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Improved governance is needed to |
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The Challenge
Even the best governance processes cannot be successful if they do not have the support of the public. No matter how decisions are made – by consensus or negotiation amongst groups of representatives or by legislative, executive, or judicial processes, decisions will be actively and sometimes quite vigorously opposed if they are not widely seen as legitimate. Securing that public support obviously requires that the processes be worthy of the public support (as demonstrated by their ability to meet the other challenges). Still, more is required.
- Realistic Expectations -- Problems can quickly arise if the public has unrealistic expectations of what they can expect from a particular governance process. To prevent this, officials must resist the temptation to over-promise and be willing to make it clear that some desires simply cannot be met.
- Transparency -- When decisions are made in secret and when people don't understand the reasoning behind them, it iss easy for them to assume the worst. This can be combated with transparent processes that make it easy for people to see how decisions are made and that conflicts of interest among decision-makers have been successfully avoided. There are, of course, situations where the release confidential information might undermine, rather than advance, the public trust which require special treatment.
- Accountability -- For those cases when governance processes have not been trustworthy, the public needs to see that remedies have come into play, the guilty parties have been held to account, and improper decisions reversed. Here it is generally better to be the "first with the truth" when problems aris,e rather than relying on someone else to discover the wrongdoing.
| The Commons does not have definitive answers to these tough problems. We do, however, think that we have started to pull together ideas that will be part of the solution. Still, what we have is only a start. Success will require contributions from people like you. Find out what you can do to help us expand and improve this section of the site. |
Other Governance Challenges
- Improving Security
- Promoting Cooperative Relationships
- Assuring Efficiency and Effectiveness
Commons Resources
To help limit violence and intimidation the Commons offers the following:
Join / Contribute to the Commons
The Commons provides a broad range of tools which allow people from all backgrounds to join the Commons community. Commons members are invited to help make the Commons a better resource and, more importantly, to join the team of people actively working together to meet the challenge of Limiting Violence and Intimidation. Participation tools include opportunities to:
To help limit violence and intimidation the Commons offers the following:
- The Chronicle -- a frequently-changing "news and feature" page focused on goverance issues, analyses, and creative responses,
- Education Portal -- providing access to core knowledge needed to understand the challenges and potential solutions,
- Practitioner Portal -- with "actionable," practical advice for those dealing with particular governance problems,
- Research and Development Portal -- with information about efforts to advance the frontier of the field,
- Browse Page -- with browsable links to more in-depth information on dozens of violence-related topics,
- Search Page -- with simple and advanced searching of the many thousands of resources in the Commons knowledge base,
- Particpation Portal -- with information about how to use the Commons to advance your own goals (see more below).
The Commons provides a broad range of tools which allow people from all backgrounds to join the Commons community. Commons members are invited to help make the Commons a better resource and, more importantly, to join the team of people actively working together to meet the challenge of Limiting Violence and Intimidation. Participation tools include opportunities to:
- Provide comments and feedback on existing resources (follow the comment links at the bottoms of every Commons page),
- Suggest additional challenges (and sub-challenges) to cover using the comment page,
- Post announcements of governance-related activities and publications,
- Post challenges to the Commons community and suggest responses to challenges posed by others,
- Participate in (or convene and facilitate) working groups on specific governance related topics,
- Help edit Commons pages on particular topics (submit a comment form describing your areas of interest and we will send you details),
- Suggest others who should be invited to participate in the Commons initiative using the comment form,
- Publish materials on Commons-related topics through the Commons (use the comment form to explaining your areas of interest and request more information )
