Public Happiness Research Articles

Moving towards a General Definition of Public Happiness: A Grounded Theory Approach to the Recent Academic Research on Well-Being

Moving towards a General Definition of Public Happiness: A Grounded Theory Approach to the Recent Academic Research on Well-Being

Laimės pažadas vartotojiškoje visuomenėje

While discussing on the possibility of happiness, indicators of public happiness, and the reorientation to the welfare economy, first of all, one should try, at least preliminary, to answer the question – what do we call happiness, what is happiness per se in the definition of this term. Thus, the article seeks to show that the discourse on happiness developed by economists, psychologists, and sociologists should be supplemented by a philosophical reflection of a question based on a more advanced discussion of the concept of happiness. This article states that, following the logic of consumerism, the overwhelming majority of members of the public follow the concept of classical happiness, which essentially dissociates with the cherished ideals of the consumer society. Empirical research reveals the valuable aspects of happiness in the younger generation of the consumer society, which are close to the aristotelic concept of happiness. Keywords: consumer society, promise of happiness, value propositions, youth values. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15823/su.2017.22

Utopian Pulse – Flares in the Darkroom

Meike Schmidt-Gleim: Throughout the book Utopian Pulse – Flares in the Darkroom I found many different ways and concepts to describe the Utopian Pulse: “public happiness”, “an act within the given that imagines, foreshadows...a life incommensurable with THINGS AS THEY ARE”, “latency (Bloch)”, “negation (Adorno)”, “a specific situation lived in certain space temporalities...”, “utopia is necessarily imperfect assertion of which is not yet...”, “imagination/hope/desires”, “not an island... (iso...

Public service happiness and morale in the context of development: the case of Bhutan

This article comprises the first detailed study published on the attitudes of civil servants in Bhutan. From the data collected under the 2015 gross national happiness (GNH) survey, an index of public service happiness (PSH) emerges, highlighting changes since 2010, with significant differences in happiness between female and male bureaucrats, and also between officials working in rural and urban areas. The findings highlight the importance of measuring public service morale. This topic that has been neglected over the last 25 years, in favour of public service motivation (PSM), due to a Western cultural bias for prioritising individual productivity over collective effectiveness. Attention to bureaucratic morale as measured by a PSH index could offer a more appropriate approach to public service performance in non-Western settings.

From Personal Happiness to Public Happiness - Political Freedom and Happiness -

From Personal Happiness to Public Happiness - Political Freedom and Happiness -

Free and Happy Bonds: Loving v. Virginia's Nineteenth-Century Precedent on Marriage and the Pursuit of Happiness

Loving v. Virginia declares that marriage contributes to the pursuit of happiness. It supports this claim by citing 19th century precedent, precedent which itself drew upon a longstanding view of marriage and happiness's pursuit. This article examines that view in state and federal opinions from the decades surrounding 14th Amendment ratification. The courts saw marriage as fulfilling the human need for community, thereby aiding in the private happiness of those marrying and the public happiness of the political society. Marriage supported private happiness by forming a bond that provided for physical, material, and emotional needs. Courts sought to aid these goals while also protecting spouses' rights. Marriage supported public happiness through creating and educating future citizens as well as cultivating virtuous habits among those married—goals which the courts also sought to protect. The article concludes by discussing the continuity and discontinuity between these 19th century cases, Loving, and Obergefell.

국민행복, 삶의 질, 그리고 공공서비스의 관계 연구

국민행복, 삶의 질, 그리고 공공서비스의 관계 연구

Liberalism and enlightened political economy

The emergence and development of political economy in the Age of Enlightenment is a complex process that shows the richness of a new science able to explain the functioning of a commercial society. The roots of political economy in the philosophical traditions of natural law help to explain its individual and liberal elements, but also its further implications for the development of the notions of human sociability, the common good, public happiness, and the betterment of society. The convergence of these different elements is crucial for understanding the common features of the variety of approaches belonging to the broad categorisation of enlightened political economy.

The battle for Zimbabwe in 2013: from polarisation to ambivalence

AbstractOn the face of it, the triumph of Robert Mugabe and ZANU(PF) in the 2013 elections came as a shock, not least to opposition MDC activists. However, after a period of introspection, many have begun to construct a coherent and wide-ranging account of the result which explores opposition shortcomings, and the revived relationship between the electorate and Mugabe's ZANU(PF). This article, based on interviews with political activists conducted three months after the election, outlines and attempts to explain this account. It explores the way in which a politics of polarisation that dominated Zimbabwe in recent years appears to have given way to a politics of ambivalence: where Zimbabweans once viewed their political landscape as one populated by antinomies, they now see their state and its relation to themselves in more complex and ambiguous ways. As a result, Zimbabweans' conception of the state is increasingly coming to resemble Mbembe's formulation of states as contemporaneously ‘organizers of public happiness’ and wielders of arbitrary violence.

