research paper common good

What does the ‘common good’ actually mean? Our research found common ground across the political divide

Senior Lecturer, Graduate School of Business and Law, RMIT University

Research Assistant in concept creep - Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne

Associate Professor of Leadership, Swinburne University of Technology

Lecturer of Marketing, Swinburne University of Technology

Disclosure statement

Melissa Wheeler has previously received philanthropic funding to conduct research on responsible leadership.

Naomi Baes has previously worked with the Australian Leadership Index to research responsible leadership and currently receives funding from the Australian government.

Samuel Wilson receives philanthropic funding for the Australian Leadership Index.

Vlad Demsar receives philanthropic funding to conduct research on responsible leadership.

University of Melbourne provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

RMIT University provides funding as a strategic partner of The Conversation AU.

Swinburne University of Technology provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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Some topics are hard to define. They are nebulous; their meanings are elusive. Topics relating to morality fit this description. So do those that are subjective, meaning different things to different people in different contexts.

In our recently published paper , we targeted the nebulous concept of the “common good”.

Like moral issues that elicit strong arguments for and against, conceptualisations of the common good can vary according to the different needs of individuals and the different values they hold. One factor that divides people is political orientation. Those on the far left hold very different opinions on moral and social issues than those on the far right.

How can we expect people across the political spectrum to agree on a moral topic when they have such different perspectives?

If we set aside the specific moral issues and focus instead on the broader aspects of the common good as a concept, we may well find foundational principles – ideas that are shared between people, ideas that are perhaps even universal.

Folk theory

To find such underlying commonalities, we used a social psychological folk theory approach. Folk theories are non-academic or lay beliefs that comprise individuals’ informal and subjective understandings of their world.

The concept of the common good bleeds into cultural perceptions and worldviews. The currency of such ideas influences how we think and what we talk about with other people. By asking people to write about or define elusive concepts, social psychologists can search for frequently expressed words and phrases and derive a shared cultural understanding from the collection of individual texts.

We asked 14,303 people who participated in a larger study for the Australian Leadership Index to provide a definition of the common good, also sometimes called the greater good or the public good.

The sample was nationally representative, meaning it reflected the demographics of the Australian population at the time the data was collected. We then used a linguistic analysis tool, called the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program, to analyse the responses.

The program has a new function called the Meaning Extraction Method , which processes large bodies of text to identify prevalent themes or concepts by analysing words that frequently occur in close proximity.

Using this method, we explored Australians’ definitions of the common good. From the word clusters derived from this analysis, we identified nine main themes:

outcomes that are in the best interest of the majority

decisions and actions that benefit the majority

that which is in the best interest of the general public

that which serves the general national population rather than individual interests

that which serves the majority rather than minority interests

that which serves group rather than individual interests

that which serves citizens’ interests

concern for and doing the right thing for all people

moral principles required to achieve the common good

Interestingly, these broad themes did not differ for the most part between right-leaning and left-leaning participants, meaning they were shared by liberals and conservatives alike. There is indeed common ground in people’s understanding of the common good.

Read more: Do universal values exist? A philosopher says yes, and takes aim at identity politics – but not all of his arguments are convincing

A working definition

These nine themes thus reflect a deeper conceptual structure. They can be distilled into three core aspects of the common good. These relate to outcomes, principles and stakeholders.

The first describes the objectives and outcomes associated with the common good – for example, the decisions and actions that are seen to be in the best interests of most people.

The second refers to the principles associated with the common good and the processes and practices through which the common good is realised.

The final aspect relates to the stakeholders who make up the community or communities that are entitled to the common good and its benefits.

From this we arrived at a working definition of the common good:

The common good refers to achieving the best possible outcome for the largest number of people, which is underpinned by decision-making that is ethically and morally sound and varies by the context in which the decisions are made.

In the definition above, you will detect the nine components, as well as the three broader themes.

While we identified a shared understanding of the common good, it is important to acknowledge that people may share the “big picture” of the common good, but differ when it comes to the social and moral issues they prioritise and the practical ways in which they think the common good should be achieved.

For instance, recent research suggests that people care deeply about fairness, but society is divided by how they view fairness concerns.

On one side, you have the social order perspective, which focuses on processes or how justice is achieved. On the other side, the social justice worldview is concerned with outcomes and what justice looks like as a result. Both sides share a disdain for inequality, but don’t often see eye to eye about naming or fixing societal inequality.

If the two sides were willing to start by finding their common ground, using our working definition to probe for areas of convergence first, then moving on to discuss areas of divergence with an openness to learn from each other’s strengths might become possible. Intractable conflicts could be broken down and systematically addressed. Of course, this requires a willingness from both sides to lower their defences and listen.

Community leaders will encounter challenges when they unite to advance the common good. Leaders from different industries bring different backgrounds, education and priorities to the table. In order to integrate their efforts, it becomes essential to set aside contextual (and often biased or partisan) understandings of the common good to focus on the “big picture”.

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What does the 'common good' actually mean? Research finds common ground across the political divide

by Melissa A. Wheeler, Naomi Baes, Samuel Wilson and Vlad Demsar, The Conversation

Some topics are hard to define. They are nebulous; their meanings are elusive. Topics relating to morality fit this description. So do those that are subjective, meaning different things to different people in different contexts.

In a recently published paper , we targeted the nebulous concept of the "common good."

Like moral issues that elicit strong arguments for and against, conceptualizations of the common good can vary according to the different needs of individuals and the different values they hold. One factor that divides people is political orientation . Those on the far left hold very different opinions on moral and social issues than those on the far right.

How can we expect people across the political spectrum to agree on a moral topic when they have such different perspectives?

If we set aside the specific moral issues and focus instead on the broader aspects of the common good as a concept, we may well find foundational principles—ideas that are shared between people, ideas that are perhaps even universal.

Folk theory

To find such underlying commonalities, we used a social psychological folk theory approach. Folk theories are non-academic or lay beliefs that comprise individuals' informal and subjective understandings of their world.

The concept of the common good bleeds into cultural perceptions and worldviews. The currency of such ideas influences how we think and what we talk about with other people. By asking people to write about or define elusive concepts, social psychologists can search for frequently expressed words and phrases and derive a shared cultural understanding from the collection of individual texts.

We asked 14,303 people who participated in a larger study for the Australian Leadership Index to provide a definition of the common good, also sometimes called the greater good or the public good.

The sample was nationally representative, meaning it reflected the demographics of the Australian population at the time the data was collected. We then used a linguistic analysis tool, called the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program, to analyze the responses.

The program has a new function called the Meaning Extraction Method , which processes large bodies of text to identify prevalent themes or concepts by analyzing words that frequently occur in close proximity.

Using this method, we explored Australians' definitions of the common good. From the word clusters derived from this analysis, we identified nine main themes:

• outcomes that are in the best interest of the majority
• decisions and actions that benefit the majority
• that which is in the best interest of the general public
• that which serves the general national population rather than individual interests
• that which serves the majority rather than minority interests
• that which serves group rather than individual interests
• that which serves citizens' interests
• concern for and doing the right thing for all people
• moral principles required to achieve the common good

Interestingly, these broad themes did not differ for the most part between right-leaning and left-leaning participants, meaning they were shared by liberals and conservatives alike. There is indeed common ground in people's understanding of the common good.

A working definition

These nine themes thus reflect a deeper conceptual structure. They can be distilled into three core aspects of the common good. These relate to outcomes, principles and stakeholders.

The first describes the 'objectives' and 'outcomes' associated with the common good—for example, the decisions and actions that are seen to be in the best interests of most people.

The second refers to the 'principles' associated with the common good and the 'processes' and 'practices' through which the common good is realized.

The final aspect relates to the 'stakeholders' who make up the community or communities that are entitled to the common good and its benefits.

From this we arrived at a working definition of the common good:

"The common good refers to achieving the best possible outcome for the largest number of people, which is underpinned by decision-making that is ethically and morally sound and varies by the context in which the decisions are made."

In the definition above, you will detect the nine components, as well as the three broader themes.

While we identified a shared understanding of the common good, it is important to acknowledge that people may share the 'big picture' of the common good, but differ when it comes to the social and moral issues they prioritize and the practical ways in which they think the common good should be achieved.

For instance, recent research suggests that people care deeply about fairness, but society is divided by how they view fairness concerns.

On one side, you have the social order perspective, which focuses on processes or 'how' justice is achieved. On the other side, the social justice worldview is concerned with outcomes and 'what' justice looks like as a result. Both sides share a disdain for inequality, but don't often see eye to eye about naming or fixing societal inequality.

If the two sides were willing to start by finding their common ground, using our working definition to probe for areas of convergence first, then moving on to discuss areas of divergence with an openness to learn from each other's strengths might become possible. Intractable conflicts could be broken down and systematically addressed. Of course, this requires a willingness from both sides to lower their defenses and listen.

Community leaders will encounter challenges when they unite to advance the common good. Leaders from different industries bring different backgrounds, education and priorities to the table. In order to integrate their efforts, it becomes essential to set aside contextual (and often biased or partisan) understandings of the common good to focus on the 'big picture.'

Journal information: British Journal of Social Psychology

Provided by The Conversation

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The common good according to great men of prayer and economists: comparisons, connections, and inspirations for economics.

1. Introduction

2. the contribution of great men of prayer to the concept of the common good, 3. the concept of the common good according to economists.

• “material sufficiency”—implying that subsistence and physical health are fundamental human values and that every member of society has an equal right to these goods by virtue of their humanity;
• “respect for human dignity”—asserting that every member of society has an equal and rightful claim to human dignity and being treated accordingly.

4. Discussion

5. conclusions and future directions.

• Universalist (objectivist) and relativistic (subjectivist) approaches;
• Emphasis on the individual (personal) and/or group (community) dimension;
• Integral (two-dimensional or three-dimensional common good, with the third dimension referring to God) and nonintegral (one-dimensional, one-sided common good) approaches;
• The common good as an end and/or a means to an end (or conditions for achieving the end).

Author Contributions

Institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Share and Cite

Horodecka, A.; Żuk, A.J. The Common Good According to Great Men of Prayer and Economists: Comparisons, Connections, and Inspirations for Economics. Religions 2023 , 14 , 1544. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14121544

Horodecka A, Żuk AJ. The Common Good According to Great Men of Prayer and Economists: Comparisons, Connections, and Inspirations for Economics. Religions . 2023; 14(12):1544. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14121544

Horodecka, Anna, and Andrzej J. Żuk. 2023. "The Common Good According to Great Men of Prayer and Economists: Comparisons, Connections, and Inspirations for Economics" Religions 14, no. 12: 1544. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14121544

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The Common Good: Theoretical Content, Practical Utility

Subscribe to governance weekly, william a. galston william a. galston ezra k. zilkha chair and senior fellow - governance studies.

April 26, 2013

Despite skepticism about the common good, the idea has both theoretical content and practical utility. It rests on important features of human life, such as inherently social goods, social linkages, and joint occupation of various commons. It reflects the outcome for bargaining for mutual advantage, subject to a fairness test. And it is particularized through a community’s adherence to certain goods as objects of joint endeavor. In the context of the United States, these goods are set forth in the Preamble to the Constitution—in general language, subject to political contestation, for a people who have agreed to live together in a united political community. While the Preamble states the ends of the union, the body of the Constitution establishes the institutional means for achieving them. So these institutions are part of the common good as well. These are the enduring commonalities—the elements of a shared good—that ceaseless democratic conflict often obscures but that reemerge in times of crisis and civic ritual.

Read the full essay at amacad.org » (PDF)

Editor’s Note: The above is from the Spring 2013 issue of Daedalus  (a journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences) co-edited by William A. Galston (Brookings) and Norman J. Ornstein (American Enterprise Institute), which contains essays on the topic of “American Democracy and the Common Good” by Galston, Brookings’ Thomas Mann, and a number of other noted scholars.  The essays range from theoretical and historical inquiries to examinations of specific institutions in the public and private sectors and in civil society.

Governance Studies

Kurtis Nelson, Darrell M. West

September 12, 2024

George Ingram

Michael E. O’Hanlon

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The Common Good

In ordinary political discourse, the “common good” refers to those facilities—whether material, cultural or institutional—that the members of a community provide to all members in order to fulfill a relational obligation they all have to care for certain interests that they have in common. Some canonical examples of the common good in a modern liberal democracy include: the road system; public parks; police protection and public safety; courts and the judicial system; public schools; museums and cultural institutions; public transportation; civil liberties, such as the freedom of speech and the freedom of association; the system of property; clean air and clean water; and national defense. The term itself may refer either to the interests that members have in common or to the facilities that serve common interests. For example, people may say, “the new public library will serve the common good” or “the public library is part of the common good.” The terms “public good” and “common good” are sometimes treated as synonyms and at other times the modifier “public” is used to draw attention to the role of the state in the authoritative allocation of goods (see Section 2 for more detail)

As a philosophical concept, the common good is best understood as part of an encompassing model for practical reasoning among the members of a political community. The model takes for granted that citizens stand in a “political” or “civic” relationship with one another and that this relationship requires them to create and maintain certain facilities on the grounds that these facilities serve certain common interests. The relevant facilities and interests together constitute the common good and serve as a shared standpoint for political deliberation. [ 1 ] When citizens face various questions about legislation, public policy or social responsibility, they resolve these questions by appeal to a conception of the relevant facilities and the relevant interests. That is, they argue about what facilities have a special claim on their attention, how they should expand, contract or maintain existing facilities, and what facilities they should design and build in the future.

The common good is an important concept in political philosophy because it plays a central role in philosophical reflection about the public and private dimensions of social life. Let’s say that “public life” in a political community consists of a shared effort among members to maintain certain facilities for the sake of common interests. “Private life” consists of each member’s pursuit of a distinct set of personal projects. As members of a political community, we are each involved in our community’s public life and in our own private lives, and this raises an array of questions about the nature and scope of each of these enterprises. For example, when are we supposed to make decisions based on the common good? Most of us would agree that we are required to do so when we act as legislators or civil servants. But what about as journalists, corporate executives or consumers? More fundamentally, why should we care about the common good? What would be wrong with a community whose members withdraw from public life and focus exclusively on their own private lives? These are some of the questions that motivate philosophical discussions of the common good.

This article reviews the philosophical literature, covering various points of agreement among traditional conceptions of the common good, such as those favored by Plato, Aristotle, John Locke, J.J. Rousseau, Adam Smith, G.W.F. Hegel, John Rawls and Michael Walzer. It also covers some important disagreements, especially the disagreement between “communal” and “distributive” views. It concludes by considering three important topics in the literature: democracy, communal sharing, and competitive markets. In order to understand the issues, it is helpful to start by distinguishing the common good from various notions of the good that play a prominent role in welfare economics and welfare consequentialist accounts of political morality.

1. First Contrast: Welfare Consequentialism

2. second contrast: public goods, 3. why does political philosophy need this concept defects in a “private society”, 4.1 a shared standpoint for practical reasoning, 4.2 a set of common facilities, 4.3 a privileged class of common interests, 4.4 a solidaristic concern, 5. common interests (i): joint activity, 6. common interests (ii): private individuality, 7. the common good perspective: communal or distributive, 8. the common good in politics: democracy and collective decision-making, 9. the common good in civic life: burden sharing and resource pooling, 10. markets, competition and the invisible hand, 11. social justice and the common good, 12. conclusion: pluralism and the common good, other internet resources, related entries.

The common good belongs to a family of concepts that relate to goodness rather than rightness (Sidgwick 1874). What makes the common good different from other concepts in this family is that it is a notion of the good that is understood to be internal to the requirements of a social relationship. In any community, the common good consists of the facilities and interests that members have a special obligation to care about in virtue of the fact that they stand in a certain relationship with one another. In a family, for instance, the family home is part of the common good because the familial bond requires members to take care of the home as part of a shared effort to care for one another’s interests in shelter and safety. In a university, the climate of academic freedom on campus is part of the common good because the special relationship among members of the university community requires them to care for this climate as part of a shared effort to care for one another’s interests in teaching, learning and inquiring.

The common good differs from the various notions of the good that play a foundational role in welfare consequentialist accounts of political morality. Among the notions in the latter category, we can include: the sum of pleasure over pain, total satisfaction of rational desire, aggregate welfare adjusted for distributive considerations, welfare prioritarianism, equality of welfare (in certain formulations), Pareto optimality, and so on. Unlike the common good, these notions make no essential reference to the requirements of a social relationship. They set out fully independent standards for the goodness of actions, motivations and states of affairs, and the independent character of these standards allows them to serve as foundational elements in a normative theory that has a consequentialist structure. [ 2 ]

According to classical utilitarianism, for example, the correct course of action is the optimal course of action as judged from the standpoint of an impartial concern for the pleasures and pains of all sentient creatures (Sidgwick 1874). Suppose that a relationship consists of a set of requirements for how people who stand in the relationship should act towards one another—e.g., parents should feed their children, parents should clothe their children, children should defer to their parents’ judgment, etc. According to classical utilitarianism, an agent should perform the action that satisfies the requirements of a relationship only when her doing so would result in the greatest sum of pleasure over pain. The notion of the good here—i.e., the sum of pleasure over pain—is defined independently of the requirements of any relationship, so it sets out a criterion for goodness that can tell us, among other things, when it would be good for people to comply with any particular relational requirements.

Some welfare consequentialist notions of the good incorporate a distributive element—e.g., welfare prioritarianism—and this feature may make it more plausible to see these notions as internal to the requirements of a relationship. For example, some may think that welfare prioritarianism could be internal to the family relationship, where the relationship is understood to require family members to perform the action that is optimal from the standpoint of the worst off member of the group. But keep in mind that even more distributionally sensitive notions of the good, such as welfare prioritarianism, retain other features of a consequentialist understanding of goodness that make it difficult to see how these notions could be internal to a relationship in the relevant sense.

Take agent neutrality. Insofar as welfare prioritarianism is a genuinely consequentialist notion, it says that the correct course of action is the course of action that is optimal as judged from a standpoint that does not change with the position of the agent or the relationships that the agent happens to stand in (Williams 1973; Nagel 1986; cf. Sen 1993). Understood in this way, welfare prioritarianism does not require an agent to perform the action that is optimal from the standpoint of the worst off member of her own family. Instead, it requires an agent to perform the action that is optimal from the agent neutral standpoint of, say, the welfare of the worst off person in the world or the average welfare of all those in the class of people who are worst off in their respective families. If people have reason to pay special attention to the worst off member of their own families, on this view, it is because a pattern of reasoning along these lines leads to the highest level of welfare for the worst off person in the world or the highest average welfare for those in the relevant class.

Because it is an agent neutral notion, welfare prioritarianism may require parents to harm their own children if circumstances arise such that doing so would bring about the best result from the standpoint of the welfare of the worst off person in the world or the average welfare of those in the relevant class. A parent might be required to act this way, even when lowering the welfare of her own child would lead to only a slightly higher level of welfare for the other people affected. These implications are clearly at odds with our ordinary understanding of the agent relative character of relational requirements.

The upshot is that welfare consequentialist accounts of political morality are not based, at the most fundamental level, on conceptions of the common good. They are based instead on notions of the good that are understood to be prior to and independent of any social relationship. Nonetheless, it is worth stressing that a welfare consequentialist account of political morality may incorporate a conception of the common good as part of a more specific account of the ethical obligations of citizens in public life. After all, a certain pattern of agent relative motivation among citizens may be the optimal pattern as judged from the standpoint of aggregate welfare (or some other suitably agent neutral perspective). John Stuart Mill sets out a theory along these lines in Considerations on Representative Government (1862). On his view, citizens should take an active interest in the public affairs of their community and social institutions should be designed to generate this pattern of motivation among citizens. The reason for this is that an orientation among citizens towards the common affairs of their community is part of the best political arrangement overall, as judged from the standpoint of the principle of utility. [ 3 ]

Another important contrast to draw is between the common good and the theory of public goods. The term “public goods” can have a narrower or a boarder meaning. In every day speech, public goods are understood as collective goods that are provided by the state. According to the public choice school of economics, goods should only be provided by the state when the benefits are non-excludable and the enjoyment of the goods is non-rivalrous (Samuelson 1954; Olson 1965). Non-rivalrous means that the enjoyment by one person does not diminish another person’s ability to enjoy the same good. The term “non-excludable” highlights the fact that it is impossible to provide a benefit to one person without others gaining access to it. According to public choice theory, state action is justified to prevent free-riding and the under-provision of these types of goods. Clean water and national defense are classic examples. The common good, by contrast, has a normative character that is absent in the public choice approach to public goods.

In both academic and nonacademic discussions, people often confuse the common good with a public good or a set of public goods. This is not surprising since, as Raymond Geuss points out, one of the original meanings of the term res publica was “the common good of all Romans” (2001: 36). Contemporary analytic philosophy tries to keep the two ideas distinct. Some of the facilities that make up the common good resemble public goods because they are often facilities that are supposed to be open and available to everyone—e.g., a public library. (For further discussion, see the entry on public goods .) The common good, however, is a much broader category that includes non-universal goods, such as support for universities, arts and culture. While these things may not be in the individual interest of each member of society, they may still be understood as necessary features of collective life that enable mutual understanding and solidarity. The facilities that make up the common good serve a special class of interests that all citizens have in common, i.e., the interests that are the object of the civic relationship.

Why does political philosophy need the concept of the common good? What’s the rationale for having this concept in addition to other concepts, such as welfare, justice, or human rights? To understand the importance of the common good, it is helpful to think about the moral defects in a private society.

A private society is a society whose members care only about their lives as private individuals (Tocqueville 1835–1840; Hegel 1821; Rawls 1971; see also Dewey 1927). Members are not necessarily rational egoists—they may care about their family and friends. What is central is that their motivational horizons do not extend beyond the people and projects that are the focus of their personal lives. [ 4 ] As an individual in a private society, I might be interested in acquiring a better home for my family or improving the local school for my children and the other children in my neighborhood. I might even vote in national elections insofar as the results could affect my home or my local school. But I take no interest in national elections insofar as the results affect citizens I don’t know, those in other states or provinces. And I take no interest in national elections insofar as the results affect the basic fairness of my society’s laws and institutions. Having withdrawn into private life, I care about the common affairs of the community only insofar as these touch my private world.

