Governing Human Well-Being

Domestic and International Determinants

Nisha Bellinger

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9783319653907
• eBook ISBN: 9783319653914
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book provides a comprehensive explanation of humanwell-being outcomes by analyzing the role of domestic and international politicalfactors. The well-beingoutcomes under study are the building blocks of development, and play acrucial developmental role in the lives of citizens, states, and the global community.The project introduces cases from Brazil, Japan, China, and Iraq, andproposes to answer some of the pressing questions that scholars andpolicy-makers alike have pondered over for years. Why are there largedisparities between countries in the quality of life people lead? What factors accountfor the general well-being of mankind? How do we improve human lives?

© The Author(s) 2018

Nisha BellingerGoverning Human Well-Beinghttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65391-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Nisha Bellinger¹

(1)

School of Public Service, Political Science, Boise State University, Boise, Idaho, USA

End Abstract

Why are there large disparities in the quality of life people lead? What factors account for the general well-being of humanity? How do we improve human lives? These are some of the perennial questions that policymakers, leaders, thinkers, and academicians alike have pondered for years. The Preamble to the Charter of the United Nations lays out the primary objectives of the international organization and emphasizes the pursuit of the betterment of human lives by stating that it aspires to “…save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom…” While international organizations such as the United Nations undoubtedly play an important role in improving human lives, individual governments are the primary actors who are uniquely placed to improve the well-being of their citizens. Thinkers such as Hobbes, writing in 1651, underlined the significance of the form of government in improving the quality of human lives. The American Declaration of Independence of 1776 emphasized that the government is formed to ensure that citizens have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Political statesmen such as Churchill and Roosevelt signed the Atlantic Charter in 1941, which outlined the governing guidelines to assure a life without misery for humanity.

Even though humankind has made strides in improving human lives, vast disparities in living conditions of people still exist. As prominent academician Amartya Sen rightly notes, in spite of all the progress that has been made in human welfare over the years, “…we also live in a world with remarkable deprivation, destitution and oppression,” thereby emphasizing that much needs to be done to enhance the quality of life people lead (Sen 1999, xi). Therefore, the issue of human well-being has always been of significance as we constantly strive to improve human lives. In this book I focus on the politics of human well-being by answering fundamental questions such as the following: What domestic and international political factors influence societal welfare? How do they affect human lives? How can we enhance the quality of the lives people lead? In doing so, the book not only contributes to the existing scholarship on human well-being but also makes an effort to answer pivotal questions that have policy relevance for the world today. Overall, this book demonstrates that politics extends to the realm of human lives.

The Concept of Human Well-Being

Understanding the determinants of human well-being is a colossal task; one of the primary reasons for this is that human well-being is a broad concept subject to different interpretations.¹ Fundamental questions that arise are: What is human well-being? How do we conceptualize and measure it? Relatedly, how do we compare human well-being among individuals, societies, and countries over time? If we hope to improve human well-being, then answers to these questions are crucial. There is indeed a large body of research that sheds light on these questions, and this body of literature has greatly enhanced our understanding of the meaning of well-being. The notion can be broadly conceptualized in two categories: subjective and objective human well-being. Both these approaches have their relative advantages and as such are equally important for obtaining a holistic understanding of the concept. This necessitates the need for us to study the different dimensions of well-being. Moreover, subjective and objective well-being may not always be present in equal measure. In other words, the prevalence of subjective well-being may not suggest the presence of objective well-being , and vice versa, making it important to focus on the determinants of both aspects of well-being if the goal is to improve every aspect of human life.

A subjective approach focuses primarily on indicators such as, for example, levels of happiness, life satisfaction, or personal achievement (e.g., Veenhoven and Ehrhardt 1995; Frey and Stutzer 2000; Radcliff 2001, 2005; Shin and Rutkowski 2003; Dorn et al. 2007; Helliwell and Huang 2008; Bjørnskov et al. 2010; Álvarez-Díaz et al. 2010; Stutzer and Frey 2010; D’Acci 2011). These indicators provide insight into individuals’ assessment of their quality of life and thus enable us to better understand well-being from an individual’s perspective. This is especially significant as well-being certainly has a subjective component, which can only be understood when we know how people perceive their own quality of life . Individuals may be wealthy and enjoy good health by an objective criterion, but are they also happy and satisfied with their lives? Do they have a high sense of personal achievement? A subjective conceptualization of well-being sheds light on such questions. Studies that focus on subjective well-being primarily utilize survey data to gain insight into individual perceptions of quality of life .

An objective approach, on the other hand, refers to outcomes such as infant mortality , child mortality , life expectancy , literacy , and education levels, among others (Moon and Dixon 1985; Przeworski et al. 2000; Lake and Baum 2001; Gerring et al. 2005, 2009; Ross 2006). This book primarily adopts the objective approach by focusing on four primary well-being outcomes: infant mortality , child mortality , gross education enrollment ratio , and the human development index . An objective approach does not provide a subjective individual perspective of how individuals view their personal well-being. Indicators of education, health, and income, for instance, provide an objective way of assessing well-being. However, the objective indicators are relatively more comparable across countries and over time and provide tremendous utility in examining general trends. Such comparisons are relatively difficult to make with subjective indicators where the very meaning of “happiness” or “life satisfaction,” for instance, may differ from country to country. This is not to say that there are no potential measurement issues with the objective indicators. Indeed, there may be differences in the ways countries collect information on health and education statistics, but comparisons are relatively easier to make when we focus on widely accepted definitions of health status or educational attainment. A more practical reason for focusing on objective indicators of well-being is that the data for objective well-being indicators are more widely available across countries and over time. This book primarily uses a quantitative methodology to identify broader patterns of relationship, which makes the objective approach in particular a more appropriate alternative.

The tremendous cross-national variation in human well-being is indicative of the large disparities in human lives prevalent even today. Figure 1.1 displays the global variation of one of the primary indicators of well-being, infant mortality , which ranges from 2 to 270 infant deaths per 1000 live births per year from 1960 to 2013, with a mean infant mortality rate of approximately 55 and a median rate of approximately 42.² Understanding such vast disparities in basic living conditions that influence fundamental quality-of-life indicators is critical and of paramount importance. Infant mortality in particular is prevalent among the poorest sections of society and reflects basic living conditions of the poor, such as poverty, housing quality, resistance to diseases, sanitation, air quality, availability of clean water, accessibility to neonatal and prenatal health service, among others (Victora et al. 2003), for which cross-national time-series data are not widely available. Thus, the well-being outcomes under study especially help us understand the political dynamics that affect the most disadvantaged segments of a population.³ Overall, since this book focuses on a diverse set of objective indicators, namely, infant mortality , child mortality , education, and human development, studying these four aspects of objective well-being enables us to gain a holistic understanding of quality of life through an objective criterion.

Fig. 1.1

Global distribution of infant mortality

Infant mortality refers to the number of deaths of infants (aged 1 year or less) per 1000 li...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction
• 1. Domestic Determinants
• 2. International Determinants
• Backmatter