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Introduction

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Governing Human Well-Being

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Abstract

This chapter provides an introduction to the book by elaborating on the concept of human well-being, distinguishes between subjective and objective well-being, and justifies the significance of future research on human well-being outcomes. The book primarily focuses on the political determinants of objective well-being. The well-being outcomes under study include infant mortality, child mortality, educational enrolment, and the human development index. The determinants of human well-being include domestic and international political determinants such as political representation, governance, globalization, and conflict. The chapter demonstrates the lacuna in existing research, addresses the research questions the book proposes to answer, and discusses the broad theoretical framework and methodology used to address these questions. The book has four substantive chapters.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The terms human well-being, human welfare, and quality of life are used interchangeably in this book.

  2. 2.

    Infant mortality data are available from the World Bank (2015), and infant mortality is measured as the number of infant deaths per thousand live births.

  3. 3.

    This is another relative advantage of focusing on objective well-being indicators over subjective well-being indicators as it will give us unique insight into the political determinants of well-being for the most deprived segments of society.

  4. 4.

    See Gidwitz et al. (2010) for a detailed overview of the construction of the HDI index.

  5. 5.

    Note the terms states and countries are used interchangeably in this book.

  6. 6.

    The literature on the determinants of subjective and objective well-being is vast. Since this book primarily focuses on objective well-being, this literature is discussed in greater detail in this chapter as compared to existing research on subjective well-being .

  7. 7.

    Note, however, that such disagreements are prevalent in other areas of study as well. For instance, studies on the objective determinants of human well-being are not always in agreement, plausibly for the same reasons mentioned here.

  8. 8.

    I use the “polity2” variable from the Polity IV data set to classify democracies and nondemocracies (Marshall et al. 2014). The variable ranges from −10 to +10, where higher values indicate higher levels of democracy. All countries with a polity2 score greater than 0 are classified as democracies, and countries with a polity2 score of less than or equal to 0 are classified as nondemocracies.

  9. 9.

    Indeed nondemocracies also display considerable variation in infant mortality , but disparities in infant mortality exist in both regime-types. Thus, we need to understand the dynamics of well-being outcomes within both political regimes .

  10. 10.

    See Gerring et al. (2005) for other features of centripetalism and decentralism.

  11. 11.

    Chapter 2 is an extension of a previously published article by Nisha Mukherjee, Party Systems and Human Well-Being, Party Politics (Volume 19, Issue 4) pp. 601–623. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068811407601. Copyright © 2011 (The Author). Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.

  12. 12.

    This is indeed a simplistic classification, and there may be more variations of state interactions.

  13. 13.

    Chapter 4 is an extension of a previously published article by Mukherjee, Nisha and Jonathan Krieckhaus, Globalization and Human Well-Being, International Political Science Review (Volume 33 Issue 2) pp. 150–170. DOI: 10.1177/0192512111402592. Copyright © 2012 (The Author). Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.

  14. 14.

    Chapter 5 is an extension of an unpublished co-authored manuscript by Jonathan Krieckhaus and myself.

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

    Nisha Bellinger

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Bellinger, N. (2018). Introduction. In: Governing Human Well-Being. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65391-4_1

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