Many philosophers believe that there is something morally defective about a private society. One type of defect bears especially on the case of a private society that consists of rational egoists. As I noted in the last section, a community of rational egoists will not perform the actions necessary to generate public goods. Since these goods are desirable, the absence of public goods may be suboptimal, both from the standpoint of aggregate welfare and from the standpoint of each member’s egoistic rationality. [ 5 ] So there are good instrumental reasons for people to create a public agency—i.e., a state—that can use taxes, subsidies and coercive threats to draw people into mutually beneficial patterns of cooperation. [ 6 ]

The common good, however, points to a different kind of defect in a private society. The defect in this case extends to all forms of private society, not just to a society of rational egoists, and the defect is noninstrumental. The defect in this case is that the members of a political community have a relational obligation to care about their common affairs, so the fact that they are exclusively concerned with their private lives is itself a moral defect in the community, whether or not this pattern of concern leads to a suboptimal outcome.

To appreciate the point, think about the various public roles that people may occupy in a liberal democracy (see Hegel 1821; Dewey 1927; J. Cohen 2010: 54–58). Most obviously, citizens act in a public capacity when they occupy positions as legislators, civil servants, judges, prosecutors, jurors, police officers, soldiers, schoolteachers, and so on. They also act in a public capacity when they participate in the political process, voting in elections and taking part in policy discussions in the public sphere (Habermas 1992; Mill 1862; Rawls 1993 [2005]). And many philosophers argue that citizens act in a public capacity—or at least in a partly public capacity—when they act as executives in large business enterprises (McMahon 2013; Christiano 2010); as high-ranking officials in colleges and universities (Scanlon 2003); as journalists, lawyers, and academics (Habermas 1992, e.g., [1996, 373–9]); as protesters engaged in civil disobedience (Rawls 1971); and as socially conscious consumers (Hussain 2012).

When citizens occupy public roles, political morality requires them to think and act differently than they would if they were acting as private individuals. If you are a judge in a criminal trial, you might stand to benefit personally if the defendant were found guilty. But political morality does not allow you to decide cases as if you were a private individual, looking to advance your own private objectives. As a judge, you are required to make decisions based on the evidence presented at trial and the standards set out in the law. These legal standards themselves are supposed to answer to common interests. So, in effect, political morality directs you to think and act from the standpoint of a shared concern for common interests.

Citizens who occupy public roles may also be required to make personal sacrifices. Consider an historical example. During the Watergate scandal, President Richard Nixon ordered the Attorney General of the United States, Elliot Richardson, to fire the Watergate special prosecutor in order to stop an investigation into Nixon’s abuses of power. Rather than carry out Nixon’s order, Richardson resigned his position. Many would argue that Richardson did the right thing, and that, in fact, he had an obligation to refuse Nixon’s order, even if this resulted in a significant setback to his career. As Attorney General, Richardson had an obligation to uphold the rule of law in the United States, a practice that serves common interests, even if this meant significant sacrifices in terms of his career aspirations.

Now consider the following possibility. Imagine that we are living in a liberal democracy with a full array of social roles in which people act in a public capacity. But imagine that our society is a private society: citizens care only about their own private affairs. In order to ensure that various public roles are filled, our institutions create private incentives for people to take on these responsibilities. High salaries draw people into positions as judges and legislators, and mutual surveillance gives these people private incentives to carry out their duties. Suppose that our institutions are well structured and private incentives are adequate to fill all of the important public positions. Is there anything missing in our society? Does our society suffer from a moral defect of some kind?

Philosophers in the common good tradition believe that the answer is yes: there is something morally significant that is missing from our society. What is missing is a genuine concern for the common good . No one in our society actually cares about shared facilities, such as the rule of law, or the common interests that these facilities serve. Citizens fill various public roles simply for the sake of the private benefits that they get from doing so. According to a common good conception of political morality, this lack of concern for the common good is itself a moral defect in a political community, even if private incentives lead people to fill all of the relevant positions.

A central challenge for theorists in the common good tradition is to explain why a genuine commitment to the common good matters. Why should it matter whether citizens actually care about the common good? Some philosophers in the tradition cite a practical problem. Even in a well-designed arrangement, circumstances are likely to arise where social institutions do not provide people with an adequate private incentive to act in a publicly oriented way. For example, political morality may require public officials to stand up for the rule of law, even in situations where this will damage their careers. Or political morality may require citizens to protest against an unjust law, even if this means a private risk of being jailed or blacklisted. Political morality may even require citizens to run the risk of losing their lives in order to defend the constitutional order against a foreign threat (see Walzer 1970; Rousseau 1762b [1997: 63–4]). In each of these cases, no matter how well designed institutions are, citizens may not have an adequate private incentive to do what political morality requires, so a genuine concern for the common good may be essential.

A different explanation—perhaps the most important one in the common good tradition—stresses the idea of a social relationship. Think of the relationship between parents and their children. This relationship requires not only that the people involved act in certain ways towards one another, but also that they care about one another in certain ways. For instance, parents are required not only to feed and clothe their children, perhaps to avoid getting fined by the Department of Child and Family Services. Parents are also required to care about their children: they must give their children’s interests a certain status in their practical reasoning. Many philosophers argue that our relation to our fellow citizens has similar features. The political bond requires not only that we act in certain ways, but also that we give the interests of our fellow citizens a certain status in our practical reasoning. It would be unacceptable, on this view, for citizens to fulfill certain public roles purely for the sake of private incentives. A Supreme Court justice, for example, must care about the rule of law and the common interests that this practice serves. If she were making consistent rulings just to cash her paycheck every two weeks, she would not be responding in the right way to her fellow citizens, who act for the sake of common interests in doing things such as voting, following the law, and standing ready to defend the constitutional order. [ 7 ]

Many philosophers believe that there is something morally defective about a private society, even one in which private incentives move people to fill all of the important public roles. A conception of the common good provides us with an account of what is missing from the practical reasoning of citizens in a private society, and it connects this with a wider view about the relational obligations that require citizens to reason in these ways.

4. Central Features of the Common Good

According to a common good conception of political morality, members of a political community stand in a social relationship with one another. This relationship is not as intimate as the relationship among family members or the members of a church. But it is a genuine social relationship nonetheless, and it requires members not only to act in certain ways, but also to give one another’s interests a certain status in their practical reasoning. This basic outlook leads most conceptions of the common good to share certain features.

The first feature that most conceptions share is that they describe a pattern of practical reasoning that is meant to be realized in the actual thought processes of the members of a political community. A conception of the common good is not just a criterion for correct action, such that citizens would satisfy the conception so long as they performed the correct action, regardless of their subjective reasons for doing so. The point of a conception of the common good is to define a pattern of practical reasoning, a way of thinking and acting that constitutes the appropriate form of mutual concern among members. In order to satisfy the conception, the activities of the members of the community must be organized, at some level, by thought processes that embody the relevant pattern. [ 8 ]

Most conceptions of the common good identify a set of facilities that citizens have a special obligation to maintain in virtue of the fact that these facilities serve certain common interests. The relevant facilities may be part of the natural environment (e.g., the atmosphere, a freshwater aquifer, etc.) or human artifacts (e.g., hospitals, schools, etc.). But the most important facilities in the literature are social institutions and practices. For example, a scheme of private property exists when members of a community conform to rules that assign individuals certain forms of authority over external objects. Private property, as a social institution, serves a common interest of citizens in being able to assert private control over their physical environment, and so many conceptions include this institution as part of the common good.

A conception of the common good will define a privileged class of abstract interests. Citizens are understood to have a relational obligation to create and maintain certain facilities because these facilities serve the relevant interests. The interests in the privileged class are “common” in the sense that every citizen is understood to have these interests to a similar degree. [ 9 ] The interests are “abstract” in the sense that they may be served by a variety of material, cultural or institutional facilities. A wide variety of interests figure prominently in the literature, including: the interest in taking part in the most choice-worthy way of life (Aristotle Pol. 1323a14–1325b31); the interest in bodily security and property (e.g., Locke 1698; Rousseau 1762b); the interest in living a responsible and industrious private life (Smith 1776); the interest in a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties (Rawls 1971 and 1993); the interest in a fair opportunity to reach the more attractive positions in society (Rawls 1971); and the interest in security and welfare, where these interests are understood as socially recognized needs that are subject to ongoing political determination (Walzer 1983).

Most conceptions of the common good define a form of practical reasoning that fits the model of solidarity. Many social relationships require a form of solidarity among those who stand in the relationship. Solidarity here basically involves one person giving a certain subset of the interests of another person a status in her reasoning that is analogous to the status that she gives to her own interests in her reasoning (see, e.g., Aristotle NE 1166a1–33). For example, if my friend needs a place to sleep tonight, friendship requires that I should offer him my couch. I have to do this because friendship requires that I reason about events that affect my friend’s basic interests as if these events were affecting my own basic interests in a similar way. A conception of the common good typically requires citizens to maintain certain facilities because these facilities serve certain common interests. So when citizens reason as the conception requires, they effectively give the interests of their fellow citizens a status in their reasoning that is analogous to the status that they give to their own interests in their reasoning.

An example will make the idea more intuitive. According to Rousseau, a properly ordered political community is “a form of association that will defend and protect the person and goods of each associate with the full common force” (1762b [1997: 49]). Citizens in this community are united by a solidaristic form of mutual concern that is focused on (among other things) their common interests in physical security and property. This form of mutual concern requires each citizen to respond to an attack on the body or property of a fellow citizen as if this were an attack on her own body and property. When extended over all members, this form of mutual concern requires the whole community to respond to an attack on any individual member as if this were an attack on every member. In this sense, “the full common force” stands behind each person’s physical security and property. Or, as Rousseau sometimes puts it, “one cannot injure one of the members without attacking the body, and still less can one injure the body without the members being affected” (1762b [1997: 52]). [ 10 ]

Let’s turn now to some of the ways that conceptions of the common good differ from each other. One way has to do with how they define the privileged class of common interests that are the object of the political relationship. We can divide the important views in the literature into two main categories: (a) joint activity conceptions and (b) private individuality conceptions .

A joint activity conception defines the privileged class of common interests as interests that members have in taking part in a complex activity that involves all or most members of the community. Among those who endorse this kind of view are ancient philosophers, such as Plato ( Republic ) and Aristotle ( Politics ), secular natural law theorists such as John Finnis (1980), and most natural law theorists in the Catholic tradition. Aspects of the joint activity view are also important in the work of communitarian thinkers such as Charles Taylor (1984) and, to a lesser extent, Michael Sandel (2009). The most important and influential view is Aristotle’s.

Aristotle holds that members of a political community are not just involved in a military alliance or an especially dense network of contractual agreements ( Pol. 1280b29–33). Members are also involved in a relationship that he describes as a form of friendship ( NE 1159b25–35). This friendship consists in citizens wishing one another well, their being aware of the fact that their fellow citizens wish them well, and their taking part in a shared life that answers to this mutual concern ( Pol. 1280b29–1281a3). In caring about one another and wishing one another well, what citizens care about in particular is that they and their fellow citizens live well, that is, live the most choiceworthy life. [ 11 ]

The most choiceworthy life, on Aristotle’s view, is a pattern of activity that fully engages and expresses the rational parts of human nature. This pattern of activity is a pattern of joint activity because, like a play, it has various interdependent parts that can only be realized by the members of a group together. The pattern is centered on an array of leisured activities that are valuable in themselves, including philosophy, mathematics, art and music. But the pattern also includes the activity of coordinating the social effort to engage in leisured activities (i.e., statesmanship) and various supporting activities, such as the education of citizens and the management of resources.

On Aristotle’s view, a properly ordered society will have an array of shared material, cultural and institutional facilities that answer to the common interest of citizens in living the most choiceworthy life. These facilities form an environment in which citizens can engage in leisured activities and in which they can perform the various coordinating and supporting activities. Some facilities that figure into Aristotle’s account include: common mess halls and communal meals, which provide occasions for leisured activities ( Pol. 1330a1–10; 1331a19–25); a communal system of education ( Pol. 1337a20–30); common land ( Pol. 1330a9–14); commonly owned slaves to work the land ( Pol. 1330a30–3); a shared set of political offices ( Pol. 1276a40–3; 1321b12–a10) and administrative buildings ( Pol. 1331b5–11); shared weapons and fortifications ( Pol. 1328b6–11; 1331a9–18); and an official system of priests, temples and public sacrifices ( Pol. 1322b17–28).

Aristotle’s account may seem distant from modern sensibilities, but a good analogy for what he has in mind is the form of community that we associate today with certain universities. Members of the university community are bound together in a social relationship marked by a certain form of mutual concern: members care that they and their fellow members live well, where living well is understood in terms of taking part in a flourishing university life. This way of life is organized around intellectual, cultural and athletic activities, such as physics, art history, lacrosse, and so on. Members work together to maintain an array of facilities that serve their common interest in taking part in this joint activity (e.g., libraries, computer labs, dorm rooms, football fields, etc.). And we can think of public life in the university community in terms of a form of shared practical reasoning that most members engage in, which focuses on maintaining common facilities for the sake of their common interest. [ 12 ]

Private individuality conceptions offer a different account of the privileged class of common interests. According to these views, members of a political community have a relational obligation to care about their common interest in being able to lead lives as private individuals. Citizens each have an interest in being able to shape their lives through their own private choices about what activities to pursue and what associations to form. Choices are “private” in the relevant sense when citizens are not required to consult with anyone in making these choices and they are not required to reach a decision through any form of shared deliberation. [ 13 ] Among the philosophers who endorse this kind of view are many important thinkers in the liberal tradition, including John Locke (1698), J.J. Rousseau (1762b), Adam Smith (1776), and G.W.F. Hegel (1821). More recent figures who endorse this kind of view include John Rawls (1971) and Michael Walzer (1983).

A sophisticated example of a private individuality conception is Rawls’s. On Rawls’s view, members of a political community have a relational obligation to care for the interests attached to the “position of equal citizenship” which all citizens share (1971 [1999: 82–83]). These interests are (a) the interest in a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties and (b) the interest in a fair opportunity to reach the more attractive positions in society. Rawls uses the term “the common good” to refer to the sum total of social conditions that answer to the interests attached to the position of equal citizenship (1971 [1999: 217]). Understood in this way, the common good consists, inter alia , of: a legal order that provides citizens with the liberty of expression, the liberty of conscience and the other liberal freedoms; a democratic system of government that provides citizens with political liberties, such as the liberty to vote, hold office and participate in collective rule-making; a system of courts to enforce the rule of law; as well as police protection and national defense to protect the basic liberties. The common good also consists of legal protections for free choice of occupation; mass media mechanisms that gather and disperse information about job possibilities; a transportation system to give people access to work; and a system of education (whether public or private) that ensures conditions in which people with similar talents and motivations have similar prospects, regardless of their class or family background.

Rawls’s conception has the core features of a private individuality view. The facilities that answer to the common interest in equal liberty and fair opportunity put citizens in a position to join or withdraw from various activities and associations as private persons who can make their own independent choices. For example, the liberty of conscience gives citizens the legal right to join or leave a religious association based on their own private beliefs. They need not consult with other citizens about these choices or make these choices as part of a wider deliberative process that involves other citizens.

Rawls’s view takes the common good to consist partly in a system of bodily security, private property and civil liberty. In this way, his view resembles Rousseau’s, which also focuses on these common interests. Where Rawls’s view differs from Rousseau’s is that it extends the privileged class of common interests to include an interest in a wider set of basic liberties and an interest in a fair opportunity to reach the more attractive positions in society. These interests involve a more extensive array of institutions and social conditions, especially when it comes to education, communication, and economic redistribution. But it is worth emphasizing that neither Rawls nor Rousseau incorporates a full account of distributive justice into their conceptions of the common good. [ 14 ] I will say more about this in the next section.

One of the most important differences among different conceptions of the common good has to do with how they take private and sectional interests to factor into determining the relational obligations of citizens. Here we can distinguish two main types of views: (a) communal conceptions of the common good and (b) distributive conceptions of the common good.

Members of a political community have a relational obligation to care for certain interests that they have in common. A “communal” conception of the common good takes these interests to be interests that citizens have as citizens, where the status of being a citizen and the interests attached to this status are both understood to be prior to the various statuses and interests that make up each member’s identity as a private individual. When citizens engage in social deliberation about their laws and institutions, a communal conception typically directs them to abstract away from their private interests and the sectional interests they may have as members of one subgroup or another and to focus instead on their common interests as citizens.

For example, imagine that citizens are considering changes to trade rules in their society. They may be inclined to assess proposals in terms of how attractive these are from the standpoint of their sectional interests as members of a certain profession or participants in a certain industry. But a communal conception of the common good directs citizens to set these interests aside and assess proposals in terms of how well they answer to common civic interests, such as the interest in national security or the interest in a productive economy. [ 15 ]

A “distributive” conception of the common good differs from a “communal” conception in that it does not direct citizens to abstract away from their private and sectional interests in the same way. A distributive conception starts with the idea that citizens belong to various groups with distinct sectional interests. These interests make partly competing claims on the material, cultural and institutional facilities in a community. The distributive conception incorporates a distributive principle that determines how social facilities should answer to these sectional interests, and the conception says that members have a relational obligation to maintain a set of facilities that answers to everyone’s sectional interests in the way that the distributive principle prescribes.

As an example of a distributive view, consider the view held by many philosophers, which defines the common good in terms of Rawls’s difference principle (see, e.g., J. Cohen 1996 [2009: 169–170]; see also section 8 below). According to this view, we can think of citizens as belonging to various subgroups, each consisting of all those born into a certain “starting position” in social life. Citizens in each group share certain choice-independent characteristics, such as their class position at birth and their level of innate talent. Group members have sectional interests in better life prospects (as measured in terms of primary goods), where these interests make partly competing claims on the basic structure of society. The difference principle says that social institutions should answer to the interests of each group equally, with the caveat that institutions should incorporate whatever inequalities would serve to maximize the prospects of the least advantaged group. Citizens are then understood to have a relational obligation to maintain a scheme of institutions that attends to everyone’s sectional interests in the way that the difference principle prescribes.

The disagreement between communal and distributive conceptions of the common good is perhaps the most important disagreement among different conceptions, and it raises two important issues about the nature of the political relationship.

The first has to do with the moral underpinnings of the communal view. It is helpful to think of communal accounts of the common good as appealing to a certain conception social life (e.g., Rousseau 1762b; Hegel 1821; Walzer 1983). According to this conception, citizens form their various private and sectional interests within the framework of a more fundamental effort to maintain certain social conditions together. The political bond is prior to their private interests in a certain way, so the political relationship may sometimes require citizens to set their private interests aside in order to act collectively to maintain the relevant social conditions. Perhaps the clearest example of this is national defense (see section 9 below). When defending the constitutional order against a foreign threat, political morality requires citizens to act collectively in defense of common interests, without organizing their efforts in a way that answers specifically to their competing private interests in different levels of protection.

An analogy may help here. Members of a family each have distinct interests as private individuals—e.g., in developing their talents, pursuing relationships, cultivating career prospects, and so on. At some level, the household must be organized in a way that answers to these private interests. But there are some matters where the familial relationship requires members to act together in a way that sets their competing private interests aside. If the family home is on fire, members are required to save the home, without special regard for how resources are being deployed in ways that are more likely to save one member’s room rather than another’s. In certain domains, members are supposed to act from a communal point of view that focuses on common interests that are essential to their social bond, rather than their distinct and potentially competing interests as private individuals. Communal conceptions of the common good see the political relationship as having a similar character. [ 16 ]

The second point is that—surprisingly—Rawls himself favours a substantially communal rather than distributive conception of the common good. In A Theory of Justice , he does not define the common good in terms of his full conception of social justice. He defines it instead in terms of the “principle of common interest”. This principle assesses social institutions from the position of equal citizenship. As he says, “as far as possible, the basic structure should be appraised from the position of equal citizenship” where this position “is defined by the rights and liberties required by the principle of equal liberty and the principle of fair equality of opportunity” (1971 [1999: 82–83]). Rawls thinks that a wide variety of policy questions can be settled by appeal to the principle of common interest, including “reasonable regulations to maintain public order”, “efficient measures for public health and safety”, and “collective efforts for national defense in a just war” (1971 [1999: 83]). [ 17 ]

Social deliberation, on Rawls’s view, should unfold, as far as possible, within a framework of reasoning that focuses on interests that are common to all citizens, where the difference principle enters the discussion mainly when the appeal to common interests alone could not properly decide an issue. But why should political deliberation unfold in this way? Why does Rawls think that, “as far as possible, the basic structure should be appraised from the position of equal citizenship”?

One possible rationale has to do with the kind of solidarity that citizens realize through their shared status as “citizens”. When members of a society reason in terms of the principle of common interest, they set their private and sectional interests aside whenever possible in order to focus on their common interests as citizens. Setting their sectional interests aside (e.g., as members of the least advantaged group, the second least advantaged group, the third least advantaged group, etc.), citizens treat their shared interests as “citizens” as being more fundamental than their distinct and potentially competing interests as private individuals. Each citizen effectively tells her fellow citizens, “What unites us is more important than what divides us”. Bringing the status of “citizen” to the center of how citizens relate to one another in public life is particularly important for Rawls because mutual recognition on the basis of this shared status is important to his account of how a just social order will prevent envy and prevent positional competition from undermining the basic liberties (1971 [1999: 476–9]).

A closely related idea has to do with mutuality (section 4.4 above). When members of society reason in terms of their common interests in liberty and opportunity, they assess policies from a standpoint that does not distinguish between one citizen and another. They each accord the interests of their fellow citizens the very same status in their reasoning that they accord to their own interests. When citizens do their parts in a social arrangement that answers to common interests, and they do so on the grounds that the arrangement serves common interests, citizens realize a form of solidarity that is perfectly mutual: each citizen works for the interests of each her fellow citizens in exactly the same way that each of her fellow citizens works for her interests.

Social cooperation on the basis of the difference principle does not embody the same kind of mutuality. Imagine that citizens are reasoning about their institutions. Starting with an arrangement that creates equal prospects for those born into every starting position, they consider different arrangements that would yield Pareto improvements over the egalitarian scheme. [ 18 ] Citizens must now choose between different possibilities: one arrangement would maximize the prospects for the least advantaged group; another would maximize the prospects for the second least advantaged group; a third would maximize the prospects for the third least advantaged group; and so on. Given these possibilities, the difference principle requires citizens to choose the arrangement that is best from the standpoint of one group in particular—i.e., those in the least advantaged position.

