Modern political-economic systems and the institutions that compose them are characterized by severe inadequacies and even outright failure. Many capitalist democracies face intractable fiscal difficulties, systemic environmental damage, increasing poverty and dependence among their citizens, and threats to individual liberty and security. Although expressed public support for such basic values as liberty, democracy and general environmental sustainability remains relatively stable, in many ways our political-economic institutions no longer reflect or sustain these values, and real reversals threaten to occur as economic and social decay deepens.

A central problem is that as the failings of current political-economic institutions become increasingly apparent, the traditions of thought that have sustained democratic society are losing their capacity to explain, to convey legitimacy, and to inspire and guide social progress. The great traditions of "good society" thinking—liberalism, socialism and traditional conservatism—have had difficulty adapting to the modern reality of complex, heterogeneous, interdependent societies. Indeed, on many of the most important issues of our time—the environment, changes in the family, the decline of the egalitarian impulse, the "globalization" of what were formerly national economic, social and political problems—our major traditions are either silent or proving themselves incapable of effective action. As a consequence, we are witnessing increased despair, alienation, cynicism, loss of faith in government and other institutions and a general sense that things cannot be made to work.

Quite simply, existing political and economic theories offer insufficient guidance for how alternative institutional and structural arrangements might avoid or reduce the major social problems and challenges we face.

Astonishingly, however, even as the guiding traditions of twentieth century thought and politics have lost much of their ability to provide workable visions of a good society, institutional analysis and reform receive little attention. Instead, political discourse takes our basic social and economic institutions as givens.

As the prevailing intellectual paradigms—socialism, the welfare state, and modern conservatism—all falter in the face of finite resource limits and a radical shift in global interdependence, how, specifically, are we to build a viable set of guiding ideas for the management of societies as we enter the new century?

Is there any meaningful way forward that promises to honor equality, liberty, democracy, ecological rationality and community, a direction that might begin to define a viable alternative to both traditional socialism and traditional capitalism as we approach a new century? What is needed is not simply a set of rhetorical goals, but the beginning outlines of an alternative system of institutions and relationships that might nurture, rather than erode, our most cherished values in an ongoing fashion over time.

The National Center is concerned with exploring the central elements of a "good society." In this endeavor, a key partner is the Committee on the Political Economy of the Good Society (PEGS).