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Conclusion: Concluding Remarks, Policy Implications, and Future Research

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Abstract

This chapter summarizes the primary findings from each of the substantive chapters, discusses the policy implications of the findings, outlines the contributions of the book in the light of the broader research on objective and subjective well-being, and identifies avenues of future research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    By no means is this an exhaustive list of political factors that influence human well-being outcomes. Please refer to Chap. 1 for an overview of the vast literature on the political determinants of subjective and objective well-being outcomes.

  2. 2.

    There are some differences and similarities between the models presented here and the statistical models presented in other chapters that need to be pointed out. First, note that the models in Chap. 2 that assess the effect of political representation on human well-being outcomes do not control for the level of democracy since political representation is an attribute of democratic regimes. However, the models in all other chapters do control for the level of democracy. Since political representation is included in all the models in this table, I do not control for the level of democracy in these models as well. Second, similar to all the other models that analyze the determinants of th e HDI, model 4 in Table 6.1 also does not include GDP per capita as a control since the HDI includes income in its measure. Third, the empirical analysis in Chap. 3 does not include country fixed effects in considering the effect of governance on human well-being outcomes since governance does not vary much within countries. Since governance is included in all the models in Table 6.1, these models also do not include country fixed effects either. Fourth, Chap. 4 assesses the effect of economic, social, political, and overall globalization on human well-being. Table 6.1 only focuses on the overall globalization index in the interest of brevity. Lastly, Chap. 5 analyzes the effect of different types and dimensions of conflict on human well-being . In the interest of conciseness, the conflict variable in Table 6.1 is measured using a dichotomous variable, which takes a value of 1 if there is an occurrence of interstate or intrastate conflict in a country and 0 otherwise. The conflict variables are discussed in greater detail in Chap. 5.

  3. 3.

    These substantive effects are calculated by changing the values of the theoretical variables of interest while holding all other variables at their mean values.

  4. 4.

    Please refer to Chap. 1 for an overview of the different reasons linking regime type to objective and subjective well-being outcomes.

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Bellinger, N. (2018). Conclusion: Concluding Remarks, Policy Implications, and Future Research. In: Governing Human Well-Being. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65391-4_6

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