Imagine now that we live in a social order that satisfies the difference principle. There are certain facilities in society—say, certain educational facilities—that answer distinctively to the interests of those in the least advantaged group. The resources involved could have been deployed in ways that would have been better for those in the second least advantaged group, or the third least advantaged group, etc., so the arrangement as a whole is tilted in favour of one group in particular. Because it is tilted in this way, the pattern of interaction lacks the property of perfect mutuality: each citizen does not work for the interests of each of her fellow citizens in exactly the same way each of her fellow citizens works for her interests. Everyone works in a way that is distinctively oriented towards the interests of the least advantaged.

Of course, citizens realize a form of solidarity insofar as social cooperation is organized in light of the difference principle; the point is just that citizens realize a distinctive form of solidarity insofar as social cooperation is organized in light of the principle of common interest. In the latter case, they realize a more communal form of solidarity, as citizens set their private interests aside to focus on common interests and citizens attach no special significance to the distinctions between different groups. A more communal form of solidarity answers better to the social dimension of the political relationship and this may be one reason why Rawls favors a form of public reasoning in which the principle of common interest governs “matters which concern the interests of everyone and in regard to which distributive effects are immaterial or irrelevant” (1971 [1999, 82–83]).

In the vast literature on the common good, several topics stand out as important subjects of concern. One important topic is democracy. Democracy figures prominently in philosophical reflection about the common good because there is broad agreement among philosophers—though by no means universal agreement!—that a private society would be defective in terms of the way that members make collective decisions. Collective decision-making in a political community must unfold in its public life, that is, in the sphere of interaction in which citizens transcend their own private concerns and reason from the standpoint of the common good.

On some accounts of democracy, citizens are not required to take up the perspective of the common good. According to pluralism, for example, democracy is best understood as a collective decision-making process that disperses power and influence among many different groups in society (see Dahl 1956 and 1989). Citizens each have their own private interests and groups of citizens with similar interests advance these interests in various rule-making forums. The overall process is essentially a form of bargaining, where each group strategically trades concessions with other groups in order to maximize the satisfaction of their policy preferences. A properly ordered democratic regime will maintain fair bargaining conditions, where all important groups are able to exercise a meaningful degree of influence on the collective decisions that affect their interests. But on the pluralist view no one needs to take an interest in the common affairs of the community: each citizen may care only about her own private affairs, entering the public forum to advance her private interests against the interests of others.

Many philosophers criticize pluralism and other similarly privatized views of democratic reasoning because these views fail to capture an important aspect of political life. As Jeremy Waldron notes, citizens often vote on the basis of something other than their own private interests:

People often vote on the basis of what they think is the general good of society. They are concerned about the deficit, or about abortion, or about Eastern Europe, in a way that reflects nothing more about their own personal interests than that they have a stake in the issues. Similarly, the way they vote will usually take into account their conception of the special importance of certain interests and liberties (Waldron 1990 [1993: 408]).

Many critics also contend that pluralism does not distinguish properly between the form of practical reasoning appropriate to democratic decision-making and the form that is appropriate in market contexts. Managers in a firm may justify one business strategy over another on the grounds that this strategy will improve the bottom line for the firm, taking no account of how the strategy might harm competitors or other groups. But citizens in a democratic process are not supposed to reason this way:

…it is a political convention of a democratic society to appeal to the common interest. No political party publicly admits to pressing for legislation to the disadvantage of any recognized social group. (Rawls 1971 [1999, 280])

If a privatized approach to democratic decision-making is morally defective, what exactly is the problem? What is wrong with citizens assessing laws and voting on laws based on how well these will serve their private interests?

One prominent line of reasoning in democratic theory appeals to an epistemic conception of democracy (e.g., Rousseau 1762b; J. Cohen 1986). According to this view, there is an independent standard of correctness for legislation, which says that laws must serve common interests. Democratic decision-making is a requirement of political morality because the legislative process is more likely to generate laws that meet the standard when the process is democratic. Moreover, a democratic process is more likely to generate laws that meet the standard when those taking part in the process are actually trying to identify laws that meet the standard. So citizens taking part in the democratic process should assess legislative proposals in terms of how well these proposals serve common interests because this is the best way to identify and enact laws that are justified.

The other main line of reasoning in democratic theory appeals to a deliberative conception of democracy (J. Cohen 1996, 2009; Habermas 1992; Gutman & Thompson 1996). According to Joshua Cohen’s deliberative conception, political morality requires citizens to make binding collective decisions through a process of public reasoning in which citizens recognize one another as equal members of the political community (J. Cohen 1989, 1996). The process of public reasoning requires that each citizen should offer reasons to convince others to adopt a legislative proposal, where these reasons are reasons that she could properly expect others to accept, given the facts of reasonable pluralism.

Cohen argues that the ideal of deliberative democracy, as he understands it, provides a compelling account of the common good orientation of democratic decision-making (1996 [2009, 168–170]). No citizen could reasonably expect others to accept a legislative proposal simply because it serves her own interests, so there is a basic requirement that any legislative proposal must be responsive to the interests of all citizens. Furthermore, the background idea that citizens are equal members of the political community imposes an additional requirement. Citizens

can reject, as a reason within [the] process, that some are worth less than others or that the interests of one group are to count less than the interests of other groups (1996 [2009, 169]).

This constraint on acceptable reasons leads to a substantive requirement that legislation must be consistent with a public understanding of the common good that treats people as equals in the relevant sense.

Cohen cites Rawls’s difference principle as one example of a public understanding of the common good that satisfies the relevant requirement.

Treating equality as a baseline, [the difference principle] requires that inequalities established or sanctioned by state action must work to the maximal advantage of the least advantaged. That baseline [i.e., equality] is a natural expression of the constraints on reasons that emerge from the background equal standing of citizens: it will not count as a reason for a system of policy that that system benefits the members of a particular group singled out by social class or native talent or any other feature that distinguishes among equal citizens. […In addition, the principle] insists, roughly speaking, that no one be left less well off than anyone needs to be—which is itself a natural expression of the deliberative conception (J. Cohen 1996 [2009, 169–170]).

Note that Cohen argues here for a “distributive” rather than a “communal” conception of the common good (see section 7 above). On Cohen’s view, members of a political community have a relational obligation to provide one another with a set of facilities that answers to everyone’s sectional interests in the way that a certain distributive principle prescribes (i.e. the difference principle). This differs from a communal conception, which does not conceive of the relational obligation of citizens in terms of a distributive principle.

Cohen is probably right that the difference principle is a natural expression of the deliberative ideal against the background of an assumption that all citizens are equal members of the political community. But defenders of a communal conception might argue that the political relationship among citizens has a social dimension that goes beyond equal membership in the political community. Like the relationship among friends or among members of a sports team, the political relationship must be understood to impose obligations on people that embody relational ideals such as solidarity and mutuality. This means that the political relationship may require citizens to reason with each other in ways that embody these values. For instance, the political relationship may require citizens to set their private and sectional interests aside in certain deliberative contexts in order to focus on their common interests as citizens. An implicit concern for social ideals such as solidarity and mutuality may be one reason why Rawls identifies the common good with the principle of common interest and gives this principle a special role to play in political reasoning.

Many philosophers agree that citizens must transcend their private concerns when they take part in the political process. But some philosophers believe that there are other aspects of social life in which citizens have a relational obligation to transcend their private concerns. Two especially prominent examples in the literature involve burden sharing and resource pooling. Michael Walzer’s discussion of conscription and national defense highlights several important issues (1983: 64–71, 78–91, 97–9, and 168–70; see also Walzer 1970).

When a foreign power threatens the constitutional order in a liberal democracy, political morality seems to direct citizens to defend the order in a particular way. Citizens must approach national defense as a communal enterprise in which they organize themselves to achieve a certain common level of security together through various forms of burden sharing and resource pooling. Burden sharing, in this case, requires every member of the community to participate in some way in carrying the collective burden of fighting the threat. Some citizens will do the actual fighting, but others will contribute by treating the wounded, developing weapons, taking care of children, sending care packages to soldiers, rationing essential resources, and so on.

The moral importance of burden sharing comes out most clearly when we consider certain highly privatized ways of organizing national defense. Consider, for example, a market based approach. A political community might allow entrepreneurs to set up “protection agencies” that would act as firms, hiring mercenaries, buying weapons, and selling varying levels of protection to individual citizens based on their preferences and their ability to pay (see Nozick 1974). Even if it were possible to defend people’s constitutional liberties through a mechanism of this kind, [ 19 ] political morality seems to rule it out. One reason is that the market scheme would allow citizens who are wealthy enough to buy protection services for themselves, but then leave it to others to face the actual dangers of combat. This would violate the communal ideal that all citizens must share in some way in carrying the collective burden of defending the community (see Walzer 1983: 98–9 and 169).

Another problem with a highly privatized approach to national defence has to do with the injured. When soldiers get injured in combat, their injuries have a different moral status as compared to the injuries that they might suffer if they decide to do things as private individuals like ride a motorcycle or work in a circus. The difference is that combat injuries are not private injuries that citizens must bear as private persons. Even in the case where soldiers volunteer for combat, they perform a public service and we treat their injuries as part of a collective burden that the community as a whole must bear, e.g., by providing medical care and rehabilitation services to the wounded free of charge.

The communal ideal of public service and burden sharing might extend beyond national defence to other forms of socially necessary work that is difficult or dangerous.

Miners today are free citizens, but we might think of them…as citizens in the service of the nation. And then we might treat them as if they were conscripts, not sharing their risks, but sharing the costs of the remedy: research into mine safety, health care designed for their immediate needs, early retirement, decent pensions, and so on (Walzer 1983: 170).

A more extensive application of the communal ideal might require citizens to treat the burdens associated with other occupations as parts of a shared social burden, including the burdens faced by police officers, firefighters, teachers, day care workers, nurses, nursing home workers, and so on (cf. Brennan & Jaworski 2015).

Besides burden sharing, resource pooling is another way that citizens may organize their activities in light of the common good. Many facilities in a modern liberal democracy serve common interests, including the armed forces, public health services, and the education system. These facilities require material resources, and this raises an array of questions about how to generate these resources and incorporate them into the pool of assets that serve common interests.

Aristotle favors an approach that works through private ownership. In Plato’s Republic , almost all of the resources held by the guardians are held as collective assets that the guardians may use for the sake of the common interest of the community. [ 20 ] Importantly, because the guardians hold almost nothing as private property, they do nothing that is analogous to the choices that a group of friends might make on a camping trip to voluntarily pool their resources for the sake of common interests. In other words, the guardians do not express their concern for the members of the community through gifts, donations or other forms of private contribution. Partly for this reason, Aristotle favors an arrangement in which citizens have private ownership and control over assets and a civic obligation to pool these assets for the sake of common interests (see Kraut 2002, 327–56). For example, if the community faces a naval threat, wealthy citizens in Aristotle’s ideal community would be responsible for building warships and contributing these ships to the war effort.

Aristotle’s view draws attention to an important set of questions in contemporary market societies. The civic obligation he has in mind comes closest to our notion of private philanthropy. But is private philanthropy really the right way for a community to maintain common facilities for the sake of common interests? In 2015, Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire founder of Facebook, announced that he would donate 99% of his shares in the company to charitable causes, including public education (Kelly 2015). From Aristotle’s point of view, this reflects well on our society: our institutions put wealth in private hands, thereby allowing citizens to make meaningful choices to pool their wealth for common interests. But many would argue that our arrangements are seriously defective insofar as they put some individuals in a position to control a private fortune worth over $45 billion, even if these individuals will eventually devote these resources to common interests. Plato is on to something when he says that political solidarity requires that social institutions channel some wealth directly into the public domain. But Plato seems to go too far in the other direction, and this leaves us with an important set of questions about when society should pool resources through the state and when society should pool resources through private philanthropy.

A third important topic in philosophical reflection about the common good is the market. Citizens have a relational obligation to care about certain common interests, and social coordination through markets can draw citizens into a pattern of production activity and consumption activity that answers to these interests. For example, markets can lead citizens to make better use of land and labor in society, thereby generating more resources for everyone to use in pursuing their various ends. The problem is that market coordination involves a privatized form of reasoning, and the proper functioning of the market may require citizens not to reason from the standpoint of the common good.

To illustrate, suppose that a society uses markets to coordinate the education of citizens (see Friedman 1962). A system of for-profit schools would operate as firms, hiring teachers, buying computers, and selling education services to the public. Parents, in turn, would act as consumers, buying the best education for their children at the lowest cost. Each citizen in this arrangement would reason from the standpoint of her own private concerns: as school managers, citizens would aim to maximize profits, and as parents, citizens would aim to get the best education for their children at the lowest cost. No one would act out of a concern for the education system as a shared facility that serves common interests. In fact, the market may require citizens to avoid this perspective. After all, to lower costs effectively, school managers must not show too much concern for the education of their students. And in order to improve the education of their own children, parents must not show too much concern for the education of other people’s children.

We can divide the philosophical debate into two camps. The first camp says that market society—i.e., a social order that relies extensively on markets to coordinate social life—is compatible with the requirements of the political relationship. Theorists in this camp include Adam Smith (1776), G.W.F. Hegel (1821), John Rawls (1971), Michael Sandel (2009) and perhaps Michael Walzer (1983). We might also include deliberative democrats such as Jürgen Habermas (1992) and Joshua Cohen (Cohen & Sabel 1997). [ 21 ]

As an example of someone in the first camp, consider Hegel (1821) and his view of the market. Hegel follows Adam Smith in thinking that the market draws citizens into a pattern of specialization that serves common interests. The market does this through prices. Each citizen finds that she can do better for herself by developing her talents and selling her labor at the going rate, then buying the goods that she needs from others. But following price signals involves a form of reasoning that is focused only on private interests, not the common good. As a result, it is essential, on Hegel’s view, that the realm of market activity must be integrated into a wider political community. As members of a political community, citizens (or at least some citizens) discuss their common interests in the public sphere, vote in elections, and find their views represented in legislative deliberations that shape an official conception of the common good. This official conception shapes the laws and guides the government in managing the economy. So even if citizens do not reason from the standpoint of the common good as market actors, their lives as a whole are organized by a form of reasoning that is focused on maintaining shared facilities for the sake of common interests.

The other camp in the disagreement says that market society is not compatible with the requirements of the political relationship. Theorists in this camp include Aristotle (see Pol. 1256b39–1258a17), Rousseau (1762b), Marx (1844, 1867), and G.A. Cohen (2009). Marx’s view provides an interesting contrast to Hegel’s.

Marx agrees with Hegel that members of a political community must organize their activities in light of a conception of the common good. But he does not think that members live up to the ideal if most of them never actually reason from this standpoint. A political community must be “radically democratic” in the sense that ordinary citizens participate directly in the collective effort to organize social life by appeal to a conception of the common good (Marx 1844). What makes social coordination through markets problematic is that market actors are drawn into certain patterns of activity through prices, which means that they never actually reason with each other in terms of the common good. On Marx’s view, a properly ordered political community would move beyond this opaque form of social coordination:

The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan. (Marx 1867 [1967, 84]).

In a properly ordered political community, members will transcend the authoritarian mysticism of price coordination and organize their production and consumption activities through an open and transparent process of reasoning that makes explicit to everyone how their activities serve common interests.

Many contemporary issues in political philosophy revolve around questions about the market and the standpoint of the common good. Most theorists today hold views that fall somewhere between the two camps I just described: they argue for some more nuanced view about when citizens are supposed to adopt a privatized perspective and when they must reason from the standpoint of the common good.

When it comes to corporations and corporate executives, for example, Thomas Christiano (2010) argues for a certain kind of socially conscious orientation: corporate leaders must reason from the standpoint of the common good at least in limiting their strategic pursuit of private objectives in a way that is consistent with the broader social objectives established by democratic majorities. [ 22 ] Joseph Heath (2014) argues for a more limited view, such that market actors must not take a purely privatized perspective in cases where externalities and other market failures would prevent the market process from generating attractive results. A great deal of work remains to be done when it comes to other aspects of market life that may require citizens to reason from a more socially conscious perspective, particularly when it comes to labor rights, political liberties and climate change.

Another important set of contemporary issues has to do with competition. Market coordination typically works through a process in which citizens compete with one another for important goods. In the United States, for instance, labor market participants compete for jobs that substantially determine who gets access to different levels of income, and by extension, different levels of health care, police protection, consideration in the justice system, and political influence. As citizens square off against each other, each one strives to secure important goods for herself, knowing that her activities will—if successful—effectively deprive some other citizen of these same goods. In this way, labor market competition requires citizens to act with an extreme form of disregard for how their actions affect one another’s basic interests.

Many philosophers believe that the antagonistic structure of market competition is inconsistent with the relational obligation that members of a political community have to care about certain common interests. G.A. Cohen (2009, 34–45) articulates the problem in terms of a “socialist principle of community” that rules out social arrangements that require people to view one another simply as obstacles that must be overcome. Hussain (forthcoming) takes a more moderate view, arguing that there is a difference between a “friendly competition” and a “life or death struggle”. The political relationship allows for a certain degree of competition among citizens, but it limits how severely institutions can pit citizens against each other when it comes to goods that are part of the common good, e.g., health care, education, and the social bases of self-respect.

The concept of the common good is related to social justice, but it goes beyond the requirements of justice because (1) it describes a pattern of inner motivation, not just a pattern of outer conduct, and (2) it may incorporate facilities and interests that are not general requirements of justice.

Consider the case of friendship. Friendship is a social relationship that requires those who stand in the relationship to think and act in ways that embody a particular form of mutual concern. The relevant form of concern incorporates the basic requirements of morality—i.e., what Scanlon (1998) calls “the morality of right and wrong”—as friends must not lie to each other, assault each other, or take unfair advantage of each other. But even strangers are required to conform to these basic moral standards. What distinguishes friendship is that the form of mutual concern it involves goes beyond basic morality and requires friends to maintain certain patterns of conduct on the grounds that these patterns serve certain common interests.

Members of a political community stand in a social relationship, and this relationship also requires them to think and act in ways that embody a certain form of mutual concern. The common good defines this form of concern. The common good incorporates certain basic requirements of social justice, as citizens must provide one another with basic rights and freedoms and they must not exploit each other. But the common good goes beyond the basic requirements of justice because it requires citizens to maintain certain patterns of conduct on the grounds that these patterns serve certain common interests.

The analogy with friendship should make it clear that the common good is distinct from, but still closely related to social justice. According to most of the major traditional views, the facilities and interests that members of a political community have a relational obligation to care about are partly defined in terms of social justice. For instance, Rousseau (1762b), Hegel (1821) and Rawls (1971) all hold that a basic system of private property is both a requirement of justice and an element of the common good.

Another tradition that has emphasized the common good is Catholic social thought. Since the Middle Ages, when St. Thomas Aquinas incorporated Aristotle’s account of the common good, the concept has supported the view that society should promote the conditions of social life that enable individual members and groups to flourish. Building on this idea, the French philosopher Jacques Maritain argued that human rights are grounded in natural law but realized through an orientation to the common good. This orientation entails a commitment to pluralism, universal dignity, and the rights of minorities, whose ideas and interests might otherwise be overlooked (see the entry on Jaques Maritain ). Similarly, in Natural Law and Natural Rights , Finnis holds that respect for human rights is a requirement of justice and that “the maintenance of human rights is a fundamental component of the common good” (1980, 218).

The prominence of the concept has diminished as social scientists and philosophers have suggested that a single conception of the common good is incompatible with the pluralism of modern societies (Mansbridge and Boot 2022). Without a shared theological or metaphysical foundation, it is challenging to justify moral obligations. In response to this concern, theorists have suggested that the common good could be productively conceived as an ideal that is the subject of deliberation, contestation and critique. From this perspective, the uncertainty and disagreement about its meaning is part of an on-going social learning process that unfolds as group members try to interpret and advance the common good (Sluga 2014: 2). Understood in this way, the common good can avoid a totalizing tendency while still playing an important role in challenging the neo-liberal imaginary that has encouraged citizens to take up a privatized perspective. In a similar vein, Michael Sandel described the civic conception of the common good as a process of reflecting on citizens’ preferences and improving them through deliberation with fellow citizens. According to Sandel, a civic culture is one that provides spaces that cultivate civic virtue and opportunities to reason together about the kind of political community we want to create (Sandel 2020: 236).

All of this leaves us with some important questions. Many contemporary social issues turn on disagreements about when citizens may take up a privatized perspective and when they must reason from the standpoint of the common good. Social justice is often silent on these issues because people could, in principle, act as justice requires, whether they are moved by a scheme of private incentives or by a concern for common interests. These social issues are best understood as turning on disagreements about the nature of the political relationship and the form of mutual concern that it requires. Philosophical reflection has an important role to play in shedding light on this relationship and what it requires of us beyond what we owe to each other as a matter of justice.

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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Simply philosophy , a blog with a good Ted Talk on the economy for the common good.
• The Concept of the Common Good , working paper by Maximilian Jaede (University of Edinburgh), at the British Academy project.
• The Common Good , Section II of Article 2, from Part Three, Section One, Chapter Two of Catechism of the Catholic Church , maintained by the Vatican. (Contains an important religious statement about the common good.)
• Catechism Commentary: The Common Good , post by David Cloutier (Theology, Catholic University of America) at Catholic Moral Theology website.
• Economy for the Common Good , a volunteer organization that advocates a model for a market economy organized around the idea of the common good.
• The Economy for the Common Good , paper by Christian Felber (Vienna University of Economics and Business) and Gus Hagelberg (Coordinator for International Expansion of the Economy for the Common Good), at the Next System Project website.
• Catholic Healthcare and the Common Good , by Rev. Charles E. Bouchard, OP, S.T.D., at the Catholic Health Association website. (Catholic statement about the common good in the context of doctor-patient relations.)
• Government And The Common Good , a resolution by the American Federation of Teachers.

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The Common Good: Theoretical Content, Practical Utility

Despite skepticism about the common good, the idea has both theoretical content and practical utility. It rests on important features of human life, such as inherently social goods, social linkages, and joint occupation of various commons. It reflects the outcome for bargaining for mutual advantage, subject to a fairness test. And it is particularized through a community’s adherence to certain goods as objects of joint endeavor. In the context of the United States, these goods are set forth in the Preamble to the Constitution – in general language, subject to political contestation, for a people who have agreed to live together in a united political community. While the Preamble states the ends of the union, the body of the Constitution establishes the institutional means for achieving them. So these institutions are part of the common good as well. These are the enduring commonalities – the elements of a shared good – that ceaseless democratic conflict often obscures but that reemerge in times of crisis and civic ritual.

