Instructor
Professor Doug Hicks, Leadership Studies
Academic Year(s) Offered
2010 - 2011
Overview
This course examines political, economic, moral, and religious approaches to how societies determine and pursue goods in common. The course is structured around the comparative exercise of conceiving, measuring, and achieving collective goals. What is well-being, how do individuals and societies determine it, and how do leaders help communities to achieve it? How do different societies balance, or trade off, individual and collective welfare? How have leaders in various contexts moved citizens to embrace common goals? In talk of “common good,” which interests are prioritized and which are left out? The principal political contexts of comparison are the United States, the Scandinavian countries, and Mediterranean Europe. This course includes occasional talks, discussions, and outside-of-class activities; a group project; travel to Washington, DC; and a weeklong travel seminar to two capitals in Western Europe (potentially Denmark and Madrid).
Possible Readings
UNDP, Human Development Report 2009: Human Development on the Move (and selections from earlier issues), Oxford University Press, 2009
Barbara Crosby and John Bryson, Leadership for the Common Good, Jossey-Bass 2005 [1992]
David Hollenbach, The Common Good and Christian Ethics, Cambridge University Press, 2002
Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, The Quality of Life, Oxford University Press, 1993
James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent, 1962
Pierre Pestieau, The Welfare State in the European Union, 2006
Gosta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, 1990
Examples of Potential Class Activities
Speakers hailing from various countries and worldviews meet with students to discuss their visions of the common good; these events can be more academic (e.g., talks with Q&A) or experiential (e.g., discussions, presentations, or debates with international students at UR)
Example(s) of Potential Group Projects in the Spring Semester
Each group chooses a country, analyzing it in terms of a set of tradeoffs—individual v. collective goods; equality v. efficiency; theory v. practice—and how well or poorly leaders in that country have helped articulate and achieve communal goals.
