Common good
Social choice theory aims to understand processes by which the common good may or may not be realized in societies through the study of collective decision rules.
According to procedural formulations, by contrast, the common good consists of the outcome that is achieved through collective participation in the formation of a shared will.
[20] In this teleological view, the good stems from objective facts about human life and purpose, which may vary, depending upon peoples' occupations, virtue-levels, etc.
[13] However, noting that only citizens have the salvation (common good) of the city at heart,[21] Aristotle argues that, regardless of form of government,[17][18][22] those who have more of a rational understanding of the needs of the state's salvation, are entitled to a greater share in administering and determining justice, within the light of its common good,[23][24] than those who have less, or no such understanding or concern for it, such as selfish despots and political factions,[25] as well as uneducated artisans and freedmen, women and children, slaves, etc.
[37][38] Elsewhere in the Discourses, freedom, safety and dignity are explicitly stated to be elements of the common good and some form of property and family life are also implied.
In his Theory of Justice, Rawls argues for a principled reconciliation of liberty and equality, applied to the basic structure of a well-ordered society, which will specify exactly such general conditions.
If an individual does not know how he will end up in his own conceived society, he is likely not going to privilege any one class of people, but rather develop a scheme of justice that treats all fairly.
In particular, Rawls claims that those in the original position would all adopt a "maximin" strategy which would maximize the prospects of the least well-off individual or group.
[46] In Islamic political thought, many modern thinkers have identified conceptions of the common good while endeavoring to ascertain the fundamental or universal principles underlying divine shari‘a law.
[47] These fundamentals or universal principles have been largely identified with the "objectives" of the shari‘a (maqāṣid al-sharī‘a), including concepts of the common good or public interest (maṣlaḥa ‘āmma, in modern terminology).
[47] A notion of the common good arises in contemporary Islamic discussions of the distinction between the fixed and the flexible (al-thābit wa-l-mutaghayyir), especially as it relates to modern Islamic conceptions of tolerance, equality, and citizenship: according to some, for instance, universal principles carry greater weight than specific injunctions of the Qur'an, and in case of conflict, can even supersede or suspend explicit textual injunctions (naṣṣ) if this serves the common good.
A simple typology illustrates the differences between various kinds of goods: The field of welfare economics studies social well-being.
[48] Neoclassical economic theory provides two conflicting lenses for thinking about the genesis of the common good, two distinct sets of microfoundations.
Thus, Smith described the "invisible hand," whereby the mechanism of the market converts individuals' self-interested activity into gains for society.
Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, an important result in social choice theory, states that no aggregative mechanism of collective choice (restricted to ordinal inputs) can consistently transform individual preferences into a collective preference-ordering, across the universal domain of possible preference profiles, while also satisfying a set of minimal normative criteria of rationality and fairness.
Buchanan and Tullock pursued this program in developing the field of "constitutional political economy" in their book The Calculus of Consent.
More recent work in social choice theory, however, has demonstrated that Arrow's impossibility result can be obviated at little or no normative cost.
Amartya Sen, for instance, argues that a range of social choice mechanisms emerge unscathed given certain reasonable restrictions on the domain of admissible preference profiles.
In The Logic of Collective Action, Mancur Olson argues that public goods will tend to be underprovided due to individuals' incentives to free-ride.
In contrast to aggregative conceptions, deliberative democracy emphasizes the processes by which agents justify political claims on the basis of judgments about the common good.
Book XIX of this, the main locus of Augustine's normative political thought, is focused on the question, 'Is the good life social?'
Against that background, the common good became a central concept in the modern tradition of Catholic social teaching, beginning with the foundational document, Rerum novarum, a papal encyclical by Pope Leo XIII, issued in 1891.
In this letter, Pope Leo guarantees the right to private property while insisting on the role of collective bargaining to establish a living wage.
The Compendium later gives statements that communicate what can be seen as a partly different, more classical, sense of the concept – as not only "social conditions" that enable persons to reach fulfilment, but as the end goal of human life.
The Roman Catholic International Theological Commission drew attention to these two partly different understandings of the common good in its 2009 publication, In Search of a Universal Ethic: A New Look at the Natural Law.
The liberal magazine The Nation[74] and the Rockridge Institute,[75] among others, have identified the common good as a salient political message for progressive candidates.
[77] Given the central concern for sustainable development in an increasingly interdependent world, education and knowledge should thus be considered global common goods.
[78] Common goods for health (CGH) can be defined as population-related interventions or activities that require cumulative finances from either donors or government on the basis of two conditions.
The second condition includes emphasis on public or common goods and large social externalities with clear economic foundation for health interventions based on market failures.
After the 1950s, the government increasingly began to see the concept of addressing mutual issues for the benefit of the citizens, but it has yet to be completely adopted and will be much more compatible with appropriate expenditure.