WILLIAM A. GALSTON, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2004, is a Senior Fellow and the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. His publications include Public Matters: Essays on Politics, Policy, and Religion (2005), The Practice of Liberal Pluralism (2005), and Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice (2002).

Many people who think of themselves as realists rather than cynics dismiss the common good as pious rhetoric. There is no shortage of leaders who have deployed the phrase in just that way. And there is evidence to support this skeptical view. Most societies are divided along lines of class, ethnicity, and religion. Free societies with market economies proliferate what we have come to call interest groups, just as James Madison predicted. In the United States, partisan polarization has intensified in recent decades and has become intertwined with dueling ideologies whose views of the proper ends and means of politics clash fundamentally. Nonetheless, the idea of the common good is neither vacuous nor futile. It has real content in theory and real utility in practice.

I begin by examining three kinds of social facts that are easy to overlook because they are so ubiquitous.

Inherently social goods. Some goods are inherently social. Telling a joke to oneself is virtually impossible, because humor requires surprise. It is barely possible to imagine a brain-damaged individual who remembers jokes only in the act of retelling them and forgets them immediately. Such a person might be capable of surprising himself. But the science-fiction character of this example suggests how fanciful it is.

Many games are inherently social goods because the stimulation and satisfaction they evoke require the interplay of two or more independent minds and wills. Playing chess with oneself is possible as a technical matter, but the experience is not the same.

Human life itself has inherently social dimensions. To survive infancy and develop human attributes, we need what has been called the social womb – the nurturing aid and companionship of other human beings. Once grown, we seek out the company of others, not only for specific benefits, but often because we feel isolated if we are alone too much or too long. We differ among ourselves, of course. Some of us find solitude unbearable, while others experience ordinary social life as burdensome. But even extreme introverts crave the company of others – on their own terms. So we assemble in parks and malls and bars, often not for specific purposes, but just to be with others. And when we do, we enjoy a kind of good together that we cannot enjoy alone.

Social linkages. In addition to these inherently social activities, there are what I call social linkages – aspects of our lives in which the well-being of some people affects the well-being of others. Mental illness is a familiar example: if one family member is afflicted, it disrupts the lives of the others. Martin Luther King, Jr., made much the same claim about segregation: oppression damages the oppressors, not just their victims.

The regime of public health rests on the fact of linkages. Societies mandate vaccinations because so many diseases are infectious. If an unvaccinated child gets sick, the odds are that many of her classmates will as well. Because we agree that health is an important good for each individual, and because we understand that the health of each individual is linked to the health of others, we can say that public health is an element of the common good. So conceived, the common good is anything but a demanding moral ideal. It is rather a matter of enlightened self-interest.

It is always tempting, however, to look for ways around the interest-based logic of the common good – that is, for ways of cutting the links that bind our fate to that of others. Before the development of modern medicine, people of means tried to put geographical distance between their families and the epicenter of epidemics. Those who could decamped for their country homes. Often the disease would follow them, because some of those who fled were already infected.

In our own times, fortunate individuals have used a similar strategy of de-linkage to escape the social version of public health hazards: violent crime. They use their wealth to live in fortified houses or well-patrolled gated communities. When they travel, private armed guards accompany them. In some stratified societies, they use guards and armored cars to protect their children from being kidnapped on the way to school.

These evasive measures are very costly, and not only in material terms. They mean living a life of constant fear, and they entail a considerable loss of liberty. At some point, most societies decide that it is better to address crime collectively – to make the investments in police and courts and prisons that a credible program of criminal justice requires. As the residents of New York and many other U.S. cities discovered during the past few decades, an investment in crime control can pay huge dividends to society as a whole. When people can walk without fear in their neighborhoods, they enjoy more freedom and more security. And besides, businesses move in, the local economy grows, and property values increase. Once we accept that social linkage is an inescapable fact, we can act in ways that benefit society as a whole. Here again, the common good is enlightened self-interest.

The good of the commons . As social beings, we find, create, and congregate in various shared places. Some are constructed physical spaces, such as streets, parks, and public buildings. Others are technology-based and virtual. Still others, such as the air we breathe, are part of the natural environment. Despite these differences, they have a common attribute: how we behave in these places affects everyone’s ability to enjoy them over time. If we carelessly leave an unextinguished fire in a campground, the entire facility may go up in flames. If we fail to control emissions from vehicles that use fossil fuels, atmospheric pollutants can increase the incidence of asthma and other ills. So the common good includes the good of the commons.

While these three kinds of social facts – intrinsically social goods, social linkages, and shared places – are aspects of the common good, they hardly exhaust it. As individuated beings, our separate existences generate clashes of interests, and our liberty gives rise to competing conceptions of the good. These familiar differences are themselves social facts, and they challenge all but the most limited understandings of the common good. In the face of difference, the common good is an achievement, not a fact.

The everyday activity of bargaining illuminates some basic features of the achieved common good. The animating reality of this activity is the belief that relative to the status quo, some agreement would leave both parties to the negotiation better off. This dyadic common good exists only potentially; it takes cooperation to make it actual.

On some occasions there is only one possible agreement, a single point of tangency between the most that A is willing to offer and the least that B is willing to accept. In the vast majority of cases, however, there is a zone of overlap between the arrangements that could be acceptable to both. Most bargaining tactics, such as bluffing, are designed to secure for oneself the largest possible share of the benefits of cooperation. So the common good neither implies nor requires comprehensive harmony between the parties: there is almost always competition within the zone of mutually beneficial cooperation.

In actual politics, this competition often takes the form of arguments about allocating the costs of maintaining important communal activities. If we agree that education is vital, whose taxes will make it possible? Does it make sense to rely as heavily as we now do on local communities, principally through property taxes? If we agree that it is important to maintain a certain level of military capabilities, who will participate in the armed forces, how are they to be chosen and compensated, and who will be asked to pay? If we go to war, should there be a “war tax” to which everyone is asked to contribute? The common good requires a balance between the benefits and burdens of social cooperation such that all (or nearly all) citizens believe that the contribution they are called on to make leaves them with a net surplus. If they cease to believe that, they will try to lighten these burdens, either by evading some taxation or, in extreme cases, by leaving the community through exit (for individuals) or secession (for groups).

It turns out that the criterion of mutual advantage is only part of what makes bar- gains mutually acceptable. In a famous two-person experiment, one person is handed ten $1 bills and is asked to divide them into two shares. If the other person agrees to the division, each receives his designated share; if not, neither gets anything. One might imagine that the second party would accept any division, because even a small share leaves him better off. In practice, not so; beyond a certain point of inequality, a sense of unfairness trumps the potential gain from the transaction. The need for mutual consent establishes a kind of bedrock equality between the parties that spills over into, and delimits, the zone of acceptable agreements.

It is always possible that an agreement that meets the tests of fairness and mutual advantage will work to the disadvantage of those not involved in the decision. In many poor communities, for example, gentrification benefits both developers and new incoming residents while pricing current residents out of the market. Rent increases can also make it impossible for long-established “mom and pop” businesses to survive. So third parties will often appeal to a conception of the common good broadened to include them, and they will resort to nonmarket mechanisms, such as street protests and local governments, to make sure their voices are heard.

This raises a question fundamental to the theory and practice of the common good: how are we to define the limits of the community within which the principle of commonality applies? Environmentalists argue for a global definition: the consumption of fossil fuels produces externalities that affect the entire human race. (The long-running international negotiations to produce a global compact on climate change represent an effort – which may fail – to reframe a zero-sum conflict between developed and developing nations as the quest for mutual advantage.)

We cannot rule out the possibility that a workable conception of the global common good will emerge from these discussions. At present, however, the common good is typically predicated on independent political communities, the kinds of entities represented in the United Nations. These communities are not pre-given natural facts, of course; they are in part human artifacts. Often one part of a community will decide that a common good linking it to the rest of the community no longer exists (if it ever did). Successful secessionist movements redraw the boundaries of the communities within which the common good is pursued. And so, in reverse, do successful efforts to integrate independent states into a single overarching political community.

The U.S. Constitution begins with three fateful words: We the people. It could have been (and, as dissidents such as Patrick Henry argued, should have been) “We the states .” Instead, the Constitution invoked – and to some extent called into being – a united political community with a single demos .

There is a precondition of community: the people who form it must want to live together as a unity, and they must think of themselves as sharing a common fate. Communities fail when this condition is not or ceases to be satisfied. In states such as Iraq and Syria, the identities of different ethnic and religious groups contend with – and may trump – their shared identity as members of the same political community. And once-successful communities can break down when disagreements on fundamentals trump their shared history. In Federalist No. 2, John Jay argued that “Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people – a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government.” Three quarters of a century later, Abraham Lincoln concluded his First Inaugural with a desperate plea to the South: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection.” In the end, of course, the “mystic chords of memory” to which Lincoln appealed proved weaker than did differences of interest and principle, and also the sentiments of anger and fear. The United States barely survived the ensuing ordeal; many communities do not, and their common good dissolves as an effective force.

But in 1787, the dominant reality was Jay’s, not Lincoln’s. Taking the presumption of one united people as granted, the Preamble went on to sketch the content of the common good the Constitution was created to foster. The words that follow “in order to” specify the key elements of that good: a more perfect union, justice, domestic tranquility, the common defense, the general welfare, and the blessings of liberty. In principle, all were to share in these goods, and all were to benefit from them. (The gap between this principle and actual practice is one of the central drivers of American history.)

Note that the Preamble defines a distinctive understanding of the common good for a specific society. Unlike some other societies, America’s common good does not explicitly include theological doctrines or a canon of the virtues. We are free to argue (and throughout our history many have argued) that the common good we seek is unattainable without religion and civic morality. George Washington and Alexis de Tocqueville are hardly alone in seeing just such connections. But as citizens, we are free to disagree, and to draw practical inferences (for example, about the wisdom of public aid to parochial schools) from our divergent views.

Note also that the Preamble defines the common good in highly general terms. We are free – indeed, invited – to argue about what it means to establish justice or to promote the general welfare. And the “liberty” we are pledged to protect and pass on to future generations is among the most contestable terms in the political lexicon. While the Preamble sets the terms of debate about the American common good, it hardly prejudges the outcome of that discussion, and it leaves open the possibility that the prevailing understanding of key terms may change over time. (History suggests that this open-endedness is anything but a defect.)

One final observation about the Preamble: it is limited geographically but not chronologically. While only the individuals associated with a particular place – the United States – fall under the canopy of the Preamble’s promise, the founders sought to extend it beyond their own generation, to “our posterity.” To remain true to the Constitution, no generation may seize for itself fleeting advantages that risk leaving future generations with diminished shares of the goods that the founding charter places at the heart of our collective enterprise.

If the Preamble states the ends of the union, the body of the Constitution sets forth the institutional means for achieving them. And these institutions are part of the common good as well. They enable not only collective decision-making but also the capacity to implement decisions once they are made. They make possible the peaceful resolution of disputes. They are designed to ward off tyranny, whether of individuals or of groups, and to offer a voice for all. They empower majorities while protecting minorities. And the Constitution provides, as well, for processes of amendment to improve its capacity to promote these ends when changing conditions make such improvements necessary.

The common good, to repeat, is no guarantee of social and political harmony. Our constitutional common good establishes a framework of ends and means about which, and within which, vigorous contestation is inevitable. We disagree, of course, about how different sectors of society are to divide the burden of maintaining a free and well-functioning political community. But the debate can touch on even deeper issues. If the common good encompasses multiple goods, then some of its elements often stand in tension with one another. A fair trial is an element of the common good as we understand it; so is a free press. What should we do when they collide? Even when only one good is at stake, we disagree on what its general specification means in specific cases. The Fourth Amendment protects us from “unreasonable” search and seizure. But how do we draw the line between what’s reasonable and what isn’t? Reasonable people often disagree about what it means to act reasonably in specific cases.

Controversy over the common good can even raise an issue on which moral philosophers have long been divided: is the good of the community to be determined by aggregating the consequences of different courses of action for all members of the community? For example, while the right to acquire and hold private property is an important element of the common good in the United States, it is not absolute. The Fifth Amendment states that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use without just compensation.” We may leave aside the often contentious issue of when compensation is just and focus on the concept of public use. No one doubts that roads, post offices, and military bases fall under this concept. In 2005, however, a five-member majority of the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the city of New London, Connecticut, to take private property to further the community’s economic development. If development was designed to boost the community’s overall production and wealth, it qualified as a public use that justified the taking of private property. This decision proved enormously controversial, in part because it subjected what many regarded as an individual right to a collective calculation. The good of private property, argued many critics, is not something we can determine simply by adding up the consequences of different patterns of property ownership for all affected individuals.

There is of course a continuum of contestation, from clashes that can trigger civil war to the disputes that characterize everyday political and social life. But even disagreements over public policy – should the federal government guarantee that no citizen must go without health insurance? – can trigger fears that the community’s fundamental character is being transformed. The passions and divisions of the moment often lead to myopia, a blurring of the vision that allows us to discern what we share despite our differences. It is the role of statesmanship – always in short supply – to remind us of the enduring commonalities that we are forever in danger of overlooking.

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The Concept of the Common Good

Citation: 383706 {383706:ICQTGGWU} apa 50 4278 https://peacerep.org/wp-content/plugins/zotpress/ %7B%22status%22%3A%22success%22%2C%22updateneeded%22%3Afalse%2C%22instance%22%3A%22zotpress-5f915d5b857633f3d5007ff158b7150a%22%2C%22meta%22%3A%7B%22request_last%22%3A0%2C%22request_next%22%3A0%2C%22used_cache%22%3Atrue%7D%2C%22data%22%3A%5B%7B%22key%22%3A%22ICQTGGWU%22%2C%22library%22%3A%7B%22id%22%3A383706%7D%2C%22meta%22%3A%7B%22creatorSummary%22%3A%22Jaede%22%2C%22parsedDate%22%3A%222017%22%2C%22numChildren%22%3A0%7D%2C%22bib%22%3A%22%3Cdiv%20class%3D%5C%22csl-bib-body%5C%22%20style%3D%5C%22line-height%3A%202%3B%20padding-left%3A%201em%3B%20text-indent%3A-1em%3B%5C%22%3E%5Cn%20%20%3Cdiv%20class%3D%5C%22csl-entry%5C%22%3EJaede%2C%20M.%20%282017%29.%20%3Ci%3EThe%20Concept%20of%20the%20Common%20Good%3C%5C%2Fi%3E%20%28PSRP%20Working%20Paper%20No.%208%29.%20Global%20Justice%20Academy%2C%20University%20of%20Edinburgh.%3C%5C%2Fdiv%3E%5Cn%3C%5C%2Fdiv%3E%22%2C%22data%22%3A%7B%22itemType%22%3A%22report%22%2C%22title%22%3A%22The%20Concept%20of%20the%20Common%20Good%22%2C%22creators%22%3A%5B%7B%22creatorType%22%3A%22author%22%2C%22firstName%22%3A%22Maximilian%22%2C%22lastName%22%3A%22Jaede%22%7D%5D%2C%22abstractNote%22%3A%22%22%2C%22reportNumber%22%3A%228%22%2C%22reportType%22%3A%22PSRP%20Working%20Paper%22%2C%22institution%22%3A%22Global%20Justice%20Academy%2C%20University%20of%20Edinburgh%22%2C%22date%22%3A%222017%22%2C%22language%22%3A%22%22%2C%22url%22%3A%22%22%2C%22collections%22%3A%5B%5D%2C%22dateModified%22%3A%222019-02-19T20%3A08%3A44Z%22%7D%7D%5D%7D Jaede, M. (2017). The Concept of the Common Good (PSRP Working Paper No. 8). Global Justice Academy, University of Edinburgh.

Download the working paper .

Policy points : • Appeals to the common good are often meant to discourage corruption and the pursuit of narrow self-interest, but what this good consists of is subject to debate and contestation. • Invocations of community and the common good do not necessarily lead to greater inclusiveness, but may also legitimise discrimination. • Politics in different social and institutional settings may or may not succeed in constructing shared notions of the common good.

Abstract : This paper provides historical and theoretical background on the concept of the ‘common good.’ Recent scholarship on peace- and statebuilding suggests that, in deeply divided societies, there is a need to construct a shared notion of the common good as part of the political transition from war to peace. The paper provides an overview of different conceptions of the common good that developed in the history of western political thought, considers similar concepts such as ‘public interest’, and explores related ideas in non-western thought. In addition, the paper surveys contemporary theoretical debates on this subject, and points to different views on the relationship between the common good on the one hand and human rights and equality on the other.

Keywords : Concepts

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The sources below consider these questions from creative, scientific, and humanistic perspectives. We invite you to start with these core sources, wander further down to the “Explore” section, and join the conversation.

International Monetary Fund: AI Will Transform the Global Economy. Let’s Make Sure It Benefits Humanity

Artificial intelligence is already changing the way that we work, play, and spend our resources. How can we make sure that those economic changes benefit humanity? Read more here.

Joshua Rothman writing for the New Yorker magazine: In the Age of A.I., What Makes People Unique?

The New Yorker magazine’s ideas editor Joshua Rothman asks what happens to human values when AI-generated content becomes indistinguishable from art, media , and thoughts produced directly by humans. Read more here.

International Committee of the Red Cross: On Being Human Now and in the Future

University of Oxford Senior Fellow Hugo Slim explores the late historian Bruce Mazlish’s conception of humanity as a species, as a code of ethical conduct, and as a global identity.

Read more here.

The Smithsonian Institution’s Human Origins Initiative

The Human Origins Initiative at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History explores the deep past and the origins of human life in order to give us insights into human evolution, the development of human cultures and societies, and the future of humanity.

Kaufman, Post-Traumatic Growth: Finding Meaning and Creativity in Adversity

Image source: Scientific American

“By embracing psychological flexibility, we face the world with exploration and openness and are better able to react to events in the service of our chosen values.”

Read more here .

Collective Photo Essay

Image source: The Walters Museum

“ This Celadon Box features kintsugi, a Japanese repair technique called kintsugi, which uses a mixture of lacquer and gold, silver, or platinum to mend an object in a way that highlights (rather than hides) the damage. ”

This is community project in progress. Check back here throughout the year and submit your own photo for the collective photo essay .

Baltimore Museum of Art

Image: Elizabeth Talford Scott’s Quilt, “Plantation”

“The Baltimore Museum of Art connects art to Baltimore and Baltimore to the world, embodying a commitment to artistic excellence and social equity in every decision.”

Explore here.

National Academy of Engineering, 14 Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century

Image: National Academy of Engineering Website

“ All of these endeavors must be undertaken with clear vision for the aesthetic values that go beyond mere function and contribute to the joy of living. ”

The Nation’s Report Card

Image: Baltimurals

“ For 13-year-olds, over the past 10 years, “the average scores declined 7 points in reading and 14 points in mathematics. “

Danielle Allen, “Aims of Education” address (2001)

“Friendship is crucial to encountering what is novel, alien, and unsettling, and such is the business of learning.”

Mark Phillips et al, “Genomics: data sharing needs an international code of conduct” (2020)

“Further regulatory uncertainty risks…undermining people’s faith in scientific collaboration for the public good.”

Eula Biss, “Sentimental Medicine” (2013)

“Herd immunity…is implausible only if we think of our bodies as inherently disconnected from other bodies. Which, of course, we do.”

Ada Limón, “Dead Stars” (2018)

“What would happen if we decided to survive more?”

Michael Sandel, “Are We All In This Together?” (2020)

“We need to ask a basic question… What do we owe one another as citizens?”

Story of Noah in the Bible, Quran, & Torah

“‘My Lord, let me land at a blessed landing place’”(Quran).

Raj Chetty, Opportunity Insights

“The defining feature of the American Dream is upward mobility – the aspiration that all children have a chance at economic success, no matter their background.”

Colin Raymond et al, “Understanding and managing connected extreme events” (2020)

“Extreme weather and climate events and their impacts can occur in complex combinations, an interaction shaped by physical drivers and societal forces.”

James Baldwin, “My Dungeon Shook” (1963) read by Chris Rock

“You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.”

James Madison, Federalist No. 10 (1787)

“Complaints are everywhere heard…that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival Parties.”

Andrew L. Russell & Lee Vinsel: “Make Maintainers, Engineering Education and an Ethics of Care” (2019)

“Innovation is not a value in itself, although it is often treated like one.”

Moon Duchin, “Can geometry save democracy from gerrymandering?” (2020)

“How hard could it be to write down what it means to be a good shape and what it means to be a bad shape when it comes to political districts?”

PDF Document: View list of source and image citations .

We spent the early summer of 2020 exploring the idea of the common good, and the sources here are ones we found along our way. Some came immediately to mind, like the TV series The Good Place or The Migration Series of paintings by Jacob Lawrence. Some, like Imani Perry’s essay on the “defiant joy” of Blackness, are just published. Some come from familiar places we turn to again and again for inspiration and meaning—Baltimore City, the BMA, This American Life , Brainpickings. Here are places to wander, to get lost, to find new pathways.

The Good Place , NBC

Rebecca Solnit

On Being with Krista Tippett

The Baltimore Sun

This American Life

Maria Popova

Imani Perry

Robert W. Stock

Afaa Michael Weaver

Jacob Lawrence

Rachel Carson

Ursula K. LeGuin

Darren Walker

Common Good Playlist

Common Good Film Series

Science Advances

Langston Hughes

Greta Thunberg

The New York Times

Bill McKibben

Fredericka Gray

Sandrine Frémeaux

What have YOU read or seen that speaks to progress? Share your ideas here.

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Common Good Principle

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• Usochi Joanann Ilozumba 3  

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Common good – common end/shared end ; Community – society/organization/association ; Flourishing – well-being/fulfillment ; Good – end ; Virtues – excellence

Introduction

According to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (hereafter, CSDC) definition of the common good which departs from the premise of the “dignity, unity and equality of all people,” the common good is “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily” (CSDC 2004 , 164). But what is the good? It is an end which attracts and perfects the one who pursues it. And what makes this good “common” is that it can be achieved if, and only if, everyone else in the group achieves it. In other words, it belongs to everyone and to each person. Only in this way is it possible to attain the [common] good (CSDC 164). For this reason, the common good perfects the persons involved as they jointly seek excellence in their actions to...

