Happiness and public policy: a procedural perspective
| Autor: | Alois Stutzer |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Předmět: |
public policy
media_common.quotation_subject Pharmaceutical Science Public policy D70 political economy 0502 economics and business ddc:330 happiness Pharmacology (medical) I31 Sociology H11 050207 economics life satisfaction media_common Public economics 05 social sciences Decision rule Democracy D60 Incentive subjective well-being Complementary and alternative medicine Happiness Social engineering (political science) 050202 agricultural economics & policy InformationSystems_MISCELLANEOUS social welfare |
| Zdroj: | Behavioural Public Policy. 4:210-225 |
| ISSN: | 2398-0648 2398-063X |
| DOI: | 10.1017/bpp.2019.44 |
| Popis: | This article comments on the role of empirical subjective wellbeing research in public policy within a constitutional, procedural perspective of government and state. It rejects the idea that, based on the promises of the measurement, we should adopt a new policy perspective that is oriented toward a decision rule maximizing some aggregate measure of subjective wellbeing. This social engineering perspective, implicit in much reasoning about wellbeing policy, neglects: (1) important motivation problems on the part of government actors, such as incentives to manipulate indicators, but also on the part of citizens to truthfully report their wellbeing; and (2) procedural utility as a source of wellbeing. Instead, wellbeing research should be oriented toward gaining insights that improve the diagnoses of societal problems and help us to evaluate alternative institutional arrangements in order to address them, both as inputs into the democratic process. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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