Introduction
Why another book on wellbeing? In the past decade or so, numerous volumes have been published on this topic, signifying the dramatic rise of interest by academics, policy-makers and civil society in the concept of wellbeing. Considering the wealth of this literature, one would think there was little new to say on the subject. Our book, however, addresses an important gap in wellbeing studies: it provides new perspectives from the discipline of politics. In this chapter, we set out why we think this is important and highlight the potential contribution of the politics discipline. 1
Wellbeing 2 has become a focus for political debate and a goal of public policy in many countries in recent decades. This focus on wellbeing has intensified in the wake of the financial crisis as politicians and policy-makers have sought new narratives and new policy frames that challenge the dominance of GDP growth as an indicator of progress and a lodestar for policy. A number of academic disciplines, economics and psychology in particular, have been influential in both shaping and seeking to explain developments in wellbeing measurement , while the disciplines of sociology and geography have provided important critical perspectives, highlighting the differentiated understandings and lived experiences of wellbeing between and within nations. However, the politics discipline has been relatively silent on developments, whether on conceptualisations of wellbeing for public policy purposes, new measures of progress, or attempts to bring wellbeing into policy. This may be understandable to the extent that developments have only relatively recently moved from a focus on concept and measurement to the policy arena. However, their emergence is the outcome of a process that has been gestating for some time, and one that has ātransformative potentialā in politics and policy (Kroll 2011, p. 1). The absence of contributions from scholars of politics has left important theoretical and empirical insights largely absent from debates: an issue that this book seeks to address. In short, this book provides the first collection in the field of wellbeing that places the concerns of the politics discipline centre stage.
As Crick (1982, p. 18) observed, āPolitics arises from accepting the fact of the simultaneous existence of different groups, hence different interests and different traditionsā and is the process through which such differences might be articulated, contested and reconciled. Thus, politics is concerned with the processes through which power and resources are distributed: āwho gets what, when, howā (Lasswell 1936, np). Central to understanding political processes is the interplay of the 3 āIāsāideas , interests and institutions . Ideas refer to basic values of different groups or individuals, the notion of interests identifies winners and losers from different options, and institutions are the fora through which the reconciliation of differences is sought (Weiss 2001; Rosendorff 2005).
According to Aristotle , oft-quoted in contemporary texts on wellbeing, political science is the āruling scienceā in furthering the good life, for it ālegislates what must be done and what avoidedā and provides the legitimisation for all other knowledge (Nicomachean Ethics, i2). Such an attempt to impose a hierarchy of disciplines is inappropriate in a modern world that increasingly values interdisciplinary endeavours to understand complex issues. Moreover, the politics discipline draws on a range of other fieldsāeconomics , geography , history, law , philosophy , psychology and sociology among themāand has been described as āan eclectic disciplineā (Flinders 2013, p. 151). Yet it is clear to us that the relative dearth of commentary from politics scholars is detrimental to the study of wellbeing. The discipline can offer important perspectives on how the issue of wellbeing is framed according to different values, highlight who stands to win or lose from contrasting approaches and different policy options and deepen understanding of the institutional processes through which decisions are taken. Such themes are at the intellectual core of this volume.
While the intellectual themes of this book are located primarily in the discipline of politics, it incorporates contributions from scholars in cognate disciplines whose concerns overlap and from those whose research and practice concerns specific policy developments. It explores key themes and issues in a range of settingsāinternational, national and subnational/substate. Through this combination of intellectual inquiry, empirically grounded research and investigation across different settings, we aim to provide fresh insights and develop new lenses through which to understand the rise and significance of the wellbeing agenda.
In the next section of this chapter, we chart the rise of wellbeing in politics and policy before outlining the nature and scale of current initiatives at both international and national levels. Following that we reflect further on the terrain of the politics discipline, before illustrating the relevance of the discipline to understanding, defining and measuring wellbeing in contemporary politics. We conclude by outlining the contributions to this volume.
Wellbeing in Politics and Policy
Debates on the āgood lifeā and the role of individuals, society and the state in promoting this date back at least as far as the ancient Greeks. Similarly, attempts at measuring wellbeing ācan be traced back as far as one likesā (Allin and Hand 2014, p. 3) . Our focus in this book is on contemporary political interest in wellbeing: the second of two such waves of interest since the Second World War (Bache and Reardon 2013, 2016; see also Scott 2012) . In the 1960s, there was an intensified focus on the conceptualisation of objective quality of life conditions and the creation of instruments to measure them, giving rise to the so-called social indicator movement. This was driven by growing dissatisfaction with GDP as the dominant measure of progress, as post-war prosperity created conditions for materialism and inequality to increase (Offer 2000). These first-wave critiques of GDP and the legitimisation they were given by senior politicians in the USA and across Europe led to the development of new social surveys in a number of advanced industrial countries (see Bache and Reardon 2016, p. 41). However, the impact of these developments on politics and policy was limited for several reasons, including the difficulties of marshalling a vast array of diverse statistics to inform coherent policy goals; a now well-recognised challenge of bringing evidence into policy. These initiatives lost momentum in the 1970s in the context of recession and changes in the dominant political ideologies and associated social welfare discourses in key nations involved (e.g. USA, UK) .
The second and current wave of political interest emerged in the 1990s, driven by environmental challenges, increased understanding of the drivers of wellbeing and growing acceptance of the value of measuring subjective wellbeing 3 for public policy purposes (Bache and Reardon 2016) . In advanced liberal democracies, the idea that globalisation, hyper-consumerism and greater individual freedom are leading to social breakdown became popularised, 4 alongside a growing awareness of increasing social inequalities. Momentum gathered pace as the effects of the financial crisis gave rise to a new level of discontent with neoliberal economics , leading to protests in many countries and increasing concern about the impacts of economic inequalities and concentration of wealth (see for example Stiglitz 2012; Piketty 2013). In this context, wellbeing emerged as a new paradigm of development alongside a range of other alternatives, including the more established notion of sustainable development, bringing with it a new industry of wellbeing measurement to challenge the dominance of GDP as an indicator of progress (Scott 2012, p. 4). Initiatives within international organisations, such as the OECD , EU and UN, combined with the entrepreneurial activity of think tanks, academics and statisticians to accelerate the flow of ideas around wellbeing across and within national boundaries.
The Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (CMEPSP), established by President Sarkozy of France (2008ā2009)āwhich is variously referred to as the CMEPSP, Sarkozy Commission , Stiglitz Commission , Stiglitz-S...