Printer-friendly version

As a challenge-oriented system, the Governance Commons is organized around a series of "frontier-of-the-field" challenges, which we believe must be surmounted before we can overcome current difficulties with governance processes. While others might conceptualize the governance problem in different ways, we have found our approach, which is built around three major challenges and subsidiary challenges, to be especially useful.

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 under threat. 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.
	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.
	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.
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."
	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.
	Challenge #2c: Encouraging Agreement-Based Problem Solving  through public- and private-sector approaches that focus on identifying and then pursuing mutually beneficial solutions.
Challenge #3: Assuring Efficiency and Effectiveness Good governance requires more than security and willingness to work together. It requires governance processes that allow the many sectors of society to effectively work together in three critical areas:
	Challenge #3a: Dealing Wisely with Technical Issues by mobilizing the available scientific expertise to effectively identify and assess options for dealing with complex contemporary problems.
	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.
	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.