Public Value and Happiness: Evidence from Public Administration in Switzerland

The factors that make people satisfied with their lives have been thoroughly researched by economists. It has been found that individual level, socioeconomic, macroeconomic as well as institutional...

A Research on the Principles of Public Happiness in Luke’s Shrewd Steward Parable in view of Donghak Movement

A Research on the Principles of Public Happiness in Luke’s Shrewd Steward Parable in view of Donghak Movement

On public happiness

Theories of happiness usually consider happiness as something that matters to us from a first-person perspective. In this paper, I defend a conception of public happiness that is distinct from private or first-person happiness. Public happiness is presented as a feature of the system of right that defines the political relationship between citizens, as opposed to their personal mental states, desires or well-being. I begin by outlining the main features of public happiness as an Enlightenment ideal. Next, I relate the distinction between the political and the personal to the distinction between having normative reasons for a particular political arrangement and merely having a ‘pro-attitude’ towards a state of affairs that accords with one's preferred definition of happiness. Following this, I demonstrate why well-being, understood as a normative rather than a purely descriptive conception of personal happiness, nevertheless cannot serve as a normative reason in the political domain. In the final section, I show why normative reason-giving matters for the relationship between citizens, and how such reason-giving relates to public happiness.

Happiness and Wellbeing

Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. Happiness as a concept seems to be readily embraced by the majority of people and appears to be more valued than the pursuit of money, moral goodness or going to heaven. Philosophers and religious thinkers often define happiness in terms of living a good life, or flourishing, rather than simply as an emotion. Happiness economics suggests that measures of public happiness should be used to supplement more traditional economic measures when evaluating the success of public policy. Happy people are healthy people. Happy people live longer and enjoy a greater quality of life. They function at a higher level, utilizing their personal strengths, skills, and abilities to contribute to their own well-being as well as that of others and society. Wellbeing is a contented state of being happy and healthy and prosperous. Psychological well-being refers to how people evaluate their lives. These evaluations may be in the form of cognitions or in the form of affect. The cognitive part is an information based appraisal of one’s life that is when a person gives conscious evaluative judgments about one’s satisfaction with life as a whole. Most people evaluate their life as either good or bad, so they are normally able to offer judgments. People invariably experience moods and emotions which have a positive effect or a negative effect. We can define psychological well-being in terms of internal experience of the respondent and their own perception of their lives. People have a level of subjective well-being even if they do not often consciously think about it, and the psychological system offers virtually a constant evaluation of what is happening to the person.

Arendt's argument for the council system: a defense

In On Revolution and other writings, Arendt expresses her enthusiasm for the council system, a bottom-up political structure based on local councils that are open to all citizens and so allow them to participate in government. This aspect of her thought has been sharply criticized – ‘a curiously unrealistic commitment’ (Margaret Canovan), ‘a naiveté’ (Albrecht Wellmer) – or, more often, simply ignored. How, her readers generally wonder, could Arendt in all seriousness advocate the council system as an alternative to parliamentary democracy? In this paper, I will pursue two distinct but related aims. First, I want to show that Arendt's ideal of council politics is an integral element of her thought. It is connected to – indeed, follows from – some of her most central notions, namely her concept of freedom, her valuation of ‘public happiness’ and her distinction between opinion and interest. Second, I want to defend the ideal in the face of the criticisms that have been levelled against it. I seek to show that it is a cogent and pertinent proposition, not ‘a curiously unrealistic commitment’.

Cesare Beccaria’s On Crimes and Punishments

Cesare Beccaria’s pamphlet, On Crimes and Punishments (Dei delitti e delle pene) of 1764, takes us back to the School of Milan, the core of the Lombard Enlightenment during the latter half of the eighteenth century. This is the only work of the whole School of Milan that almost immediately achieved worldwide fame. Its treatment of the fundamental issues of penal law is one of the main pillars of the age of rights from the Enlightenment down to the present day. To understand the work properly it must be set in context within the utilitarian view of public happiness which was the key element of the whole Italian School at the time.

