in the society (Diggs, 1973; Selloni, 2017).
In an ever-changing social world, people's efforts to pursue societal goals also need to adjust. Throughout history, societies have constructed a wide range of structures and institutions aiming to develop communities and societies towards a common good, in which the citizens have been alienated as clients or consumers rather than acknowledged as part of the solution (Pestoff, 2019; Torfing et al., 2016). When research and community change are worked out for rather than with citizens, they are unlikely to engage a wide range of relevant concerns promoting public interest (Gergen, 2014; McNamee and Hosking, 2012; Smith, 2009). Throughout the last century, the Nordic countries and other welfare states across the globe have undergone major (although overlapping and coexisting) changes in logics and ways of governing societies towards desired outcomes (Torfing et al., 2016). Public sector organizations all over the world are now striving to transform neoliberal organizational recipes (i.e., new public management, NPM) into a logic embracing the public sector as an ‘arena for co-creation’ (i.e., new public governance, NPG; collaborative governance). From a co-creational perspective, people, relationships and their living environments alongside nurturing capabilities, capacity building and empowerment are positioned at the heart of societal and community development (Cottam, 2018; Davidson, Ridgway, Wieland and O'Connell, 2009; Gergen, 2014; Hersted et al., 2020; McNamee and Hosking, 2012; Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1992, 1999; Torfing et al., 2016). We will argue that this represents a truly people-centered and relational approach, placing ‘human becomings’ and the potential solutions that we create together in our social, ecological worlds as a focal point.
Adjustments, or even radical change, require inquiry, collaboration and action. One ongoing example of radical change that we find inspiring is the transformation of welfare states towards relational welfare (Cottam, 2018). This approach places people and the relationships between them as a focal point to reinvent and design societies and welfare systems. Based on above-mentioned theories and approaches, we propose the following definition of relational welfare:
Relational welfare is a human centred and collaborative approach premised on human rights, social justice and societal sustainable development. Relational welfare means that welfare is a resource that people co-create together, where personal and collective relationships and environments are placed at the centre of development. Within this, the foremost mission of the public sector is to build public value as a common good by supporting conditions that enable all people to flourish and live a life they have reason to value and the capacity to sustain. The purpose is to strengthen the resources, relationships and communities to create positive and sustainable life courses, now and in the future.
Following Cottam (2018) and Desai et al. (2019), there is a need to start by standing in communities, shoulder to shoulder, and by seeking insight together to understand the complexity of the problems and the possibilities of approaching these from an everyday life perspective. As Cottam (2018, p. 46) points out, ‘participation cannot be seen as something special or unusual that must be celebrated. We need to create systems that make participation easy, intuitive and natural’.
A recent example that has gained large-scale international attention and widespread praise for pursuing a ‘re-turn’ towards the common good is New Zealand (NZ). In 2019, the NZ government unveiled its very first (actually the world's first) ‘well-being budget’, aiming to replace GDP with a national framework measuring well-being, equity and sustainability as the ultimate societal goals. In developing the policies and assessments for progress, the state agencies in NZ invited and mobilized a large-scale participatory and collaborative process where citizens with diverse backgrounds contributed by constructing meaning and purpose for national policies. In the development of the Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy, the NZ government, with the support of partner agencies, engaged with more than 10,000 New Zealanders, including 6000 children and young people (New Zealand Government, 2019). As a result of what mattered most to New Zealanders in negotiation with the knowledge built on research, all policies in NZ are now evaluated through a lens of kindness, empathy and well-being (Ngā Tūtohu Aotearoa – Indicators Aotearoa New Zealand, 2019). In this process, NZ people shared what was most important for their well-being through a wide range of face-to-face meetings, workshops, surveys, focus groups and free postcards.
In 2018, NZ, together with Scotland and Iceland, established the network of Wellbeing Economy Governments (WEGo, nd), through which these governments share expertise and transferable policy to challenge the acceptance of GDP as the ultimate measure of a country's success. The objectives of the group are as follows:
Collaborate in pursuit of innovative policy approaches aimed at enhancing well-being through a broader understanding of the role of economics – sharing what works and what does not to inform policy making.
Progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals, in line with Goal 17, fostering partnership and cooperation to identify approaches to delivering well-being.
Address the pressing economic, social and environmental challenges of our time.
A ‘well-being economy’ places collaboration to achieve goals such as equal pay, childcare, mental health and access to green space at its heart and demonstrates how this approach helps build resolve to confront global challenges. Although the NZ and WEGo example does not explicitly build on the notion of ‘the common good’ or CAR, we believe that it serves as an excellent example of a ‘re-turn’ to the interest of the citizens as described by Aristotle. Further, we believe that it serves as an inspiration for a collaborative movement towards desirable societal goals, to which CAR could make an important contribution.
The Collaborative Turn and the Growing Jungle of ‘Co's’
Throughout the last decades, collaboration and active citizen participation have been increasingly endorsed as essential approaches to address complex societal problems and promote human flourishing across a wide range of practices and academic disciplines (Bradbury, 2015; Cottam, 2018; Hersted et al., 2020; Ostrom, 1996; Pestoff, 2019; Voorberg et al., 2015).
Indeed, participatory and collaborative approaches and concepts are not new, especially because they have always been the focus of social constructionist theory and practice. In social constructionist theory, the term ‘co-construction’ has a long history and is used to describe processes of relational meaning-making and joint action (Gergen, 1985, 1994, 2009; McNamee, 2010; Shotter, 1993). However, the expansion of attention to such concepts and the language used for meaning-making around these have most certainly come from the public sector. Many of these emerging discourses have been constructed and described through a language of ‘co's’ (Phillips and Napan, 2016). This development may be considered a reaction to societal development heavily dominated by neoliberal and positivist ideas, where individualism and fragmentation have been key tendencies (Gergen, 2009, 2014; Selloni, 2017).
The expansion of parallel worlds of ‘co's’ in a series of academic and practice discourses (e.g., public administration and policy, organizational studies and design thinking) can be described as co-constructed through terms such as ‘co-creation’, ‘co-production’, ‘collaborative governance’ and ‘co-design’. Most of these co's have mainly focused on descriptions of processes aimed at achieving desired outcomes, not on the process of co-constructing knowledge or evaluating or having dialogues about outcomes (e.g., Voorberg et al., 2015). In this chapter, we will not go into detail about these numerous concepts of ‘co's’ and the academic struggle to coin and further develop them. Instead, we acknowledge the commonality of collaboration, participation and empowerment as central concepts in the developing pluralism of ‘co's’ and as key issues in addressing the complex societal problems described above.
Collaboration as Key to Capabilities and Capacity Building for the Common Good
We
