Paper short abstract:

Presenting a common good approach to development theory and practice. Rather than focusing on the outcomes or conditions (capabilities, resources) of development, we concentrate on the quality of development processes, suggesting that a common good dynamic is key to trigger development

Paper long abstract:

We would like to introduce the work resulting from more than three years of research by an international group of over fifty scholars collected in a forthcoming (2022) manuscript which advocates for a modern understanding of the common good—rather than a theological or metaphysical good—in societies by emphasising the social practice of 'commoning' at its core. It suggests that the dynamic equilibrium of common goods in a society should be at the centre of development efforts. For this purpose, it develops a matrix of common good dynamics, accounting for how institutions, social norms and common practices interconnect by identifying five key drivers of human development (agency, governance, justice, stability, humanity). We suggest a possible metric for measuring the quality of these dynamics.

The concept of the common good has recently enjoyed a revival and inspired practitioners keen to look beyond the shortcomings of political and economic liberalism. The main contribution of the book is twofold. First, in contrast to mainstream development approaches that rely on outcome-based aggregate individual data to evaluate social realities, our approach focuses on processes and on the commons of development practice. Therefore, it questions the language of individual rights and freedoms as the sole ethical anchors of development. Second, by proposing a matrix of interconnected dimensions and developing an original survey to capture it, our book goes beyond existing measures of 'procedural' dimensions, which tend to look at each in isolation as detached from the whole web of social goods and the socio structural context.