On the many accounts of public happiness

Economists of the HEIRS association for Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations promote a better understanding of the fundamental importance of sociality for people’s happiness. The 2013 conference on “Public Happiness” did justice to this goal and provided an overview of stimulating new developments in the study of people’s well-being. The special issue focuses on the one hand on social comparison processes that most naturally emerge if people form interpersonal connections. On the other hand, it contributes to the conceptualization of the many different accounts of public happiness.

Public happiness in today’s economics

This paper illustrates the significance of revisiting the idea of public happiness today, by briefly discussing recent contributions, some of which appeared in the IREC review.

The significance of the political: individuality and public happiness

The paper argues that individualist (liberal and conservative) views of the individual and the state are contradictory in regard to each and to the relation between them. In failing to give substantial content to the individual and to the state, they make the former a nonentity, and the latter either unlimited or nonexistent. By contrast, the view of plural individuality, according to which individuals are constituted through relations with one another, offers an adequate account of the individual in which the political plays a substantial role especially through the necessity of public happiness.

Trust as a Key Variable of Sustainable Development and Public Happiness: A Historical and Theoretical Example Regarding the Creation of Money

This article purports to trace the origin of money on the basis of factors in interpersonal relationships, affecting a sustainable development and public happiness, namely trust, reciprocity and the concept of we-rationality. Both the historical approach and the one based on traditional economic theory have been found inadequate mainly because they did not take into account these factors. The hypothesis expounded in the paper is that these values underlay the beginning of economic activity. Initially economic activity was carried out within small human groups. In such groups interpersonal relations were not based on individual self-interest. As a matter of fact, there is historical evidence supporting the notion that the first exchanges were gift-giving and were made possible by trust and reciprocity as expounded by Polanyi (1957) and Sudgen (2000) among others. When the exchanges strengthened between elements of various groups all with the same values and moral characteristics the process to the creation of money started, without any intrinsic value and the presence of any superior authority. In the paper it is also hypothesized that the creation of money is one of the basic factors in the progress of economic and social activity, together with the ancient phenomena as language ad writing. Finally, the paper advocates that in future the economic activity be permeated by those moral values on which a sustainable development can be based. This will, in turn, increase the rate of economic and social growth.

Simulation Games Applications Towards the Exploration of Attitudes Related to the Felicitary Policies

In recent decades among the public debates about the future trends in the society the Economy of Happiness and the Felicitary Policy (Felicity - lat. Happiness) were widely discussed. Felicitary policy is considered as the tool of the implementation of the economy of happiness. This policy is based on happiness, subjective well-being, satisfaction or dissatisfaction with life and various human life aspects. The researches devoted to those issues despite of their preciseness are rather general and summarizing. When changing the direction of the development of the Ssociety the paradigm of knowledge is in the process of inevitable change. The selection of new indicators properly reflecting Society's economic and social status is becoming more and more important. Lithuanian official statistics does not provide the statistical data on the the levels of happiness in Lithuania Society as a whole nor for specific social groups. Thus it is becoming more and more important to explore the Society‘s attitudes and perceptions towards the indicators reflecting the true reality and achieving the proper balance between them. For this purpose one can apply the of simulation models of reality in order to find the proper set of indicators. The choice of balanced indicators can be justified for the Societal needs analysis and for the future development of felicitary policy as the use of Balanced Scorecard (BSC) systems is becomig more and more applicable in public and business life. One of the proposed balanced socrecard framework for the happiness and felicitary policies includes the economic, employment, social, environmental, political, physical and mental well-being indicators. The latter balanced set of indicators of feliccitary policy was chosen as the basis for the simuliation game Towards the happier Lithuania 2020”. The purpose of this article is to analyze and to present the attitudes towards the felicitary policy in Lithuania obtained through the simulation game mehods. The simulation game was conducted January – February, 2014 in Lithuania. Sixty five participants had attended the simulation and were the active part of the research. The outcomes of the simulation game Towards the happier Lithuania 2020 had confirmed that the simulation games can be successfully used as the tools for proper analysis of social issues. The results had also revealed that happier future concept in Lithuanian society was primarily concerned with economic growth, employment and positive social changes. The participants of simulation game had identified and considered the society’s mental and physical health as basis of their personal development rather than the political solution. The environment and its impact on the levels public happiness were evaluated with some controversy. In addition, the simulation game participants did not associate the political matters and freedom rights with the indicators of public happiness.