Re-Imagining Public Governance
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Edited by:
Scherto Gill
This series moves beyond familiar critiques by exploring constructive and forward-looking orientations to democracy. Since many global challenges hinge on rethinking public governance, it is imperative to develop and implement futures-forming approaches to politics. Grounded in emerging theories and grassroots experiences worldwide, the series redefines public governance as social spaces and relational processes for inclusive dialogue and collective decision-making. To advance synergistic, non-bureaucratic systems, it highlights core ethical pillars founded on non-instrumentality, equality of persons, harmony, and well-being. Through these guiding principles, readers will discover how co-created spaces can facilitate richer dialogue, foster deeper citizen participation in policy development, and spark transformative action for the common good.
This book argues that love is not just a fleeting emotion, but rather an action that can bring tangible benefits to people. Its practical approach to love reveals a public dimension that makes love important in a co-governance perspective, as it contributes to citizens’ well-being and institutional guidance.
Rooted in the debate of how well-being can be operationalized by integrating classic indicators of progress and wealth with other relational dimensions, this book proposes a new measurement: The World Love Index, a transnational secondary data analysis, measures how much people from different countries care for others and the world. In the current post-pandemic context, marked by conflicts and identity issues, the proposed new index aims to signal the transition toward a new social ecology. It can be considered a complementary of alternative measure to the GDP.
The book provides the theoretical framework supporting the usage of the World Love Index and it presents the Index’s results, focusing on the tole of citizens and institutions, and analyzing methods, social capital, and policies such as migration and welfare policies. The volume also identifies open challenges for a more supportive and inclusive world.
Collective efforts to address the legacies of slavery and colonialism tend to orient solely towards dealing with material compensation, such as reducing economic disparity, and levelling access to public services. However, communities directly impacted by the dehumanizing legacies have insisted on a broader reckoning—one that recognizes all dimensions of the harms, including the spiritual injury and the relevant psychosocial trauma inflicted across the generations. They remind us that harms of structural injustice extend beyond the material, the physical and the psychological, also entangling the moral, relational, and spiritual fabric of human life. Understanding harms of inhumanity brings to light the layers of damage and is key to identifying interdisciplinary approaches to collective healing, social transformation and the well-being of all.
This book emerges from the ongoing intellectual dialogue as part of the UNESCO Collective Healing Initiative. The Initiative focuses on healing the wounds of inhumanity, co-creating just societies and enhancing the flourishing of current and future generations.
The concept of an economy requires us to characterise what human life and society are fundamentally about, or what is valuable and why. This includes our social relations with each other and to the ecosystems we live in, as well as our happiness, well-being and flourishing.
Beyond the Instrumentalised Economy defines what work, consumption and the use of natural resources would look like if they were not instrumentalised. This enables the reader to see how a company would work in a non-instrumentalised economy, and what would constitute a non-instrumentalised market. Based on this, the book provides insight concerning how investment would work in such an economy, and the main features of a non-instrumentalised financial system.
Beyond Mimicry offers critical analysis of the main characteristics of African endogenous approaches to governance, investigating the potential of these systems in response to the crises many of today’s societies in Africa are facing. The book reflects on these studies and develops policy recommendations for African decision-makers willing to consider integrating endogenous systems of governance as a basis to search for alternative solutions to current critical issues.
Political thinking tends to outline reforms to existing political institutions. In contrast, Beyond Instrumentalised Politics argues for the need for systemic transformation. It articulates the evaluative principles for good governance, and employs these principles to argue for a new political system. Because persons are non-instrumentally valuable, good governance requires that all people are respected equally, and this necessitates a participatory democracy. The book investigates how such a democracy might function through consensus-based decision-making and argues for a redefinition of consensus. It characterises the local and national institutions required for public governance thus conceived. This includes the creation of various types of spaces for deep dialogue and mutual inquiry. This book demonstrates how this innovative vision would transform our current conceptions of governance.
