The Governance Commons
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A Quick Tour of Governance Commons

  • Welcome to the Governance Commons.
  • The system is designed to increase the effectiveness of those who are trying to do something about our failing systems of governance.
  • The Commons is both a knowledge base and a community.
  • As a Knowledge Base, the system contains over 5000 articles on all aspects of the governance problem.
  • From the Library Tab, the site allows full-text searching of this knowledge base using both simple and advanced techniques.
  • You can also browse virtual bookshelves on well over 1000 topics.
  • The site also includes a periodically-updated Chronicle featuring stories gathered from all over the web about the nature of governance problems and constructive ways in which people are responding to those problems.
  • The Commons also includes what we call a large-scale, long-term, learning community.
  • In case anyone needs persuading, we've also included a section on the nature of governance failures and the importance of addressing them.
  • The site is organized around a series of nine tough challenges that we believe have to be addressed as part of any comprehensive effort to deal with poor governance.
  • To provide information on strategies for meeting each of these challenges, we are posting a series of portals in addition to the Chronicle.
  • These portals, which are accessible from the tabs at the top of the page, include:
    • Education and training pages highlighting foundational knowledge on each topic;
    • Practice pages highlighting materials likely to be useful to those struggling with real-world governance problems; and
    • Research and development pages, highlighting the contributions of those working on the frontier of the field.
  • The project is built around eight ideas that we believe are key to realistically addressing these daunting challenges.
  • To facilitate the CL3 community's collaboration efforts, the Governance Commons includes a series of participation tools that make it easier for people to publicize their work, find out about the work of others, and pursue collaborative efforts.
  • We are actively recruiting, as Commons "affiliates" organizations that are doing governance work.
  • We are also developing a series of special projects that focus Commons resources on specific governance problems. 
  • We invite you to explore the site and use the contact links to tell us what you think.
  • If you'd like to contribute your insights, simply fill out a registration form and we'll set you up with a free username and password that gives you use the various participation tools.
  • We hope that you find the system useful. And, we would appreciate any suggestions you might have regarding possible improvements.