Governments, academics and communities have defined social cohesion through multiple, overlapping lenses, reflecting different policy objectives, disciplinary traditions and national contexts. Across disciplines and public policy domains, these definitions vary substantially. Different perspectives leave social cohesion conceptually broad, analytically fragmented and inconsistently operationalised for overlapping decision-making needs.

The aim of this paper is to identify tensions in current definitional frameworks. It seeks to inform policy discussions on how to operationalise social cohesion as part of a wider system approach. 

The paper summarises four international case studies and measurement approaches, including Australia’s Scanlon Foundation Research Institute’s Scanlon Index of Social Cohesion framework and comparative models from Germany and Chile, highlighting both shared domains and significant variation in focus, methods and intended policy use. Together, these cases illustrate how definitional choices shape what is measured, how cohesion is interpreted and which decisions measurement can inform.