A special Issue on Common Good. Introduction

This Special issue is devoted to defining the notion of common good in a practical, operational way, and to providing some initial empirical evidence on measuring the quality and the dynamics of a concrete, specific “system of common goods”, or “nexus” of the common good, within local communities (with reference to rural and peri-urban Mexican municipalities). The essential common good of a community is here understood as the same fact of experiencing the possibility of living together, in good times and in challenging times. Assessing common good dynamics can provide useful insights on the process of development. The notion of “integral’’ development captures the systemic nature of development as a dynamic process, intrinsically relational in nature and concretely unfolding in time and space. While assessing preconditions and measuring development outcomes can obviously provide very useful information, as in a sort of comparative statics analysis, a truly dynamic account of development requires referring to a systemic change, with many dimensions intertwined to form a ‘‘nexus’’.