President’s Peace Commission tackles governing for the common good

Neiheisel	O’Keefe

SAN ANTONIO • For three days in October, the 24th annual President’s Peace Commission at St. Mary’s University (StMU) took a long, hard look at national, as well as global, accountability and the many ways humans impact each other and the world — for better or worse.

“Embracing Our World: Are We Accountable?” brought to the table a wide range of issues in line with the commission’s overall mission of helping establish world peace and social justice through encouraging students, faculty and staff to grow in these areas.

Tackling the subject “Governing for the Common Good” on Oct. 29, were Steve Neiheisel, Ph.D., chairman of the Political Science Department at StMU, and William O’Keefe, senior director of the Advocacy Department at Catholic Relief Services (CRS).

STEVE Neiheisel
“How, in a country of 300 million people as diverse as our country, can one arrive at the common good?” posed Neiheisel. While some argue that there can be no such thing, he noted there are two ways of thinking about just what “the common good” means.

One is the “public good,” or non-divisible service benefits we receive from our government, such as public education, roads and clean air, which are accessible to all. But government itself, he said, can also be a “common good,” in terms of its collective action that binds us by certain rules and regulations. An example is our justice system, which we expect to be fair and consistent in enforcement.

Our economic system is another example though not a particularly good one, he noted, in light of the recent economic crisis, as are labor rules and safety regulations.

These systems are, he said, a “common good” because they “are the means by which we make social decisions in how we’re going to get along, in how we’re going to organize our lives.” They also build what he referred to as social capital, “the trust that we have between ourselves as individuals, between ourselves as individuals and institutions, and among institutions.”

Finally, he related, they provide hope, allowing us to calculate what level of effort we must exert to reach an expected outcome, an example being investing in college knowing it will ensure a better job and future.

Neiheisel then delved into the subject of good governance, what he calls the “social ecology of organization.” Our society, he noted, is divided into three sectors or types of organizations — the government sector, the nonprofit sector and the for profit sector. “To have a healthy society,” he said, “all three must do well what they do well, and we need all three present in our society for a healthy society.”

The government or public sector, he said, provides regulatory power through rules and regulations — something only this sector can do — and we rely on it to be fair. “Government is also important for accountability and oversight,” he related. “It can regulate the rest of society.”

The importance of the nonprofit sector, he pointed out, is its serving as a buffer, softening the harder edges of government’s work, as well as the harder edges of the for profit market. Hence, we rely on it to be mission-driven. The for profit sector, on the other hand, is looked to for its innovation, entrepreneurship and the creation of new ideas, plus money to assist the nonprofit sector. “All three are necessary for good governance,” he concluded.

William O’Keefe
As director of advocacy for Catholic Relief Services, William O’Keefe noted that the reason for his department, which oversees 100 countries where CRS operates, is to address issues of poverty and social justice which tie back to the United States. The mission of CRS itself is international relief development — res-ponding to emergencies, building community and helping families meet their own needs in countries around the globe, as well as addressing questions of social justice.

“Catholic Relief Services faces around the world many overarching challenges,” he said, “and the most obvious and dramatic challenges are really governance challenges.” This includes climate change, and how the national and global political systems respond to it, the global food crisis, which is affected by trade rules and global health. Finally, there is the global issue of war and peace.

The Catholic Church holds to the moral belief that each human being has inalienable dignity, O’Keefe noted, with people thriving in the context of family, community and society, and he sees this ordering of society as the “common good,” enabling all to reach their full potential. Particular attention must be paid though to society’s poorest members. In this context, he said, good governance relates to government wielding the forces which are only at its disposal, such as taxes, the police and the military, for the good of its members, especially the most vulnerable.

According to the Catholic principle of subsidiary, he added, the functions of people, families and communities should be addressed at the lowest possible level, starting at the family level. “The wisdom there,” he said, “is that the further away the people making decisions get from the people affected, ‘surprisingly,’ the worse the decisions that happen.”

CRS has found there are certain pre-conditions that must be in place in the countries they work with in order for good governance to take place. There must be rules, he said, and they must be enforced fairly and transparently, with the participation of the people themselves in shaping the rules. There also must be accountability for not following the rules.

Internationally, we are looking at an imperfect system, he admitted. While most countries have a legal system in line with United Nations and international conventions, they sometimes are not enforced fairly, bringing the legitimacy of the government into question.

Nonprofits (NGOs), play a particularly important role, he said, noting, “I think one of the great gifts that the United States has to share with the rest of the world is we have this incredibly rich infrastructure of associations, nonprofits, groups, societies, leagues, activities that underpin our whole society and meet many human needs that the government doesn’t provide.” These also provide independent sources of power and influence that counterbalance that of the government.

“They provide an opportunity,” he said. “They provide services; they provide accountability in monitoring what the government is doing and whether they’re enforcing their rules fairly.” Many countries in which CRS operates do not have this rich infrastructure, however.

In fact, he noted that in many places the Catholic Church is the only organization providing these services, referring to Uganda and the global debt relief movement to absolve poor countries from sinking further into poverty by absolving their debts.

There was a question whether these governments would use the resources they would then have at their disposal in corrupt ways or for military expenditures and it rested on a network of local organizations, supported by CRS, to monitor the government.

As to the question of whether there is a conflict between the roles of the NGOs and government, O’Keefe noted this is not the case unless a government is not fairly applying rules and thus sees NGOs as competitors or whistle-blowers.

“The role of CRS is an important one,” he said in conclusion, “but one that’s really subsidiary. We have no real legitimate role in that society outside of what is the strengthening of the local members and the local groups that are already there.”