Global public goods (GPGs)--the economic term for a broad range of goods and services that benefit everyone, including stable climate, public health, and economic security--pose notable governance ...challenges. At the national level, public goods are often provided by government, but at the global level there is no established state-like entity to take charge of their provision. The complex nature of many GPGs poses additional problems of coordination, knowledge generation and the formation of citizen preferences. This book considers traditional public economy theory of public goods provision as oversimplified, because it is state centered and fiscally focused. It develops a multidisciplinary look at the challenges of understanding and designing appropriate governance regimes for different types of goods in such areas as the environment, food security, and development assistance. The chapter authors, all leading scholars in the field, explore the misalignment between existing GPG policies and actors’ incentives and understandings. They analyze the complex impact of incentives, the involvement of stakeholders in collective decision making, and the specific coordination needed for the generation of knowledge. The book shows that governance of GPGs must be democratic, reflexive--emphasizing collective learning processes--and knowledge based in order to be effective.
The Essentials of Social Cohesion Schiefer, David; van der Noll, Jolanda
Social indicators research,
06/2017, Letnik:
132, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The social cohesion literature repeatedly criticizes a lack of consensus regarding the theoretical conceptualization of the construct. The current paper attempts to clarify this ambiguity by ...providing a literature review on the recent approaches. By taking a bird’s eye view on previous conceptualizations of social cohesion we emphasize that in the majority of approaches there is in fact more overlap in the concept than has so far been assumed. In particular, we suggest three essential dimensions of social cohesion: (1) social relations, (2) identification with the geographical unit, and (3) orientation towards the common good. Each dimension is further differentiated into several sub-dimensions. We argue that additional elements identified in the literature (shared values, inequality, quality of life) are rather determinants or consequences of social cohesion, but not constituting elements. Suggestions for future research are discussed.
Sharpening the debate over the values that formed America's founding political philosophy, Barry Alan Shain challenges us to reconsider what early Americans meant when they used such basic political ...concepts as the public good, liberty, and slavery. We have too readily assumed, he argues, that eighteenth- century Americans understood these and other terms in an individualistic manner. However, by exploring how these core elements of their political thought were employed in Revolutionary-era sermons, public documents, newspaper editorials, and political pamphlets, Shain reveals a very different understanding--one based on a reformed Protestant communalism. In this context, individual liberty was the freedom to order one's life in accord with the demanding ethical standards found in Scripture and confirmed by reason. This was in keeping with Americans' widespread acceptance of original sin and the related assumption that a well-lived life was only possible in a tightly knit, intrusive community made up of families, congregations, and local government bodies. Shain concludes that Revolutionary-era Americans defended a Protestant communal vision of human flourishing that stands in stark opposition to contemporary liberal individualism. This overlooked component of the American political inheritance, he further suggests, demands examination because it alters the historical ground upon which contemporary political alternatives often seek legitimation, and it facilitates our understanding of much of American history and of the foundational language still used in authoritative political documents.
Economic individualism and market-based values dominate today's policymaking and public management circlesùoften at the expense of the common good. In his new book, Barry Bozeman demonstrates the ...continuing need for public interest theory in government. Public Values and Public Interest offers a direct theoretical challenge to the utility of economic individualism, the prevailing political theory in the western world. The book's arguments are steeped in a practical and practicable theory that advances public interest as a viable and important measure in any analysis of policy or public administration. According to Bozeman, public interest theory offers a dynamic and flexible approach that easily adapts to changing situations and balances today's market-driven attitudes with the concepts of common good advocated by Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, and John Dewey. In constructing the case for adopting a new governmental paradigm based on what he terms managing publicness, Bozeman demonstrates why economic indices alone fail to adequately value social choice in many cases. He explores the implications of privatization of a wide array of governmental servicesùamong them Social Security, defense, prisons, and water supplies. Bozeman constructs analyses from both perspectives in an extended study of genetically modified crops to compare the policy outcomes using different core values and questions the public value of engaging in the practice solely for the sake of cheaper food. Thoughtful, challenging, and timely, Public Values and Public Interest shows how the quest for fairness can once again play a full part in public policy debates and public administration.