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Aristotle (1987) The Nicomachean ethics. Great Books in Philosophy. Prometheus Books, Buffalo/New York

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Benedict XVI, PP Encyclical Letter (2009) Caritas in Veritate. On the Integral Human Development in Charity and Truth. Encyclical Letter

Cruess SR, Johnston S, Cruess RL (2004) “Profession”: a working definition for medical educators. Teach Learn Med 16:74–76. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15328015tlm1601_15

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Dupré L (1993) The common good and the open society. Rev Politics 55(4):687–712. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034670500018052

Moosmayer DC, Laasch O, Parkes C, Brown KG (eds) (2020) Virtues in responsible management education: building character. In The Sage handbook of responsible management learning and education. Sage, pp 280–297

Plato (2003) The Republic (trans: Lee D), 2nd edn. Penguin Classics, London/New York

Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (2004) Compendium of the social doctrine of the church. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Rome

Simon YR (1960) Common good and common action. The Review of Politics 22. [University of Notre Dame du lac on behalf of Review of Politics, Cambridge University Press]: 202–244. JSTOR

Sison AJG, Fontrodona J (2012) The common good of the firm in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. Bus Ethics Q 22:211–246. https://doi.org/10.5840/beq201222218

Sison AJG, Ferrero I, Guitian G (eds) (2018) Virtues and the common good in business. In Business ethics. A virtue ethics and common good approach. Routledge, New York, pp 1–23

Walshe (O.Praem.), Sebastian (2006) The primacy of the common good as the root of personal dignity in the doctrine of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Pontificia studiorum Universitas a S, Thoma Aq. in Urbe

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Ilozumba, U.J. (2021). Common Good Principle. In: Poff, D.C., Michalos, A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_522-1

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The Common Good

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Commenting on the many economic and social problems that American society confronts, Newsweek columnist Robert J. Samuelson once wrote: "We face a choice between a society where people accept modest sacrifices for a common good or a more contentious society where groups selfishly protect their own benefits." The common good has been an important ethical concept in a society that has encouraged many to "look out for Number 1."

Appeals to the common good have also surfaced in discussions of business' social responsibilities, discussions of environmental pollution, discussions of our lack of investment in education, and discussions of the problems of crime and poverty. Everywhere, it seems, social commentators are claiming that our most fundamental social problems grow out of a widespread pursuit of individual interests.

What exactly is "the common good", and why has it come to have such a critical place in current discussions of problems in our society? The common good is a notion that originated over two thousand years ago in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. More recently, the ethicist John Rawls defined the common good as "certain general conditions that are...equally to everyone's advantage". The Catholic religious tradition, which has a long history of struggling to define and promote the common good, defines it as "the sum of those conditions of social life which allow social groups and their individual members relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfillment." The common good, then, consists primarily of having the social systems, institutions, and environments on which we all depend work in a manner that benefits all people. Examples of particular common goods or parts of the common good include an accessible and affordable public health care system, an effective system of public safety and security, peace among the nations of the world, a just legal and political system, an unpolluted natural environment, and a flourishing economic system. Because such systems, institutions, and environments have such a powerful impact on the well-being of members of a society, it is no surprise that virtually every social problem in one way or another is linked to how well these systems and institutions are functioning.

As these examples suggest, the common good does not just happen. Establishing and maintaining the common good require the cooperative efforts of some, often of many, people. Just as keeping a park free of litter depends on each user picking up after himself, so also maintaining the social conditions from which we all benefit requires the cooperative efforts of citizens. But these efforts pay off, for the common good is a good to which all members of society have access, and from whose enjoyment no one can be easily excluded. All persons, for example, enjoy the benefits of clean air or an unpolluted environment, or any of our society's other common goods. In fact, something counts as a common good only to the extent that it is a good to which all have access.

It might seem that since all citizens benefit from the common good, we would all willingly respond to urgings that we each cooperate to establish and maintain the common good. But numerous observers have identified a number of obstacles that hinder us, as a society, from successfully doing so.

First, according to some philosophers, the very idea of a common good is inconsistent with a pluralistic society like ours. Different people have different ideas about what is worthwhile or what constitutes "the good life for human beings", differences that have increased during the last few decades as the voices of more and more previously silenced groups, such as women and minorities, have been heard. Given these differences, some people urge, it will be impossible for us to agree on what particular kind of social systems, institutions, and environments we will all pitch in to support.

And even if we agreed upon what we all valued, we would certainly disagree about the relative values things have for us. While all may agree, for example, that an affordable health system, a healthy educational system, and a clean environment are all parts of the common good, some will say that more should be invested in health than in education, while others will favor directing resources to the environment over both health and education. Such disagreements are bound to undercut our ability to evoke a sustained and widespread commitment to the common good. In the face of such pluralism, efforts to bring about the common good may lead to adopting or promoting the views of some, while excluding others.  This has led some to argue the common good is an unachievable goal.

A second problem encountered by proponents of the common good is what is sometimes called the "free-rider problem". The benefits that a common good provides are, as we noted, available to everyone, including those who choose not to do their part to maintain the common good. Individuals can become "free riders" by taking the benefits the common good provides while refusing to do their part to support the common good. An adequate water supply, for example, is a common good from which all people benefit. But to maintain an adequate supply of water during a drought, people must conserve water, which entails sacrifices. Some individuals may be reluctant to do their share, however, since they know that so long as enough other people conserve, they can enjoy the benefits without reducing their own consumption. If enough people become free riders in this way, the common good which depends on their support will be destroyed. Many observers believe that this is exactly what has happened to many of our common goods, such as the environment or education, where the reluctance of all person to support efforts to maintain the health of these systems has led to their virtual collapse.

The third problem encountered by attempts to promote the common good is that of individualism. our historical traditions place a high value on individual freedom, on personal rights, and on allowing each person to "do her own thing". Our culture views society as comprised of separate independent individuals who are free to pursue their own individual goals and interests without interference from others. In this individualistic culture it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to convince people that they should sacrifice some of their freedom, some of their personal goals, and some of their self-interest, for the sake of the "common good". American cultural traditions, in fact, reinforce the individual who thinks that she should not have to contribute to the community's common good, but should be left free to pursue her own personal ends.

Finally, appeals to the common good are confronted by the problem of an unequal sharing of burdens. Maintaining a common good often requires that particular individuals or particular groups bear costs that are much greater than those borne by others. Maintaining an unpolluted environment, for example, may require that particular firms that pollute install costly pollution control devices, undercutting profits. Making employment opportunities more equal may require that some groups, such as white males, limit for a time their own employment chances. Making the health system affordable and accessible to all may require that insurers accept lower premiums, that physicians accept lower salaries, or that those with particularly costly diseases or conditions forego the medical treatment on which their live depend. Forcing particular groups or individuals to carry such unequal burdens "for the sake of the common good", is, at least arguably, unjust. Moreover, the prospect of having to carry such heavy and unequal burdens leads such groups and individuals to resist any attempts to secure common goods.

All of these problems pose considerable obstacles to those who call for an ethic of the common good. Still, appeals to the common good ought not to be dismissed. For they urge us to reflect on broad questions concerning the kind of society we want to become and how we are to achieve that society. They also challenge us to view ourselves as members of the same community and, while respecting and valuing the freedom of individuals to pursue their own goals, to recognize and further those goals we share in common.

This article appeared originally in Issues in Ethics V5, N1 (Spring 1992). It was updated in August 2018.

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113 Great Research Paper Topics

General Education

One of the hardest parts of writing a research paper can be just finding a good topic to write about. Fortunately we've done the hard work for you and have compiled a list of 113 interesting research paper topics. They've been organized into ten categories and cover a wide range of subjects so you can easily find the best topic for you.

In addition to the list of good research topics, we've included advice on what makes a good research paper topic and how you can use your topic to start writing a great paper.

What Makes a Good Research Paper Topic?

Not all research paper topics are created equal, and you want to make sure you choose a great topic before you start writing. Below are the three most important factors to consider to make sure you choose the best research paper topics.

#1: It's Something You're Interested In

A paper is always easier to write if you're interested in the topic, and you'll be more motivated to do in-depth research and write a paper that really covers the entire subject. Even if a certain research paper topic is getting a lot of buzz right now or other people seem interested in writing about it, don't feel tempted to make it your topic unless you genuinely have some sort of interest in it as well.

#2: There's Enough Information to Write a Paper

Even if you come up with the absolute best research paper topic and you're so excited to write about it, you won't be able to produce a good paper if there isn't enough research about the topic. This can happen for very specific or specialized topics, as well as topics that are too new to have enough research done on them at the moment. Easy research paper topics will always be topics with enough information to write a full-length paper.

Trying to write a research paper on a topic that doesn't have much research on it is incredibly hard, so before you decide on a topic, do a bit of preliminary searching and make sure you'll have all the information you need to write your paper.

#3: It Fits Your Teacher's Guidelines

Don't get so carried away looking at lists of research paper topics that you forget any requirements or restrictions your teacher may have put on research topic ideas. If you're writing a research paper on a health-related topic, deciding to write about the impact of rap on the music scene probably won't be allowed, but there may be some sort of leeway. For example, if you're really interested in current events but your teacher wants you to write a research paper on a history topic, you may be able to choose a topic that fits both categories, like exploring the relationship between the US and North Korea. No matter what, always get your research paper topic approved by your teacher first before you begin writing.

113 Good Research Paper Topics

Below are 113 good research topics to help you get you started on your paper. We've organized them into ten categories to make it easier to find the type of research paper topics you're looking for.

Arts/Culture

• Discuss the main differences in art from the Italian Renaissance and the Northern Renaissance .
• Analyze the impact a famous artist had on the world.
• How is sexism portrayed in different types of media (music, film, video games, etc.)? Has the amount/type of sexism changed over the years?
• How has the music of slaves brought over from Africa shaped modern American music?
• How has rap music evolved in the past decade?
• How has the portrayal of minorities in the media changed?

Current Events

• What have been the impacts of China's one child policy?
• How have the goals of feminists changed over the decades?
• How has the Trump presidency changed international relations?
• Analyze the history of the relationship between the United States and North Korea.
• What factors contributed to the current decline in the rate of unemployment?
• What have been the impacts of states which have increased their minimum wage?
• How do US immigration laws compare to immigration laws of other countries?
• How have the US's immigration laws changed in the past few years/decades?
• How has the Black Lives Matter movement affected discussions and view about racism in the US?
• What impact has the Affordable Care Act had on healthcare in the US?
• What factors contributed to the UK deciding to leave the EU (Brexit)?
• What factors contributed to China becoming an economic power?
• Discuss the history of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies  (some of which tokenize the S&P 500 Index on the blockchain) .
• Do students in schools that eliminate grades do better in college and their careers?
• Do students from wealthier backgrounds score higher on standardized tests?
• Do students who receive free meals at school get higher grades compared to when they weren't receiving a free meal?
• Do students who attend charter schools score higher on standardized tests than students in public schools?
• Do students learn better in same-sex classrooms?
• How does giving each student access to an iPad or laptop affect their studies?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Montessori Method ?
• Do children who attend preschool do better in school later on?
• What was the impact of the No Child Left Behind act?
• How does the US education system compare to education systems in other countries?
• What impact does mandatory physical education classes have on students' health?
• Which methods are most effective at reducing bullying in schools?
• Do homeschoolers who attend college do as well as students who attended traditional schools?
• Does offering tenure increase or decrease quality of teaching?
• How does college debt affect future life choices of students?
• Should graduate students be able to form unions?

• What are different ways to lower gun-related deaths in the US?
• How and why have divorce rates changed over time?
• Is affirmative action still necessary in education and/or the workplace?
• Should physician-assisted suicide be legal?
• How has stem cell research impacted the medical field?
• How can human trafficking be reduced in the United States/world?
• Should people be able to donate organs in exchange for money?
• Which types of juvenile punishment have proven most effective at preventing future crimes?
• Has the increase in US airport security made passengers safer?
• Analyze the immigration policies of certain countries and how they are similar and different from one another.
• Several states have legalized recreational marijuana. What positive and negative impacts have they experienced as a result?
• Do tariffs increase the number of domestic jobs?
• Which prison reforms have proven most effective?
• Should governments be able to censor certain information on the internet?
• Which methods/programs have been most effective at reducing teen pregnancy?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Keto diet?
• How effective are different exercise regimes for losing weight and maintaining weight loss?
• How do the healthcare plans of various countries differ from each other?
• What are the most effective ways to treat depression ?
• What are the pros and cons of genetically modified foods?
• Which methods are most effective for improving memory?
• What can be done to lower healthcare costs in the US?
• What factors contributed to the current opioid crisis?
• Analyze the history and impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic .
• Are low-carbohydrate or low-fat diets more effective for weight loss?
• How much exercise should the average adult be getting each week?
• Which methods are most effective to get parents to vaccinate their children?
• What are the pros and cons of clean needle programs?
• How does stress affect the body?
• Discuss the history of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
• What were the causes and effects of the Salem Witch Trials?
• Who was responsible for the Iran-Contra situation?
• How has New Orleans and the government's response to natural disasters changed since Hurricane Katrina?
• What events led to the fall of the Roman Empire?
• What were the impacts of British rule in India ?
• Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary?
• What were the successes and failures of the women's suffrage movement in the United States?
• What were the causes of the Civil War?
• How did Abraham Lincoln's assassination impact the country and reconstruction after the Civil War?
• Which factors contributed to the colonies winning the American Revolution?
• What caused Hitler's rise to power?
• Discuss how a specific invention impacted history.
• What led to Cleopatra's fall as ruler of Egypt?
• How has Japan changed and evolved over the centuries?
• What were the causes of the Rwandan genocide ?

• Why did Martin Luther decide to split with the Catholic Church?
• Analyze the history and impact of a well-known cult (Jonestown, Manson family, etc.)
• How did the sexual abuse scandal impact how people view the Catholic Church?
• How has the Catholic church's power changed over the past decades/centuries?
• What are the causes behind the rise in atheism/ agnosticism in the United States?
• What were the influences in Siddhartha's life resulted in him becoming the Buddha?
• How has media portrayal of Islam/Muslims changed since September 11th?

Science/Environment

• How has the earth's climate changed in the past few decades?
• How has the use and elimination of DDT affected bird populations in the US?
• Analyze how the number and severity of natural disasters have increased in the past few decades.
• Analyze deforestation rates in a certain area or globally over a period of time.
• How have past oil spills changed regulations and cleanup methods?
• How has the Flint water crisis changed water regulation safety?
• What are the pros and cons of fracking?
• What impact has the Paris Climate Agreement had so far?
• What have NASA's biggest successes and failures been?
• How can we improve access to clean water around the world?
• Does ecotourism actually have a positive impact on the environment?
• Should the US rely on nuclear energy more?
• What can be done to save amphibian species currently at risk of extinction?
• What impact has climate change had on coral reefs?
• How are black holes created?
• Are teens who spend more time on social media more likely to suffer anxiety and/or depression?
• How will the loss of net neutrality affect internet users?
• Analyze the history and progress of self-driving vehicles.
• How has the use of drones changed surveillance and warfare methods?
• Has social media made people more or less connected?
• What progress has currently been made with artificial intelligence ?
• Do smartphones increase or decrease workplace productivity?
• What are the most effective ways to use technology in the classroom?
• How is Google search affecting our intelligence?
• When is the best age for a child to begin owning a smartphone?
• Has frequent texting reduced teen literacy rates?

How to Write a Great Research Paper

Even great research paper topics won't give you a great research paper if you don't hone your topic before and during the writing process. Follow these three tips to turn good research paper topics into great papers.

#1: Figure Out Your Thesis Early

Before you start writing a single word of your paper, you first need to know what your thesis will be. Your thesis is a statement that explains what you intend to prove/show in your paper. Every sentence in your research paper will relate back to your thesis, so you don't want to start writing without it!

As some examples, if you're writing a research paper on if students learn better in same-sex classrooms, your thesis might be "Research has shown that elementary-age students in same-sex classrooms score higher on standardized tests and report feeling more comfortable in the classroom."

If you're writing a paper on the causes of the Civil War, your thesis might be "While the dispute between the North and South over slavery is the most well-known cause of the Civil War, other key causes include differences in the economies of the North and South, states' rights, and territorial expansion."

#2: Back Every Statement Up With Research

Remember, this is a research paper you're writing, so you'll need to use lots of research to make your points. Every statement you give must be backed up with research, properly cited the way your teacher requested. You're allowed to include opinions of your own, but they must also be supported by the research you give.

#3: Do Your Research Before You Begin Writing

You don't want to start writing your research paper and then learn that there isn't enough research to back up the points you're making, or, even worse, that the research contradicts the points you're trying to make!

Get most of your research on your good research topics done before you begin writing. Then use the research you've collected to create a rough outline of what your paper will cover and the key points you're going to make. This will help keep your paper clear and organized, and it'll ensure you have enough research to produce a strong paper.

What's Next?

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Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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Public Speaking Tips & Speech Topics

717 Good Research Paper Topics

Jim Peterson has over 20 years experience on speech writing. He wrote over 300 free speech topic ideas and how-to guides for any kind of public speaking and speech writing assignments at My Speech Class.

Some examples of common research paper styles include:

• Argumentative Research Papers
• Persuasive Research Papers
• Education Research Papers
• Analytical Research Papers
• Informative Research Papers

Your research essay topic may also need to be related to the specific class you are taking. For example, an economics class may require a business research paper, while a class on human behavior may call for a psychology research paper.

The requirements for your paper will vary depending on whether you are in high school, college, or a postgraduate student. In high school, you may be able to choose an easy topic and cite five or six sources you found on Google or Yahoo!, but college term papers require more in-depth research from reliable sources, such as scholarly books and peer-reviewed journals.

Do you need some help with brainstorming for topics? Some common research paper topics include abortion, birth control, child abuse, gun control, history, climate change, social media, AI, global warming, health, science, and technology. 

But we have many more!

On this page, we have hundreds of good research paper topics across a wide range of subject fields. Each of these topics could be used “as is” to write your paper, or as a starting point to develop your own topic ideas.

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How to Choose Your Research Paper Topic

The first step to developing an interesting research paper is choosing a good topic. Finding a topic can be difficult, especially if you don’t know where to start. Finding the Right Research Paper Topic

If you are in a class that allows you to choose your own term paper topic, there are some important areas to consider before you begin your project:

Your Level of Interest: Research papers are time-consuming; you will be spending countless hours researching the topic and related topics, developing several primary and secondary sources, and putting everything together into a paper that is coherent and accomplishes your objectives. If you do not choose a topic you are passionate about, the process will be far more tedious, and the finished product may suffer as a result.

Your Level of Experience: Being interested in a topic is great, but it is even more helpful if you already know something about it. If you can find a topic that you already have some personal and/or professional experience with, it will vastly reduce the amount of research needed and make the whole process much easier.

Available Information on the Topic: Be sure to choose a topic that is not only interesting but also one that has numerous sources available from which to compile your research. A researchable topic with several potential sources gives you access to the level of information you need to become an authority on the subject.

Your Audience: An interesting topic to you may not necessarily be interesting to your professor or whoever is grading your research paper. Before you begin, consider the level of interest of the person(s) who will be reading it. If you are writing a persuasive or argumentative essay, also consider their point of view on the subject matter.

As you begin researching your topic, you may want to revise your thesis statement based on new information you have learned. This is perfectly fine, just have fun and pursue the truth, wherever it leads. If you find that you are not having fun during the research phase, you may want to reconsider the topic you have chosen.

The process of writing the research paper is going to be very time consuming so it’s important to select a topic that is going to sustain your interest for the duration of the project. It is good to select a topic that is relevant to your life since you are going to spend a long time researching and writing about it. Perhaps you are considering starting your own business or pursuing a career in politics. Look through the suggested research paper topics and find one in a category that you can relate to easily. Finding a topic that you have some personal interest in will help make the arduous task a lot easier, and the project will have better results because of your vested interest.

Our List of Research Topics and Issues

Affirmative action, health, pharmacy, medical treatments, interpersonal communication, marketing and advertising, barack obama, discrimination, bill clinton, hilary clinton, computer crimes and security, cosmetic surgery, controversial, criminal justice, donald trump, easy/simple, environment, family violence, foreign policy, gambling and lotteries, the lgbtq community, generational conflict, gun control, hate crimes, immigration, middle east, maternity/paternity leave, natural disasters, police work, population explosion, pornography, prisons and prisoners, prostitution, ronald reagan, student loan debt, teen issues, women, mothers, what, why, and how, relationships.

We compiled an exhaustive list of topics that would make excellent research papers. The topics are specifically organized to help you find one that will work for your project. Broad topics are headed, and then below them are narrowed topics, all to help you find an area to focus on. The way we have organized the topics for research papers can save you lots of time getting prepared to write your research paper.

We have topics that fit into categories that cover such areas as education, environmental sciences, communication and languages, current events, politics, business, criminal justice, art, psychology, economics to name just a few. Simply get started by choosing the category that interests you and peruse through the topics listed in that category and you’ll be well on your way to constructing an excellent research paper.

Be sure to check other topics ideas: persuasive speech topics , argumentative speech topics , policy speech topics . We also have some sample outlines and essay templates .

