Public Good and Public Goods Public Good (singular and community - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Public Good and Public Goods

• Public Good (singular and community specific) –

bonum commune; what is deemed to be for the general good of a specified public

• Public Goods (Plural and community indifferent)

– particular products, resources or conditions valued by individuals that are more effectively realised or better enjoyed on a collective or public basis

Two types of Political Association

• Societas (nomocracy)

Civil association based on acceptance of common rules as grounding an identifiable public (public GOOD)

• Universitas (teleocracy)

Enterprise association based on co-operation to achieve some pre-specified collective purpose (public GOODS) However most actual political communities are a mixture of the two. The pursuit of each MAY encourage the other

The Public Good (societas)

Thick or Thin

• ‘thick’ – solidaristic sense of the public good as development
• f and commitment to a common ethical project – in line with

communitarianism

• thin’ –understood in welfarist terms as aggregate utility, or in

broader tradition of modern liberalism as protection of individual autonomy (also pre-modern sense of public Good, retained in modern natural law

(Maritain, Finnis etc..,) – collective good here is reflection and realisation

• f common individual good, neither the aggregation and reconciliation of

diverse individual interests as in liberalism/utilitarianism, nor construction

• f a shared ethic as in communitarianism)

Public Goods (Universitas) 1

Thin or Thick

• “Thin’ – classical material public goods (and bads) – non-excludability
• f access and non-rivalry of consumption. (bridge, clean air, pandemic

disease, climate change etc.,)

• often matter of degree (and technological and normative choice) – both

in creating public goods (e.g. free trade) and in constraining them by turning them into ‘club goods’ with restricted access

• instrumental justification (for individual benefit) of the collective provision
• f the goods in question

Public Goods (Universitas) 2

Thin or Thick

• Thick’ intrinsically social public goods – the good itself is a feature of

social relations rather than a material product.

• Makes essential reference to the ‘togetherness’ of our enjoyment-

conviviality, friendship, tolerance, Rule of Law, common language, security – intrinsic justification of collective provision – produced by the group for the good of the group

• Most such social Goods are mixed in their justification – both individual

and collective rationale

Public Good(s) in the EU (compared to the state)

• 1. at best, ‘thin’ sense of the singular public Good (societas).

Maximisation of individual utility in economic or interest-satisfaction terms – ordoliberalism and the economic constitution

• 2.significant emphasis on instrumental Public Goods – from

Monnet method and neo-functionalism to Ipsen’s ‘special purpose association’, Majone’s ‘regulatory state” and Scharpf’s ‘output legitimacy’ (carbon and steel production, common market , Euratom, CAP, currency, defence and foreign policy, macroeconomic stabilization, climate protection, energy production etc.)

• 3. important secondary emphasis on social Public Goods (of the

mixed sort) – peace, prosperity, Rule of Law, toleration, cultural diversity etc.

Three Problems, three Challenges

• Entrapment and policy gridlock – overemphasis on material public

goods requiring normative innovation, precision and discipline (and so premium on Law). Problems of distributive fairness and competing national public goods – joint-decision trap

• Policy fragmentation - Public goods increasingly diverse, not just

natural ‘spillover’. Problems of coherence and joined-up legitimacy

• Loose coupling between European society and European polity –

social goods may have been more successful than often reckoned in making a European society (peace, prosperity, mutual tolerance, pride in constitutionalism)but these insufficient to create a solidaristic European public good. Gradualist analysis is flawed