Cutting across many biophysical, institutional, cultural, and psychological boundaries, the quest for the ‘common good’ is an enduring legitimation for land-use planning interventions that go beyond ...statutory planning, even supporting the emergence of new commons. We analyse a body of qualitative and semi-quantitative data from a recent strategic land-use plan process in Southwest Finland, including a series of planning documents and the results of a Q study. We describe how planners, citizens, and stakeholder organisations co-created a regional land-use plan and, focusing on the relationships between the practice of land-use planning and the legal structures of private property, ask how the commons were advanced in relation to private land ownership and how the different interpretations of the common good were reflected in the process. In the studied process, the planners strove to emphasise the commons and the common good by introducing new strategic land-use symbols. However, the emergence of new commons was seen as a threat by many landowners, their advocacy organisations, and regional decision makers. Instead of an unavoidable impasse, we urge that the situation should be seen as a call for novel solutions in the face of the ambitious and spatially explicit nature conservation commitments that increasingly contest the prevailing perceptions of the relationships of nature, property, and the distinct interpretations of common good.
•Seeking the common good in land-use planning requires a vantage point that transcends property boundaries.•Strategic land-use planning may contribute to the emergence of new commons that overlap private property.•Leaving the topic of land ownership unattended in planning processes does not fade out the resulting tensions.•Liabilities in the transition zones between private property and the commons need to be defined in societal dialogues.
Reacting to critiques that the smart city is overly technocratic and instrumental, companies and cities have reframed their initiatives as ‘citizencentric’. However, what ‘citizen-centric’ means in ...practice is rarely articulated. We draw on and extend Sherry Arnstein’s seminal work on participation in planning and renewal programmes to create the ‘Scaffold of Smart Citizen Participation’—a conceptual tool to unpack the diverse ways in which the smart city frames citizens. We use this scaffold to measure smart citizen inclusion, participation, and empowerment in smart city initiatives in Dublin, Ireland. Our analysis illustrates how most ‘citizen-centric’ smart city initiatives are rooted in stewardship, civic paternalism, and a neoliberal conception of citizenship that prioritizes consumption choice and individual autonomy within a framework of state and corporate defined constraints that prioritize market-led solutions to urban issues, rather than being grounded in civil, social and political rights and the common good. We conclude that significant normative work is required to rethink ‘smart citizens’ and ‘smart citizenship’ and to remake smart cities if they are to truly become ‘citizen-centric’.
This paper brings together two separate fields—inclusion and alternative organizations—to study the relational aspects of inclusion and exclusion both within and beyond organizations. By analyzing ...reports and websites of organizations committed to the network “Economy for the Common Good,” we empirically explore, first, how these organizations represent their “alternativeness” and how this relates to inclusion and exclusion; and second, we address the question of who is included in these alternative ventures by examining both their inclusionary and exclusionary potential in terms of diversity. Introducing a conceptual framework to distinguish between internal and external perspectives on inclusion and exclusion, our qualitative analysis reveals the simultaneity of two contradictory phenomena: On the one hand, these alternative organizations offer a new inclusionary potential that encompasses both the social and natural environments; on the other, they tend to ignore internal and external inclusion along diversity dimensions. Hence, we conclude that while there exists the potential to link inclusion with alternative organizations, a commitment to an alternative economy does not automatically lead to an engagement with issues of diversity and inclusion.
Being social entrepreneurship (SE) the closest to Economy for the Common Good (ECG) principles, our work proposes to analyze the contribution of ECG model to SE. It is also intended to establish the ...relationship that exists between both concepts. Therefore, our specific objectives are to (1) identify the specific contributions of ECG principles to SE as well as their overlaps, (2) perform a literature review to analyze and quantify the number of research papers on SE and ECG, and (3) identify the possible existing gap. Through a double methodology, we (1) determine the potential contributions of the ECG model to SE, we propose to analyze the Common Good (CG) matrix and (2) empirical analysis on the existing literature body on SE and ECG. SE and ECG model share a number of principles and features which may be translated into some important overlaps in relation to both research bodies. So CG matrix can help to successfully launch and manage social ventures. This fact is mainly due to the fact that there is not a sufficiently large body of literature that relates models. In future research, it would be interesting to extend the bibliographic search to other databases.
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