• What limits are responsible?
• What limits are realistic?
• How to protect abortion doctors, pregnant women, and the protection of abortion clinics vs. the right to protest
• Partial birth abortion
• Scientific evidence vs. definition of viability
• Stem cell research
• Unborn victims of violence
• Relative equality has been achieved vs. serious inequities continue
• Can racial balance in business, education, and the military be achieved without policies that promote Affirmative Action
• Reverse discrimination
• NOW, National Organization for Women
• No government support vs. fairness to parents who pay twice for education
• Separation of church and state vs. religion’s contribution to the public good
• Placement by age vs. placement by academic ability
• Mainstreaming students with disabilities vs. special classrooms for their special needs
• Required standardized tests for advancement vs. course requirements only
• National standardized tests vs. local control of education
• Discrimination in education
• Multicultural/bilingual education vs. traditional basics
• Teacher competency tests vs. degree requirements only
• Teacher’s needs/demands vs. teaching as a service profession
• Policing schools
• School’s responsibility vs. parental responsibility for school violence
• Drug and alcohol abuse, pregnancy, suicide
• Zero tolerance toward violence vs. toughness with flexibility
• Permit corporal punishment
• Exams often do little more than measure a person’s ability to take exams. Should exams be outlawed in favor of another form of assessment?
• Should teens in the U.S. adopt the British custom of taking a “gap year” between high school and college?
• In some European schools, fewer than 10% of students get “As”. Is there grade inflation in the U.S.? Why so many “As” for Americans?
• Education and funding
• Grade inflation
• No Child Left Behind Act: Is it working?
• Home schooling
• Standardized tests
• Are children smarter (or more socialized) because of the Internet?
• Should the federal government be allowed to regulate information on the internet?
• How has the music industry been affected by the internet and digital downloading?
• How does a search engine work?
• What are the effects of prolonged steroid use on the human body?
• What are the benefits and hazards of medical marijuana?
• How does tobacco use affect the human body?
• Do the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks?
• What are some common sleep disorders and how are they treated?
• What are the risks of artificial tanning or prolonged exposure to the sun?
• Should thin people have to pay Medicare and other health costs for the health problems of obese people? Should obese people have higher premiums?
• Low carbohydrate vs. low fat diets
• Benefits of weight training vs. aerobics
• How much weekly exercise is needed to achieve lasting health benefits
• Health websites give too much information
• Psychological disorders, such as cutting and self-harm, eating disorders, Autism, Tourette Syndrome, ADHD, ADD, Asperger Syndrome
• Are we taking it too far by blaming fast food restaurants for obesity? When is it individual responsibility and when is it appropriate to place blame?
• Should companies allow employees to exercise on work time?
• Steroids, Antibiotics, Sprays; Are food manufacturers killing us?
• Alternative medicine
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Causes of eating disorders, society’s portrayal of women
• Eating disorders statistics
• Down’s syndrome
• Birth control
• Dietary supplements
• Exercise and fitness
• Heart disease
• In vitro fertilization
• Attention deficit disorder
• Investigate the history and authenticity of ADHD and ADD.
• Organic foods
• Prescription drugs
• Vegetarianism
• Learning disabilities
• Schizophrenia
• Coma recovery: techniques, successes, new strategies.
• What are the primary types of cancer, and in what ways are they related?
• Investigate the success ratio of holistic and non-medical cancer treatments.
• Is Alzheimer’s inevitable? Examine theories regarding its prevention.
• What forms of physical degeneracy are seen as linked to aging?
• Investigate the connections between emotional stability and physical well-being, and provide evidence as to how the two may be related.
• Investigate differences in rates of injury recovery and overcoming illness based on cultural parameters.
• Examine the modern history of viral epidemics, researching what is known about the emergence of deadly viruses.
• Examine how congenital heart disease may be treated, and how it differs from other forms of heart disease.
• Is occasional depression a natural state to an extent, and is society too eager to treat this as a disorder?
• Investigate Sociopathy, determine biological and psychological roots, typical patterns, and potentials of treatment.
• How are compulsive behaviors determined as such? Explore examples of anal retention and expulsion, OCD, etc., as offering accepted criteria.
• Research and analyze the nature of codependency as both a normal state of relations and as an unhealthy extreme.
• Investigate the history and practice of electroshock, analyzing how and why this extreme treatment came to be widely used.
• Hoarding: symptoms and treatments, causes, types of hoarding
• Limits on extraordinary, costly treatments vs. doing everything possible
• Nutritional/alternative therapy vs. mainstream medical treatment insurance coverage for alternative treatment?
• Government grants for alternative treatment research?
• Health superiority of alternative treatments?
• Assisted suicide vs. preservation of life
• Governmental insurance requirements
• Should there be a national database to track controlled substances (i.e., OXYCODONE) or should it be a state issue?
• Should parents avoid vaccinating their children?
• Decline of communication due to technology
• Online social networks and their influence
• Impact of texting and cell phones
• How do men and women communicate differently using body language, and why does it matter (in dating, the workplace, and social circles)?
• Limitations of the media
• Marketing to children
• Sexual innuendos in marketing
• Global marketing trends
• Should certain kinds of ads be banned in the interest of health/morality/annoyance – alcohol, cigarettes, prescription meds, etc…?
• Children’s programming and advertising
• Most controversial political ads
• Media response and public outcry to political ads
• Campaign funds and their relation to political advertising
• Domestic policy
• Separation of church and state
• Judge nominations and make up of supreme court
• Congressional opposition to presidential nominees/filibusters
• Affirmative action
• Erosion of civil liberties vs. protection against terrorism
• Patriot Act One and Two
• Most developed nations have universal health coverage. Why doesn’t the U.S., the wealthiest nation, have it?
• Tax cut as economic stimulation
• Needs of the states vs. needs of the individuals
• Budget deficits and deficit spending
• Rich vs. poor
• Protection of victims vs. freedom of speech/rights of the accused
• How to improve race relations
• Women still earn only 75 cents for every $1 a man earns. Explain why.
• Discrimination in the workplace: analyzing issues for today’s corporations.
• Gender discrimination
• Interracial marriage
• Should government impose restrictions on what kinds of foods can be served in school cafeterias?
• Pros and cons of school uniforms.
• Do children learn better in boys-only and girls-only schools?
• Charter schools
• Prayer in schools
• Rights of the individual vs. community safety (or campus safety)
• Funding for research
• U.S. obligation to third world countries
• Manufacturing of generic drugs vs. U.S. pharmaceutical companies
• How contagious diseases “jump” from animal hosts to human
• What treatments are available to people infected with HIV and are they effective?
• Right to privacy of a child with AIDS vs. safety of other children
• Limits for campus safety vs. personal freedom
• Implications on violence and crime
• Issues with binge drinking
• Should the U.S. lower the drinking age to 18?
• Leniency because of condition vs. community safety
• Revoking drivers license vs. being able to attend classes and work
• Age discrimination of violators
• Animal rights vs. medical research
• Should it be illegal to use animals for sports and entertainment?
• Humane treatment of animals vs. factory farms
• Animal welfare in slaughter houses
• Animal protection vs. business, employment interests
• School prestige vs. academic standards
• Should shoe companies be able to give away free shoes and equipment to high school athletes?
• Should college athletes be paid?
• Doping in sports
• What are the effects on children whose parents push them in sports?
• Steroids: Should they be legalized?
• Title IX: Has it helped women’s sports? Has it harmed men’s sports?
• Social effects of team sports
• Needed in public school library/curriculum?
• Needed in entertainment industry?
• Needed on the Internet?
• Should parents censor textbooks and other literature for children in schools?
• Parental filters on the Internet. Does censorship actually increase curiosity and use of pornography?
• How is internet censorship used in China and around the world?
• How has United States censorship changed over the decades?
• Democratic kingmaker, influence on political succession
• Impact of global initiative
• Influence on fundraising
• Influence as Secretary of State
• Foreign policies
• Influence on women
• ACT or SAT score requirements
• Promotional techniques, such as 1st time scholarships
• 4 year vs. 2 year colleges
• College admission policies
• College tuition planning
• Distance education
• Diploma mills
• Online porn vs. freedom of speech
• Stalking, invasion of privacy vs. reasonable access
• Hacking crimes–workable solutions?
• What are the latest ways to steal identity and money?
• From where does spam email come and can we stop it?
• How do computer viruses spread and in what ways do they affect computers?
• Cyber security
• Securing Internet commerce: is it possible in today’s arms’ race of hackers and evolving technology?
• Is downloading of media (music, videos, software) infringing on the rights of media producers and causing economic hardships on media creators?
• Should media producers prosecute students and individuals that they suspect of downloading copyrighted materials?
• Programs such as SPOTIFY and PANDORA
• Copyright Law
• Age limitations on surgery
• Addiction to surgery
• Demand for beauty by society
• The dangers of breast implants for teenagers
• The cost of cosmetic surgery
• Plastic surgery
• Weight loss surgery
• Are surgeons “scissor happy,” and are surgeries widely unnecessarily
• Negative texting, instant messaging, email
• Is cyber-bullying as bad as face-to-face?
• Kinds of punishment for cyber-bullying
• Media response
• Should the state or federal government put laws into place to prevent bullying?
• Is homosexuality a choice, or are people born gay?
• Evolution vs. Creationism.
• Should “under God” remain in the Pledge of Allegiance?
• Is healthcare a right or a privilege?
• Fossil fuels vs. alternative energy.
• Transgender bathroom policies.
• Capitalism vs. socialism.
• Should parents be allowed to spank their children?
• Should sanctuary cities lose their federal funding?
• The pros and cons of gun control.
• Should the U.S. continue drone strikes in foreign countries?
• Was the U.S. justified in going to war with Iraq?
• How to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• The pros and cons of animal testing.
• Do pro athletes have the right to sit during the national anthem?
• Incarceration rates in the U.S.
• Technology and the criminal justice system.
• Police brutality and minorities.
• Should the police wear body cameras?
• In what circumstances should the death penalty be allowed?
• Should we have stiffer penalties for drunk driving?
• Should those who text while driving be put in jail?
• White-collar crime and punishment.
• Criminalizing protests and activism.
• The rise of wrongful convictions.
• Mutual consent vs. exploitation
• Campuses with “no touch” policy
• Drugs associated to Date Rape
• Violence and Rape
• Government support vs. parental financing
• Benefits vs. harmful effects
• Trump’s unconventional presidential campaign.
• The psychology of Donald Trump.
• Who is behind Trump’s political rise?
• Donald Trump and evangelical voters.
• Donald Trump the businessman.
• Trump’s war on the press (aka “fake news”).
• The Trump Organization and conflicts of interest.
• The border wall and illegal immigration policy.
• Global warming and climate change policy.
• Trump-Russia collusion.
• The rapid rise of “The Resistance.”
• Trump’s legislative agenda; e.g., health care, tax policy, deregulation, etc.
• Trump’s “America First” trade and foreign policy.
• The case for (or against) the Trump presidency.
• Punishment vs. treatment
• Family reactions
• Social acceptance
• Community safety vs. legalization
• United States military involvement in Colombian drug trade?
• Drug legalization
• Abstinence Program: Do they work?
• Should the federal government legalize the use of marijuana?
• What is the true key to happiness?
• What is the cause of America’s obesity crisis?
• Why sleep is necessary.
• Are plastic bottles really bad for you?
• How to encourage people to recycle more.
• How 3D printers benefit everyone.
• How do GPS systems on smartphones work?
• How have oil spills impacted the environment?
• Verbal vs. nonverbal communication.
• The accuracy of lie detector tests.
• How Bill Gates and Steve Jobs changed the world.
• The pros and cons of hitchhiking.
• The PC vs. the Mac.
• What causes tornadoes?
• Pollution, air, and water
• Endangered species
• What are the risks of climate change and global warming?
• Rain forests
• Alternative energy
• Alternative fuel/hybrid vehicles
• Conservation
• Deforestation
• Greenhouse effect
• Marine pollution
• How have oil spills affected the planet and what steps are being taken to prevent them?
• Sustainability of buildings
• Recycling programs
• Cost of “green” programs
• Wind turbines
• Landfill issues
• Renewable fuels
• Radioactive waste disposal
• Soil pollution
• Wildlife conservation: what efforts are being taken to protect endangered wildlife?
• Excessive burden on industries?
• Drilling for oil in Alaska’s ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge)
• Gasoline consumption vs. SUV’s popularity
• Wildlife protection vs. rights of developers
• Clean air and water standards–weakened vs. strengthened
• What are the dangers of scuba diving and underwater exploration?
• Should the use of coal be subjected to stricter environmental regulations than other fuels?
• Is global warming a hoax? Is it being exaggerated?
• How much is too much noise? What, if anything, should we do to curb it?
• Protecting victims vs. rights of the accused
• Women who kill abusive husbands vs. punishment for murder
• Marital rape?
• How to protect children vs. respect for parental rights
• Children who kill abusive parents
• Child abuse–workable solutions?
• Child abuse
• Domestic abuse
• Organic farming vs. mainline use of chemical sprays
• How to best protect the environment; conservation
• Family vs. corporate farms
• Food production costs
• Interventionism?
• Third world debt and World Bank/International Monetary Fund
• Military support vs. economic development of third world countries
• Human rights violations
• European Union in competition with the U.S.
• Unilateralism
• Relevance of the United Nations
• Neocon role in foreign policy
• Christian right influence on foreign policy
• Pentagon vs. State Department
• Nation building as a policy
• Arms control
• Obama’s National Strategy for Counterterrorism
• Control of al Qaeda
• Drawdown of U.S. Armed Forces in the Middle East
• Cats vs. dogs: which makes the better pet?
• My pet can live forever: why I love animal clones.
• According to my social media profile, my life is perfect.
• Football vs. baseball: which sport is America’s favorite pastime?
• Starbucks vs. Caribou: whose coffee is better?
• What does your dog really think of you?
• Why millennials deserve lower pay.
• What makes people end up with so many mismatched socks?
• How to become a research paper master.
• How reading Tuesdays with Morrie can make you wiser.
• Easy way to earn revenues vs. social damage
• Individual freedom vs. social damage
• Do lotteries actually benefit education or is it a scam?
• Can gamblers ever acquire a statistical advantage over the house in casino games?
• Should there be a constitutional amendment that allows gays and lesbians to legally marry?
• Adoption rights?
• Need special rights for protection?
• College campus response
• Gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender
• Gay parenting
• Elderly to share in the tax burden vs. government support of elderly
• Future of social security
• Job discrimination
• Child rearing
• Employment issues
• Generational differences
• Community and police safety vs. unrestricted right to bear arms
• NRA (National Rifle Association)
• 2nd Amendment
• Do states that allow citizens to carry guns have higher or lower crime rates?
• Community safety vs. freedom of Speech
• Punishment inequities
• Persecution of alternative lifestyles
• Church Arson: Hate crime?
• Prevention of hazing
• Greek organizations and rituals of hazing
• Statistics of death or injury due to Hazing
• High Schools and Hazing
• What happened during the Salem witch trials?
• How did trains and railroads change life in America?
• What may have occurred during the Roswell UFO incident of 1947?
• What Olympic events were practiced in ancient Greece?
• How did Cleopatra come to power in Egypt? What did she accomplish during her reign?
• What are the origins of the conflict in Darfur?
• What was the women’s suffrage movement and how did it change America?
• How was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln plotted and executed?
• How did Cold War tension affect the US and the world?
• What happened to the lost settlers at Roanoke?
• How did Julius Caesar affect Rome?
• How did the Freedom Riders change society?
• What was the code of the Bushido and how did it affect samurai warriors?
• How did Joan of Arc change history?
• What dangers and hardships did Lewis and Clark face when exploring the Midwest?
• How are the Great Depression and the Great Recession similar and different?
• What was the Manhattan Project and what impact did it have on the world?
• Why did Marin Luther protest against the Catholic Church?
• How did the Roman Empire fall?
• How did the black plague affect Europe?
• How did Genghis Khan conquer Persia?
• How did journalists influence US war efforts in Vietnam?
• Who is Vlad the Impaler and what is his connection to Count Dracula?
• Who was a greater inventor, Leonardo di Vinci or Thomas Edison?
• What was the role of African Americans during the Revolutionary War?
• What was Britain’s view of India during British rule?
• What were the factors in the China-Tibet conflict?
• Research and analyze the emergence of the Catholic Church as a political force following the collapse of the Roman Empire.
• Investigate Dr. Eileen Powers’ claim that the Roman Empire was lost primarily due to an inability to perceive itself as subject to the change inevitable to all governments, or her “force of nature” theory.
• Explore and discuss the actual cooperation occurring through the centuries of Barbarian conquest of Rome.
• Examine the differences and similarities between Western and Eastern concepts and practices of kingship.
• Investigate and explain the trajectory of ALEXANDER THE GREAT’s empire, with minimal emphasis on personal leadership.
• To what extent did commerce first link Eastern and Western cultures, and how did this influence early international relations?
• Research and analyze how Japan moved from a feudalistic to a modern state, and how geographic isolation played a role in the process.
• Analyze the process and effects of Romanization on the Celtic people of ancient England: benefits, conflicts, influences.
• Overview of British dominance of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland! How was this justified in each case, and what motivated the attempts over centuries of rebellion and failure?
• Investigate the known consequences of Guttenberg’s printing press within the first 30 years of its invention, and only in regard to the interaction between European nations.
• Identify and analyze the point at which the Reformation became fused with European politics and nationalist agendas.
• To what extent did Henry VIII promote the Reformation, despite his vigorous persecution of heretics in England?
• Trace and discuss the uses of papal power as a military and political device in the 14th and 15th centuries.
• Research the city/state of Florence from the 13th to the 16th centuries, discussing how and why it evolved as so fiercely republican.
• Compare and contrast the Russian Czarism of Peter, Elizabeth, and Catherine with the monarchies of England and France in the 18th and 19th centuries.
• Investigate the enormous significance of Catholic Orthodoxy as the dominant faith in Russia, and its meaning and influence in an empire populated by a minimal aristocracy and predominant serfdom.
• To what extent did Philip II’s religious convictions shape European policy and conflict in the 16th century?
• Trace the path leading to the convocation of the Estates in France in the late 18th century, leading to the Revolution. Assess political and social errors responsible.
• What eventually ended serfdom in Russia, and why were numerous attempts to end it by the Czars in power consistently unsuccessful?
• Research and report on how England was transformed in the 19th century by the industrial revolution and the advent of the railroad.
• Compare and contrast the consequences of the industrial revolutions in England and America in terms of urbanization.
• What were the circumstances leading to World War I, and how might the war have been averted?
• Assess the Cold War of the 20th century in an historical context: can any parallels be made between this conflict and other ongoing tensions between major powers in earlier centuries?
• Analyze Roosevelt’s decisions in implementing the New Deal, beginning with the closing of the banks. Suggest alternative strategies, or reinforce the rationale of the actions.
• What architectural marvels were found in Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire?
• What was the cultural significance of the first moon landing?
• Food programs
• Welfare reform
• Governmental supplementation
• Homeless: urban restrictions vs. needs of the destitute
• Workable solutions?
• Realistic limits vs. openness toward people in need
• English as official language vs. respect for diversity
• Should illegal immigrants be made legal citizens?
• Access to public school and public programs for Illegal Aliens
• Policing borders–workable solutions?
• Employment and/or taxation for Illegal Aliens
• International trade
• Democratization
• “Shock and awe”
• U.S. occupation vs. liberation
• Iraqi run vs. U.S. puppet state
• Oil and Gas prices-Control of resources
• Effective self-government
• War on Terrorism
• Is America winning or losing the War? What is the measurement of success? Have the benefits outweighed the costs?
• Parental leave for both parents
• FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act)
• Bonding time
• Preemptive strike policy
• Precision weapons
• Intelligence reliability
• Afghanistan – a success or stalemate
• Should the U.S. have mandatory military conscriptions? For whom?
• Governmental support
• Preparedness
• School emergency plans
• Community warning systems
• Damage costs
• U.S. presidential elections should be decided by the popular vote, rather than the Electoral College.
• The minimum wage should be increased to provide a “livable” wage for working families.
• There should be stiffer penalties for those who commit animal cruelty.
• School vouchers increase competition and create better quality schools.
• The corporate tax rate should be lowered to create more jobs.
• Social Security should be privatized.
• Human torture should be banned in all circumstances.
• Affirmative action is still needed to ensure racial and gender equality.
• The U.S. dollar should go back on the gold standard.
• Euthanasia and assisted suicide should be outlawed.
• Police brutality vs. dangers that police face
• Racially motivated brutality?
• Politician’s right to privacy vs. the public’s right to know
• Amount of money going into presidential campaigns
• Views on abortion, gay marriage, and other controversial topics
• Political debates throughout history
• Third-party candidates at presidential debates
• Rights of religious citizens vs. freedom from imposition (e.g. prayer in schools)
• Religious motivation for political involvement vs. cultural pluralism
• Christian Right’s influence on foreign policy
• How serious? Causes? Workable solutions?
• Funding abortion as a form of birth control in third world countries?
• What would happen globally if the demand for natural resources is greater than the supply?
• Limitation of social deterioration vs. freedom of speech
• Definition of Pornography
• Child Pornography
• Building prisons vs. alternative sentencing
• Adjusted sentencing for lesser crimes
• Community service
• Diversion Programs for inmates
• How does the prison population in America compare to other nations?
• Prostitution laws in the US and abroad
• Benefits and drawbacks to legalizing prostitution
• Psychological effect on prostitutes and former prostitutes
• Sex slavery, buying and selling
• Should the government be allowed to wire tap without permission?
• What limitations, if any, should be applied to the paparazzi?
• What medical information should be confidential? Who, if anybody, should have access to medical records?
• Does the public have a right to know about a public figure’s private life?
• Privacy rights
• Do harsher punishments mean fewer convictions?
• Date rape: consent vs. exploitation
• Drugs-Rohypnol, GHB, KETAMINE
• Legalization of Date Rape Drugs
• Recently, a 17-year-old boy was sentenced to 10 years in prison for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl. Are statutory rape laws patronizing to girls and discriminatory to boys?
• Acquaintance rape
• Is there one true religion?
• Freedom of religion
• Offer distinct reasons why the Bible should be studied as literature, removed from religious significance.
• From Hollywood to the White House: the political rise of Ronald Reagan.
• The Great Communicator: how Reagan captured the hearts of Americans.
• 1981 assassination attempt: bullet wound leaves Reagan inches away from death.
• Reagan appoints the first female Supreme Court justice.
• The PATCO breakup and decline of the labor unions.
• Tax cuts and “Reaganomics.”
• The “Iran-Contra” scandal.
• Reagan, Gorbachev, and the end of the Cold War.
• The final act: Reagan’s Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis and long goodbye.
• How has airport security intensified since September 11th, 2001?
• Identity theft
• Homeland Security: Are we safer since the creation of this department?
• Should the government use invasive pat-downs and body scans to ensure passenger safety or are there better methods?
• Is arming Pilots a good idea?
• What responsibilities do secret service agents have?
• Student loan scams
• How to avoid student loan debt
• Managing student loan debt
• Driverless cars and the future of transportation.
• Breaking the glass ceiling: the impact of the women’s rights movement.
• How seniors contribute to societal well-being.
• How disabled individuals are viewed by society.
• The modern-day civil rights movement.
• Has technology made us more detached from society?
• The role of religion in society.
• In today’s society, are we better off or worse off than previous generations?
• Popular music and its impact on the culture.
• Class and geographical segregation.
• The differences between life in the city, suburbs, and/or rural areas.
• Should parents be able to create designer babies?
• Should microchips be implanted inside humans for better tracking and security?
• Will smart watches eventually replace cell phones?
• The pros and cons of being a global citizen.
• Progressive vs. flat tax
• Excessive taxes vs. worthwhile programs
• Is text messaging contributing to teen illiteracy?
• How eating disorders impact teens.
• Tablets vs. textbooks.
• Do standardized tests improve teen education?
• Are violent video games contributing to juvenile delinquency?
• Is English literature relevant for today’s teens?
• Should the HPV vaccine be required for teen girls?
• Do teachers inflate grades so students can pass?
• Should advertisers be allowed to target teens?
• How to encourage teens to stop smoking.
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• How to prevent teen pregnancy.
• Osama Bin Laden
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• Al Qaida: Has U.S. policy actually spread terrorism rather than contained it? Will it get better or worse? Why and how?
• Can terrorism ever be justified?
• What kind of person becomes a suicide bomber?
• What were the circumstances surrounding the death of Osama Bin Laden?
• Has the Patriot Act prevented or stopped terrorist acts in America?
• How is text messaging affecting teen literacy?
• Cell Phones: How have they changed us socially?
• Does the Information Age mean we are losing important historical information?
• Where did hip-hop music originate?
• A day in the life of a Buddhist monk.
• How does the brain store and retrieve memories?
• What life is like inside an ant colony.
• The case for and against the existence of UFOs.
• Can virtual reality adequately substitute for actual reality?
• Are dreams hidden messages or just hot air?
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• The art of pretending to care.
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• Investigate the psychological process in group dynamics with regard to the emergence of leaders and the compliance of others.
• Compare and contrast Jung, Freud, and Adler: explore distinctions and commonalities.
• What is “normal,” and to what extent is psychology reliant on culture to define this?
• Research and assess the effectiveness of radical psychotherapies and unconventional treatments.
• Research the concept of human will as both a component of individual psychology and a process or element removed from it.
• To what extent is self-image influenced by culture in regard to eating disorders? Are external factors entirely to blame?
• How do centuries-old beliefs of madness and dementia relate to modern conceptions of mental illness?
• Is psychology itself inevitably a non-science in that virtually any theory may be substantiated, or is there a foundation of science to the subject to which all theorists must conform?
• Examine Euripides and gender psychology: what do the Trojan Women and Medea reveal?
• Using three characters, explore Chaucer’s insight into human behavior in The Canterbury Tales.
• Identify the true relationship between Dante and Virgil in The Divine Comedy, emphasizing Dante’s reliance on the poet.
• Research and discuss the English fascination for euphemism and ornate narratives in the 16th century, beginning with John Lyly.
• Examine any existing controversies regarding Shakespearean authorship, citing arguments on both sides.
• Analyze similarities and differences between Marlowe and Shakespeare in regard to Tamburlaine and Titus Andronicus.
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• To what degree are Shakespeare’s plays influenced by, or reflective, of the Elizabethan era? Identify specific cultural and national events linked to at least 3 plays.
• Analyze the unusual construction of A Winter’s Tale in regard to transition from comedy to drama. Is this valid? Does the transition benefit or harm the play?
• Support the belief that Shakespeare is representing himself as Prospero through evidence, or similarly refute the belief.
• Why was extreme violence so popular in English Reformation drama? Cite Marlowe, Kyd, Webster, and Shakespeare.
• Analyze the metaphysical in Donne’s poetry: is it spiritual, existential, or both?
• What is Shelley seeking to say in Frankenstein? Support your answer with passages from the novel.
• Compare and contrast Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina with Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, noting the characters of the heroines.
• It is argued that Dickens failed when he turned to serious, romantic narrative in his novels. Using Copperfield, Great Expectations, and Dombey and Son, defend or refute this claim.
• Assess Dickens’ stance as a moralist in Bleak House and Hard Times: to what extent does he seek reform, and to what does he comment on the human condition?
• Was the Harry Potter phenomenon warranted by quality of storytelling or more a matter of public receptivity at the time combined with media exposure?

