, **Research, **Education, More Information
	Challenge #3c: Fostering Legitimate Governance through transparent and accountable processes that build public trust by demonstrating that the processes are, in fact, worthy of the public's trust. Portals: Chronicle, Practice, Research, Education, More Information