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20 thoughts on “717 Good Research Paper Topics”

How has music evolved? How has music effected history? Music of the past vs music of the present. How has the music industry effected the music’s quality?

Do you think abortion is legal? Why they do abortion?

Why are people instinctively afraid of animals that are not mammals?

Should abortion be legalized? Should domestic abuse and child abuse victims be granted clemency for killing their abuser?

Jewish holocaust and its contribution to European History, specifically Germany

What is the most popular college in the United States?

The Black Knight: Space Waste or Alien Satellite? The Moon Landing: Real or Hollywood Hoax? Have We Become Too Politically Correct? Paranormal Research: Real? Fake? Should it be offered in college? Who really was Jack the Ripper? Can a zombie apocalypse truly occur? Who is the best or worst president of the USA? The Men in Black: real or hoax?

Why Marching Band is a sport.

Marching band is not a sport

how did aids start?

Topic : Alternative medicine Research question : Does the alternative medicine is safe and standardized Hypothesis : analyse the quality controle of alternative medicine formulations

Does our nostalgic music/childhood songs affect our present lifestyle, and in what ways?

reverse discriminations is still discrimination so there’s no such thing as that. like reverse racism isn’t a thing because that is still racism

Men on birth control and not women.

You forget the topic Islamophobia 😉

You should add a music section. Is Muzio Clementi overshadowed by Mozart? The Toccata and Fugue in D- really wasn’t written by Bach The use of the “Dies Irae” in cinema Why is modern music so repetitive and simple compared to classical music?

I want to do a research project on Education

I want to research but not get a perfect topic help me give me a best topic about current affairs

Topic: History. Are the Crusades oversimplified? where they justified? If so, how? Topic: Current affairs. Is the term “conspiracy theory” used to discredit any non-mainstream, controversial opinions. Topic: Gun control. Does limiting magazine capacity for firearms have any effect on gun crime? Are high-capacity magazines ever necessary for self-defense? Topic: Economics. Are minimum wage laws necessary to guarantee “decent”, or do the laws of supply and demand automatically ensure that?

Are women funny?

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What does the ‘common good’ actually mean? Our research found common ground across the political divide

Monday, Jan 22, 2024, 07:03 PM | Source: The Conversation

Melissa A. Wheeler, Naomi Baes, Samuel Wilson, Vlad Demsar

Some topics are hard to define. They are nebulous; their meanings are elusive. Topics relating to morality fit this description. So do those that are subjective, meaning different things to different people in different contexts.

In our recently published paper , we targeted the nebulous concept of the “common good”.

Like moral issues that elicit strong arguments for and against, conceptualisations of the common good can vary according to the different needs of individuals and the different values they hold. One factor that divides people is political orientation. Those on the far left hold very different opinions on moral and social issues than those on the far right.

How can we expect people across the political spectrum to agree on a moral topic when they have such different perspectives?

If we set aside the specific moral issues and focus instead on the broader aspects of the common good as a concept, we may well find foundational principles – ideas that are shared between people, ideas that are perhaps even universal.

Folk theory

To find such underlying commonalities, we used a social psychological folk theory approach. Folk theories are non-academic or lay beliefs that comprise individuals’ informal and subjective understandings of their world.

The concept of the common good bleeds into cultural perceptions and worldviews. The currency of such ideas influences how we think and what we talk about with other people. By asking people to write about or define elusive concepts, social psychologists can search for frequently expressed words and phrases and derive a shared cultural understanding from the collection of individual texts.

We asked 14,303 people who participated in a larger study for the Australian Leadership Index to provide a definition of the common good, also sometimes called the greater good or the public good.

The sample was nationally representative, meaning it reflected the demographics of the Australian population at the time the data was collected. We then used a linguistic analysis tool, called the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program, to analyse the responses.

The program has a new function called the Meaning Extraction Method , which processes large bodies of text to identify prevalent themes or concepts by analysing words that frequently occur in close proximity.

Using this method, we explored Australians’ definitions of the common good. From the word clusters derived from this analysis, we identified nine main themes:

outcomes that are in the best interest of the majority

decisions and actions that benefit the majority

that which is in the best interest of the general public

that which serves the general national population rather than individual interests

that which serves the majority rather than minority interests

that which serves group rather than individual interests

that which serves citizens’ interests

concern for and doing the right thing for all people

moral principles required to achieve the common good

Interestingly, these broad themes did not differ for the most part between right-leaning and left-leaning participants, meaning they were shared by liberals and conservatives alike. There is indeed common ground in people’s understanding of the common good.

Read more: Do universal values exist? A philosopher says yes, and takes aim at identity politics – but not all of his arguments are convincing

A working definition

These nine themes thus reflect a deeper conceptual structure. They can be distilled into three core aspects of the common good. These relate to outcomes, principles and stakeholders.

The first describes the objectives and outcomes associated with the common good – for example, the decisions and actions that are seen to be in the best interests of most people.

The second refers to the principles associated with the common good and the processes and practices through which the common good is realised.

The final aspect relates to the stakeholders who make up the community or communities that are entitled to the common good and its benefits.

From this we arrived at a working definition of the common good:

The common good refers to achieving the best possible outcome for the largest number of people, which is underpinned by decision-making that is ethically and morally sound and varies by the context in which the decisions are made.

In the definition above, you will detect the nine components, as well as the three broader themes.

While we identified a shared understanding of the common good, it is important to acknowledge that people may share the “big picture” of the common good, but differ when it comes to the social and moral issues they prioritise and the practical ways in which they think the common good should be achieved.

For instance, recent research suggests that people care deeply about fairness, but society is divided by how they view fairness concerns.

On one side, you have the social order perspective, which focuses on processes or how justice is achieved. On the other side, the social justice worldview is concerned with outcomes and what justice looks like as a result. Both sides share a disdain for inequality, but don’t often see eye to eye about naming or fixing societal inequality.

If the two sides were willing to start by finding their common ground, using our working definition to probe for areas of convergence first, then moving on to discuss areas of divergence with an openness to learn from each other’s strengths might become possible. Intractable conflicts could be broken down and systematically addressed. Of course, this requires a willingness from both sides to lower their defences and listen.

Community leaders will encounter challenges when they unite to advance the common good. Leaders from different industries bring different backgrounds, education and priorities to the table. In order to integrate their efforts, it becomes essential to set aside contextual (and often biased or partisan) understandings of the common good to focus on the “big picture”.

Melissa Wheeler has previously received philanthropic funding to conduct research on responsible leadership.

Naomi Baes has previously worked with the Australian Leadership Index to research responsible leadership and currently receives funding from the Australian government.

Samuel Wilson receives philanthropic funding for the Australian Leadership Index.

Vlad Demsar receives philanthropic funding to conduct research on responsible leadership.

University of Melbourne Researchers

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Writing a Research Paper

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The Research Paper

There will come a time in most students' careers when they are assigned a research paper. Such an assignment often creates a great deal of unneeded anxiety in the student, which may result in procrastination and a feeling of confusion and inadequacy. This anxiety frequently stems from the fact that many students are unfamiliar and inexperienced with this genre of writing. Never fear—inexperience and unfamiliarity are situations you can change through practice! Writing a research paper is an essential aspect of academics and should not be avoided on account of one's anxiety. In fact, the process of writing a research paper can be one of the more rewarding experiences one may encounter in academics. What is more, many students will continue to do research throughout their careers, which is one of the reasons this topic is so important.

Becoming an experienced researcher and writer in any field or discipline takes a great deal of practice. There are few individuals for whom this process comes naturally. Remember, even the most seasoned academic veterans have had to learn how to write a research paper at some point in their career. Therefore, with diligence, organization, practice, a willingness to learn (and to make mistakes!), and, perhaps most important of all, patience, students will find that they can achieve great things through their research and writing.

The pages in this section cover the following topic areas related to the process of writing a research paper:

• Genre - This section will provide an overview for understanding the difference between an analytical and argumentative research paper.
• Choosing a Topic - This section will guide the student through the process of choosing topics, whether the topic be one that is assigned or one that the student chooses themselves.
• Identifying an Audience - This section will help the student understand the often times confusing topic of audience by offering some basic guidelines for the process.
• Where Do I Begin - This section concludes the handout by offering several links to resources at Purdue, and also provides an overview of the final stages of writing a research paper.

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Article Contents

Primacy of the research question, structure of the paper, writing a research article: advice to beginners.

• Article contents
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Thomas V. Perneger, Patricia M. Hudelson, Writing a research article: advice to beginners, International Journal for Quality in Health Care , Volume 16, Issue 3, June 2004, Pages 191–192, https://doi.org/10.1093/intqhc/mzh053

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Writing research papers does not come naturally to most of us. The typical research paper is a highly codified rhetorical form [ 1 , 2 ]. Knowledge of the rules—some explicit, others implied—goes a long way toward writing a paper that will get accepted in a peer-reviewed journal.

A good research paper addresses a specific research question. The research question—or study objective or main research hypothesis—is the central organizing principle of the paper. Whatever relates to the research question belongs in the paper; the rest doesn’t. This is perhaps obvious when the paper reports on a well planned research project. However, in applied domains such as quality improvement, some papers are written based on projects that were undertaken for operational reasons, and not with the primary aim of producing new knowledge. In such cases, authors should define the main research question a posteriori and design the paper around it.

Generally, only one main research question should be addressed in a paper (secondary but related questions are allowed). If a project allows you to explore several distinct research questions, write several papers. For instance, if you measured the impact of obtaining written consent on patient satisfaction at a specialized clinic using a newly developed questionnaire, you may want to write one paper on the questionnaire development and validation, and another on the impact of the intervention. The idea is not to split results into ‘least publishable units’, a practice that is rightly decried, but rather into ‘optimally publishable units’.

What is a good research question? The key attributes are: (i) specificity; (ii) originality or novelty; and (iii) general relevance to a broad scientific community. The research question should be precise and not merely identify a general area of inquiry. It can often (but not always) be expressed in terms of a possible association between X and Y in a population Z, for example ‘we examined whether providing patients about to be discharged from the hospital with written information about their medications would improve their compliance with the treatment 1 month later’. A study does not necessarily have to break completely new ground, but it should extend previous knowledge in a useful way, or alternatively refute existing knowledge. Finally, the question should be of interest to others who work in the same scientific area. The latter requirement is more challenging for those who work in applied science than for basic scientists. While it may safely be assumed that the human genome is the same worldwide, whether the results of a local quality improvement project have wider relevance requires careful consideration and argument.

Once the research question is clearly defined, writing the paper becomes considerably easier. The paper will ask the question, then answer it. The key to successful scientific writing is getting the structure of the paper right. The basic structure of a typical research paper is the sequence of Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion (sometimes abbreviated as IMRAD). Each section addresses a different objective. The authors state: (i) the problem they intend to address—in other terms, the research question—in the Introduction; (ii) what they did to answer the question in the Methods section; (iii) what they observed in the Results section; and (iv) what they think the results mean in the Discussion.

In turn, each basic section addresses several topics, and may be divided into subsections (Table 1 ). In the Introduction, the authors should explain the rationale and background to the study. What is the research question, and why is it important to ask it? While it is neither necessary nor desirable to provide a full-blown review of the literature as a prelude to the study, it is helpful to situate the study within some larger field of enquiry. The research question should always be spelled out, and not merely left for the reader to guess.

Typical structure of a research paper

The Methods section should provide the readers with sufficient detail about the study methods to be able to reproduce the study if so desired. Thus, this section should be specific, concrete, technical, and fairly detailed. The study setting, the sampling strategy used, instruments, data collection methods, and analysis strategies should be described. In the case of qualitative research studies, it is also useful to tell the reader which research tradition the study utilizes and to link the choice of methodological strategies with the research goals [ 3 ].

The Results section is typically fairly straightforward and factual. All results that relate to the research question should be given in detail, including simple counts and percentages. Resist the temptation to demonstrate analytic ability and the richness of the dataset by providing numerous tables of non-essential results.

The Discussion section allows the most freedom. This is why the Discussion is the most difficult to write, and is often the weakest part of a paper. Structured Discussion sections have been proposed by some journal editors [ 4 ]. While strict adherence to such rules may not be necessary, following a plan such as that proposed in Table 1 may help the novice writer stay on track.

References should be used wisely. Key assertions should be referenced, as well as the methods and instruments used. However, unless the paper is a comprehensive review of a topic, there is no need to be exhaustive. Also, references to unpublished work, to documents in the grey literature (technical reports), or to any source that the reader will have difficulty finding or understanding should be avoided.

Having the structure of the paper in place is a good start. However, there are many details that have to be attended to while writing. An obvious recommendation is to read, and follow, the instructions to authors published by the journal (typically found on the journal’s website). Another concerns non-native writers of English: do have a native speaker edit the manuscript. A paper usually goes through several drafts before it is submitted. When revising a paper, it is useful to keep an eye out for the most common mistakes (Table 2 ). If you avoid all those, your paper should be in good shape.

Common mistakes seen in manuscripts submitted to this journal

Huth EJ . How to Write and Publish Papers in the Medical Sciences , 2nd edition. Baltimore, MD: Williams & Wilkins, 1990 .

Browner WS . Publishing and Presenting Clinical Research . Baltimore, MD: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins, 1999 .

Devers KJ , Frankel RM. Getting qualitative research published. Educ Health 2001 ; 14 : 109 –117.

Docherty M , Smith R. The case for structuring the discussion of scientific papers. Br Med J 1999 ; 318 : 1224 –1225.

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500 Good Research Paper Topics

Bonus Material: Essential essay checklist

Writing a research paper for a class and not sure how to start?

One of the most important steps to creating a great paper is finding a good topic! 

Here’s a hand-drafted list from a Princeton grad who has helped professors at Harvard and Yale edit their papers for publication and taught college writing at the University of Notre Dame and .

What’s more, we give you some foolproof formulas for creating your own paper topic to fit the requirements of your class.

Using these simple formulas, we’ve helped hundreds of students turn a B- paper topic into an A+ paper topic.

Keep reading for our list of 500 vetted research paper topics and our magic formulas for creating your own topic!

Of course, if you want help learning to write research papers tailored to your individual needs, check out our one-on-one writing coaching or academic writing workshop . Set up a free consultation to see how we can help you learn to write A+ papers!

Jump to paper topics in:

European & Mediterranean History

African history, asian history, history of the pre-columbian americas.

• Latin American History

History of Science

Politics & public policy, education & education policy, political theory, science policy.

• Health Sciences & Psychology

What is a research paper?

In order to write a good research paper, it’s important to know what it is! 

In general, we can divide academic writing into three broad categories:

• Analytical: analyze the tools an author uses to make their point
• Research: delve deeply into a research topic and share your findings
• Persuasive : argue a specific and nuanced position backed by evidence

What’s the difference between an analytical paper and a research paper? For an analytical paper, it’s okay to just use one or two sources (a book, poem, work of art, piece of music, etc.) and examine them in detail. For a research paper, however, the expectation is that you do, well . . . research .

The depth of research that you’re expected to do will depend on your age and the type of class you’re taking.

In elementary or middle school, a “research paper” might mean finding information from a few general books or encyclopedias in your school library. 

In high school, your teachers might expect you to start using information from academic articles and more specific books. You might use encyclopedias and general works as a starting point, but you’ll be expected to go beyond them and do more work to synthesize information from different perspectives or different types of sources. You may also be expected to do “primary research,” where you study the source material yourself, instead of synthesizing what other people have written about the source material.

In college, you’ll be required to use academic journals and scholarly books, and your professors will now expect that you be more critical of these secondary sources, noticing the methodology and perspectives of whatever articles and books you’re using. 

In more advanced college courses, you’ll be expected to do more exhaustive surveys of the existing literature on a topic. You’ll need to conduct primary research that makes an original contribution to the field—the kind that could be published in a journal article itself.

For a walkthrough of the 12 essential steps to writing a good paper, check out our step-by-step guide .

Working on a research paper? Grab our free checklist to make sure your essay has everything it needs to earn an A grade.

Get the essential essay checklist

What makes a good research paper topic?

One of the most important features of a research paper topic is that it has a clear, narrow focus. 

For example, your teacher may assign you to write a research paper related to the US Revolutionary War. Does that mean that your topic should be “the US Revolutionary War”? 

Definitely not! There’s no way to craft a good paper with in-depth research with such a broad topic. (Unless you’re in elementary or middle school, in which case it’s okay to have a more general topic for your research paper.)

Instead, you need to find a more specific topic within this broader one. There are endless ways that you can make this narrower! Some ideas generated from this one broader topic might be:

• Causes of the US Revolutionary War
• Changes in military strategy during the Revolutionary War
• The experiences of Loyalists to England who remained in the American colonies during the Revolutionary War
• How the Revolutionary War was pivotal for the career of Alexander Hamilton
• The role of alliances with France during the US Revolutionary War
• The experiences of people of color during the Revolutionary War
• How George Washington’s previous military career paved the way for his leadership in the Revolutionary War
• The main types of weaponry during the Revolutionary War
• Changes in clothing and fashion over the courses of the Revolutionary War
• How Valley Forge was a key moment in the Revolutionary War
• How women contributed to the Revolutionary War
• What happened in Amherst, Massachusetts during the Revolutionary War
• Field medicine during the Revolutionary War
• How the Battle of Saratoga was a turning point in the Revolutionary War
• How different opinions about the Revolutionary War were reflected in poetry written during that time
• Debates over abolition during the Revolutionary War
• The importance of supply chains during the Revolutionary War
• Reactions to the US Revolutionary war in Europe
• How the US Revolutionary war impacted political theory in England and France
• Similarities and differences between the US Revolutionary War and the French Revolution
• Famous paintings inspired by the US Revolutionary War
• Different ways that the US Revolutionary War has been depicted in modern contemporary culture
• The appropriation of the “Boston Tea Party” by US politicians in the 2010s

This list could go on forever!

In fact, any of these topics could become even more specific. For example, check out the evolution of this topic:

• Economic causes of the Revolutionary war
• The way that tax policies helped lead to the Revolutionary War
• How tax laws enacted 1763–1775 helped lead to the Revolutionary War
• How the tax-free status of the British East India Company helped lead to the Revolutionary War
• How the 1773 tax-free status of the British East India Company helped lead to the Revolutionary War, as reflected in letters written 1767–1775
• How the 1773 tax-free status of the British East India Company helped lead to the Revolutionary War, as reflected in letters written by members of the Sons of Liberty 1767–1775

As you advance in your educational career, you’ll need to make your topic more and more specific. Steps 1–3 of this topic might be okay in high school, but for a college research paper steps 4–7 would be more appropriate!

As you craft your research paper topic, you should also keep in mind the availability of research materials on your subject. There are millions of topics that would make interesting research papers, but for which you yourself might not be able to investigate with the primary and secondary sources to which you have access.

Access to research materials might look like:

• To the best of our knowledge, the sources exist somewhere
• The source isn’t behind a paywall (or you or your school can pay for it)
• Your school or local library has a copy of the source
• Your school or local library can order a copy of the source for you
• The source is in a language that you speak
• The source has been published already (there’s tons of amazing research that hasn’t been published yet, a frustrating problem!)
• You can access the archive, museum, or database where the primary source is held—this might mean online access or travel! To access a source in an archive or museum you’ll often need permission, which often requires a letter of support from your school.

If you’re not sure about access to source materials, talk to a librarian! They’re professionals for this question.

Finally, pick a research topic that interests you! Given that there are unlimited research topics in the world and many ways to adapt a broad topic, there should absolutely be a way to modify a research topic to fit your interests.

Want help learning to write an amazing research paper? Work one-on-one with an experienced Ivy-League tutor to improve your writing skills or sign up for our bestselling academic writing workshop .

Insider tips to generate your own research paper topic

Use these formulas to generate your own research paper topics:

• How did X change over a period of time (year, decade, century)?
• What is the impact (or consequences) of X?
• What led to X?
• What is the role of X in Y?
• How did X influence Y?
• How did X become Y?
• How was X different from Y?
• How is X an example of Y?
• How did X affect Y?
• What were some reactions to X?
• What are the most effective policies to produce X result?
• What are some risks of X?
• How is our current understanding of X incorrect? (advanced)
• What happens if we look at X through the lens of Y theory or perspective? (advanced)

A good research paper topic often starts with the question words—why, how, what, who, and where. Remember to make it as specific as possible!

Good research paper topics

These research paper topics have been vetted by a Princeton grad and academic book editor!

• How did European rivalries (British vs French) impact North American history?
• What was the role of British and French alliances with indigneous tribes during the Seven Years’ War?
• Reactions to the 1754 Albany Congress among North American intellectual figures
• How the Albany Plan served as a model for future attempts at union among the North American colonies
• How did different religious identities (Calvinist, Catholic, etc.) play a role in the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War?
• What were the consequences of the 1763 Treaty of Paris?
• How did the Seven Years’ War impact British debt and colonial economics?
• What were some causes of the US Revolutionary War?
• How did military strategy change during the Revolutionary War?
• What were the experiences of Loyalists to England who remained in the American colonies during the Revolutionary War?
• How was the Revolutionary War pivotal for the career of Alexander Hamilton?
• What was the role of alliances with France during the US Revolutionary War?
• What were the experiences of people of color during the Revolutionary War?
• How did George Washington’s previous military career pave the way for his leadership in the Revolutionary War?
• What were the main types of weaponry during the Revolutionary War? How did that affect the options for military strategies?
• How did clothing and fashion change over the courses of the Revolutionary War?
• How was Valley Forge a key moment in the Revolutionary War?
• How did women contribute to the Revolutionary War?
• What happened in Amherst, Massachusetts (or any other specific location) during the Revolutionary War?
• What was field medicine like during the Revolutionary War? 
• How was the Battle of Saratoga a turning point in the Revolutionary War?
• How were different opinions about the Revolutionary War reflected in poetry written during that time?
• What were the debates over abolition during the Revolutionary War?
• What was the role of supply chains during the Revolutionary War?
• What were reactions to the US Revolutionary war like in Europe? What does that tell us about politics in England, France, the Netherlands, etc?
• How did the US Revolutionary war impact political theory in England and France?
• What are similarities and differences between the US Revolutionary War and the French Revolution?
• What are some famous paintings inspired by the US Revolutionary War? What do differences between these paintings tell us about how the artists who created them saw the war?
• What are some different ways that the US Revolutionary War has been depicted in modern contemporary culture? What does that tell us?
• How was the story of the “Boston Tea Party” appropriated by US politicians in the 2010s, and why?
• What was the difference between the Federalists and the Jeffersonians?
• How did the 1797 XYZ Affair lead to the Quasi-War with France?
• How were loans from European countries and companies (France, Spain, Dutch bankers) key to the early US?
• What were reactions to the Constitutional Convention of 1787?
• Why did the US remain neutral during the French Revolution?
• How did the Alien and Sedition acts contribute to the election of Thomas Jefferson as president?
• What was the US’s reaction to the Haitian revolution? Why did the US not recognize Haitian independence until 1862?
• What were the reactions to John Jay’s Treaty of 1794?
• How have the remarks made by George Washington in his Farewell Address inspired isolationist policies?
• How did interpretations of the Monroe Doctrine change over the decades since its creation? 
• How did the Roosevelt Corollary and Lodge Corollary change and expand the Monroe Doctrine?
• How did the presence of US companies like the United Fruit Company affect US military interventions in Latin America? 
• How was the Monroe Doctrine invoked in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962? 
• How was US culture shaped by the Cold War?
• How did ecology play a role in the rise of Ancient Egypt?
• How did water management technologies impact Ancient Egypt?
• How did bureaucracies function in Ancient Egypt?
• How did Egyptian art influence Ancient Greek art?
• Who could be a citizen in Athens in the 5th century BCE? What does this tell us about classical Athenian society?
• What was the impact of the Peloponnesian War?
• What was the impact of Alexander the Great’s attempt to create an empire?
• How does the way that Alexander the Great is represented in art demonstrate conceptions about the relationship between the human and the divine?
• Was there a conception of race in the ancient world? How were these ideas different from our own modern conceptions of race?
• What was the role of debt slavery in the Roman republic? How were these policies ended, and what is the significance of the end of debt slavery? What kinds of slavery remained?
• To what degree does the movie Gladiator accurately the Roman Empire in 176–192 CE?
• What was the role of slavery in managing the large latifundia ?
• How and why did the emperor Constantine I adopt Christianity?
• How did patterns of urbanism in the latter Roman empire change? What does this tell us about challenges being faced at that time?
• What do reactions to the Byzantine empress Theodora tell us about ideas of gender in 6th-century Byzantium?
• How did scientific advancements in Islamic Spain influence the rest of Europe?
• What was the relationship between Muslim, Christian, and Jewish populations in Islamic Spain? How does this compare to the experience of Muslim and Jewish populations in Christian Spain?
• How did medieval troubadour poetry represent a new idea of romantic relationships?
• What are similarities and differences between medieval troubadour poetry and lyric poetry in Ancient Greece? 
• What do letters between women and popes tell us about gender, power, and religion in medieval Europe?
• In what ways was Hildegard of Bingen groundbreaking for her time?
• Who produced beer in medieval England, and what does this tell us about society?
• How did the adoption of hops affect the production and distribution of beer?
• How did beer production allow some women a way to be financially independent?
• How was clothing used to mark religious and cultural identities in 15th- and 16th-century Spain?
• How did print culture change relationships and courting in Georgian England?
• How did churches function as social gathering spaces in Georgian England?
• To what degree is Netflix’s Bridgerton series historically accurate?
• How did ideas of love change in the 18th century? How did philosophy play a role in this?
• When were Valentine cards first commercially available? What does that show us about cultural ideas of love and courtship?
• What were the consequences of the desertification of the Sahara?
• How did trade links on the Red Sea influence Nubian culture?
• How did Carthage build power in Northern Africa around 600–500 BCE?
• What was the impact of the Mercenary War (241–238 BCE) in Carthage?
• How did the Roman province of Africa play a key role in financing the Roman Empire?
• What were the consequences of the Donatist division in the 300s in Northern Africa?
• What was the impact of the large-scale movement of Bedouins from the Arabian peninsula into the Maghreb?
• How was Mande society organized in the Mali Empire? 
• What was the role of the book trade in Timbuktu? What does this tell us about culture and learning in the Mali Empire?
• How did Aksum use trade to build wealth and power? 
• What do Nok terracotta sculptures tell us about Nok culture?
• How did the Luba Empire create a centralized political system? How did the idea of spiritual kins ( balopwe ) play a role in this system?
• How did tax collection work in the Lunda empire?
• What does it mean to say that the Ajuran Empire was a hydraulic empire? How did control over water resources allow the Ajuran Empire to build and consolidate power?
• What is the significance of diplomatic ties between the Somai Ajuran Empire and Ming dynasty China? 
• How did the tribute system in the Kingdom of Kongo help to stimulate interregional trade?
• What was the impact of the introduction of maize and cassava to the Kingdom of Kongo?
• How did women wield influence in the Kingdom of Benin?
• How did the Industrial Revolution in Europe help lead to the Scramble for Africa 1878–1898?
• What were the consequences of the Second Boer War?
• What happened in the Year of Africa (1960)?
• How did the Han dynasty consolidate power in frontier regions? 
• How and why did the Han dynasty nationalize the private salt and iron industries in 117 BCE?
• What are the earliest records of papermaking, and what is the significance of this invention?
• What was the role of Daoist religious societies in rebellions at the end of the Han dynasty (Yellow Turban Rebellion, Five Pecks of Rice Rebellion)?
• What do tomb paintings tell us about ancient Chinese society?
• What was the impact of the Sui dynasty’s standardization and re-unification of the coinage?
• What was the role of standardized testing in Sui dynasty and Tang dynasty China?
• Why is the Tang dynasty often regarded as a golden age of cosmopolitan culture in Chinese history?
• What was the role of slavery in imperial China? 
• How did the rise of jiedushi (regional military governments) undermine the civil-service system? What were the consequences of this?
• How did Tang dynasty China exert power over Japan and Korea?
• What was the Three Departments and Six Ministries system in imperial China and how did it work?
• What does the appearance of Inca, Maya, and Aztec goods in North America (Utah, Canada) and the appearance of goods from the Great Lakes region in Maya and Aztec ruins tell us about trade in the Pre-Columbian Americas?
• How did celebration of maize play a central role in Mesoamerican cultures?
• How did the Aztec empire use relationships with client city-states to establish power? How did the Aztec empire use taxation to exert power?
• How did the luxury good trade impact Aztec political power? 
• How did the building of roads play a key role in the Aztec empire?
• How and why has archaeology played a pivotal role in expanding our understanding of the pre-Columbian Americas?
• What are some common misconceptions about the Americas in the year 1491? Why do these misconceptions exist?

Latin American History (post-1492)

• How and why did the Spanish appropriate Aztec sites of significance (e.g. Mexico City at the site of Tenochtitlan)?
• What were reactions among Latin American intellectuals (e.g. Luis María Drago, Alejandro Álvarez and Baltasar Brum) to the Monroe Doctrine?
• How was the US’s involvement in the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903 a pivotal turning point in the relationship between the US and Latin American countries?
• What were the effects of the US’s involvement in the Cuban War for Independence?
• How did the Roosevelt Corollary of 1904 benefit the US?
• How did Simon Bolivar’s time in Europe affect his ideas about Latin American independence?
• How did 19th century academic societies play a role in the advancement of scientific discoveries? Who was excluded from these societies?
• How was music connected to the sciences in medieval thinking?
• When was the concept of zero first used, and how was it instrumental for advancements in math?
• What role did Islamic Spain play in the spread of scientific advancements in medieval Europe?
• What role has translation between languages played in the development of sciences?
• Why were Galileo’s ideas about astronomy controversial at the time?
• What was the connection between art and advancements in human anatomy?
• Why were Darwin’s ideas about natural selection controversial at the time?
• To what degree does the film Master and Commander accurately depict the voyages of Charles Darwin?
• How did the discovery of quinine and other medical innovations help to facilitate the European colonization of Africa?
• How and why was the internet invented?
• Does Virgil’s Aeneid celebrate the new Roman Empire or subvert it?
• Why was the poet Ovid exiled from Rome?
• What are the pagan influences in Beowulf ? What are the Christian elements in Beowulf ? What does that tell us about late Anglo-Saxon England?
• How does Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales reflect gender roles in late medieval England?
• How does Dante’s Inferno draw on book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid ? 
• How are gender roles presented and subverted in Shakespeare’s plays?
• To what degree did Henry David Thoreau live out the ideals he described in Walden in his own life?
• How did the serialized publication of novels affect the way that they were written?
• Does Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities accurately portray the French Revolution?
• How did 18th-century novels propagate the idea of marrying for love?
• What did contemporary readers think about Jane Austen and her novels?
• To what degree do Jane Austen’s novels reflect economic realities for women in Regency England? What do they leave out?
• How did Lord Byron’s personal life affect his poetry?
• What do we know about the romantic life of Emily Dickinson?
• What were the religious movements that influenced the writer George Eliot, and how do those influences appear in her novels?
• In what ways were Walt Whitman’s writings new or different?
• How did British poets react to the horrors of Word War I?
• What do Tolkien’s letters reveal about the ways in which the two world wars influenced his writings?
• How did the friendship between CS Lewis and Tolkien affect their respective writings?
• What are the arguments for and against Catalonian independence from Spain?
• What are the arguments for and against Scottish independence from the United Kingdom?
• What are some risks of contact sports, especially for children?
• What are the most effective policies for combating childhood obesity?
• What are the most effective policies for reducing gun violence?
• Which countries have the longest life expectancy and why?
• What are some differences between the healthcare system in the US and in European countries? Which country has the most similar system to the US?
• What policies for parental leave exist in different countries? What are some effects of these policies?
• Has the drinking age in the US always been 21? What have been some different policies, and what were some consequences of them?
• What is the debate around museum artifacts like the Elgin Marbles in London or the Benin Bronzes in Berlin?
• How have politicians attempted to control population growth in different countries, either directly or indirectly? What have been some effects of these policies?
• Which countries have the most gender parity reflected in national governments? How have they accomplished this?
• How has public funding of K-12 education changed since the 1930s in the US? 
• How has public funding of higher education changed in the US?
• What is early childhood education like in different countries?
• What are some effects of free or reduced-cost meals in schools?
• How does access to menstrual products affect education outcomes for girls in different countries?
• What was the impact of Rousseau’s writings on education?
• How did Plato’s ideal forms of government reflect contemporary Athenian concerns about the unruly masses ( demos )?
• How did Aristotle justify slavery?
• How has wealth inequality increased in recent decades?
• How is inflation calculated, and what are the implications of this methodology?
• How have genetically-engineered crops changed the way that the planet feeds itself?
• How has animal testing changed since 2000?
• How is animal testing regulated differently in different countries?

Health Sciences and Psychology

• How do different societies reflect the natural circadian rhythms of the human body?
• How does secondhand smoke affect the human body?
• How does lack of sleep affect the body?
• How does stress affect the body?
• What are some ways to reduce stress?
• How have cancer treatments changed in the past 30 years?
• Why is it hard to find a “cure” for cancer?
• How has the Human Genome Project changed medical science?
• How were the Covid vaccines developed so quickly? What is the difference between the various Covid vaccines that have been developed?

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Emily graduated  summa cum laude  from Princeton University and holds an MA from the University of Notre Dame. She was a National Merit Scholar and has won numerous academic prizes and fellowships. A veteran of the publishing industry, she has helped professors at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton revise their books and articles. Over the last decade, Emily has successfully mentored hundreds of students in all aspects of the college admissions process, including the SAT, ACT, and college application essay. 

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101 research paper topics.

• Why do we sleep ?
• How do GPS systems work?
• Who was the first person to reach the North Pole ?
• Did anybody ever escape Alcatraz ?
• What was life like for a gladiator ?
• What are the effects of prolonged steroid use on the human body?
• What happened during the Salem witch trials ?
• Are there any effective means of repelling insects ?
• How did trains and railroads change life in America?
• What may have occurred during the Roswell  UFO incident of 1947?
• How is bulletproof clothing made?
• What Olympic events were practiced in ancient Greece?
• What are the major theories explaining the disappearance of the dinosaurs ?
• How was the skateboard invented and how has it changed over the years?
• How did the long bow contribute to English military dominance?
• What caused the stock market crash of 2008?
• How did Cleopatra come to power in Egypt what did she do during her reign?
• How has airport security intensified since September 11 th , 2001?
• What is life like inside of a beehive ?
• Where did hip hop originate and who were its founders?
• What makes the platypus a unique and interesting mammal?
• How does tobacco use affect the human body?
• How do computer viruses spread and in what ways do they affect computers?
• What is daily life like for a Buddhist monk ?
• What are the origins of the conflict in Darfur ?
• How did gunpowder change warfare?
• In what ways do Wal-Mart stores affect local economies?
• How were cats and dogs domesticated and for what purposes?
• What do historians know about ninjas ?
• How has the music industry been affected by the internet and digital downloading?
• What were the circumstances surrounding the death of Osama Bin Laden ?
• What was the women’s suffrage movement and how did it change America?
• What efforts are being taken to protect endangered wildlife ?
• How much does the war on drugs cost Americans each year?
• How is text messaging affecting teen literacy?
• Are humans still evolving ?
• What technologies are available to home owners to help them conserve energy ?
• How have oil spills affected the planet and what steps are being taken to prevent them?
• What was the Magna Carta and how did it change England?
• What is the curse of the pharaohs?
• Why was Socrates executed?
• What nonlethal weapons are used by police to subdue rioters?
• How does the prison population in America compare to other nations?
• How did ancient sailors navigate the globe?
• Can gamblers ever acquire a statistical advantage over the house in casino games?
• What is alchemy and how has it been attempted?
• How are black holes formed?
• How was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln plotted and executed?
• Do the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks?
• How do submarines work?
• Do lie detector tests accurately determine truthful statements?
• How did Cold War tension affect the US and the world?
• What happened to the lost settlers at Roanoke ?
• How does a hybrid car save energy?
• What ingredients can be found inside of a hotdog ?
• How did Julius Caesar affect Rome?
• What are some common sleep disorders and how are they treated?
• How did the Freedom Riders change society?
• How is internet censorship used in China and around the world?
• What was the code of the Bushido and how did it affect samurai warriors ?
• What are the risks of artificial tanning or prolonged exposure to the sun?
• What programs are available to help war veterans get back into society?
• What steps are involved in creating a movie or television show?
• How have the film and music industries dealt with piracy ?
• How did Joan of Arc change history?
• What responsibilities do secret service agents have?
• How does a shark hunt?
• What dangers and hardships did Lewis and Clark face when exploring the Midwest?
• Has the Patriot Act prevented or stopped terrorist acts in America?
• Do states that allow citizens to carry guns have higher or lower crime rates?
• How are the Great Depression and the Great Recession similar and different?
• What are the dangers of scuba diving and underwater exploration?
• How does the human brain store and retrieve memories ?
• What was the Manhattan Project and what impact did it have on the world?
• How does stealth technology shield aircraft from radar?
• What causes tornadoes ?
• Why did Martin Luther protest against the Catholic Church?
• How does a search engine work?
• What are the current capabilities and future goals of genetic engineers ?
• How did the Roman Empire fall?
• What obstacles faced scientists in breaking the sound barrier ?
• How did the black plague affect Europe?
• What happened to Amelia Earhart ?
• What are the dangers and hazards of using nuclear power ?
• How did Genghis Khan conquer Persia?
• What architectural marvels were found in Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire ?
• From where does spam email come and can we stop it?
• How does night vision work?
• How did journalists influence US war efforts in Vietnam ?
• What are the benefits and hazards of medical marijuana ?
• What causes desert mirages and how do they affect wanderers?
• What was the cultural significance of the first moon landing ?
• What are sinkholes and how are they formed?
• Have any psychics ever solved crimes or prevented them from occurring?
• Who is Vlad the Impaler and what is his connection to Count Dracula ?
• What are the risks of climate change and global warming ?
• What treatments are available to people infected with HIV and are they effective?
• Who was a greater inventor, Leonardo di Vinci or Thomas Edison ?
• How are the Chinese and American economies similar and different?
• Why was communism unsuccessful in so many countries?
• In what ways do video games affect children and teenagers?

923 Comments

I like using this website when I assist kids with learning as a lot of these topics are quickly covered in the school systems. Thankyou

Mackenah Nicole Molina

Wow! I always have trouble deiciding what to do a research project on but this list has totally solved that. Now my only problem is choosing what idea on this list I should do first!

Most of these my teacher rejected because apparently ‘these aren’t grade level topics, and I doubt they interest you”

I’m sorry to hear that. Sounds like you will have a potentially valuable character-building experience in the short-term.

Edwin Augusto Galindo Cuba

THIS SITE IS AWESOME, THERE ARE LOTS OF TOPICS TO LEARN AND MASTER OUR SKILLS!

research kid

I need one about animals, please. I have been challenged to a animal research project, Due Friday. I have no clue what to research! somebody help, thanks for reading!

You can do one on bats

For international studies you can do Defense and Security.

This was very helpful.

Research on Ben Franklin? I think THAT will get a real charge out of everyone (hehehehegetit)

Mandy Maher

“Is it possible to colonize Mars?”

maddy burney

these are silly topics

thx for making this real.

more gaming questions!!!!!!

Is it still considered stealing if you don’t get caught?

Yes, yes it is still considered stealing.

I need topics on memes

Mary Nnamani

Please I need project topics on Language Literature

Marcella Vallarino

I would appreciate a list of survey questions for middle school grades 6-8

I need a research topics about public sector management

I NEED FIVE EXAMPLES EACH ON QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH (EDUCATION, HEALTH, TECHNOLOGY, ECONOMY AND ENGINEERING)

publish research that are interesting please……

hey can you do one on the burmiueda triangle

Anybody know video games effect kids,and,teens. There Fun!!

they’re

I need a topic about woman history if any of u can find 1 please that would be great!

You could research about the history of the astronauts, and of human past (WWI, WWII, etc.)

so about women? Manitoba Women Win the Right to Vote in Municipal Elections, The First Women, January 23, 1849: Elizabeth Blackwell becomes the first woman to graduate from medical school and become a doctor in the United States, Rosa Parks Civil Rights Equal Pay. I have way more. so if you need more just ask.

communism is good

what are you a communist?!?!

Did FDR know about the upcoming attack on Pearl Harbor on 07 DEC 1941.

do you know how babies are born

Christine Singu

kindly assist with a research topic in the field of accounting or auditing

need more about US army

Please can yiu give me a topic in education

I think one should be how can music/Video games can affect the life for people

or How Do Video Games Affect Teenagers?

zimbabwe leader

I think a good topic is supporting the confederate flag!

Need a research topic within the context of students union government and dues payments

do more weird ones plz

joyce alcantara

Hi pls po can you give me a topic relate for humanities pls thank u.

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