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The Pandemic and Political Behavior: Staying the Course
- Geoffrey C. Layman, Levi G. Allen, James R. G. Kirk, Wayde Z. C. Marsh, Benjamin Radcliff
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- PS: Political Science & Politics / Volume 57 / Issue 3 / July 2024
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 30 January 2024, pp. 414-419
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- July 2024
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Political Behavior is the official journal of the Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior organized section of the American Political Science Association. It publishes research on the political behavior of citizens, political activists, and political officeholders in the United States and around the world. From the perspective of its Journal Impact Factor, the journal’s reputation and impact have grown steadily in recent years. The first and last listed authors of this article served as co-editors-in-chief of Political Behavior from 2019 through 2022. The middle three listed authors served as editorial assistants during this same period.
Contributors
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- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
- Edited by Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
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- 05 August 2015
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- 27 April 2015, pp ix-xxx
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6 - Labor Unions and Economic Regulation
- Benjamin Radcliff, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Political Economy of Human Happiness
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- 05 March 2013
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- 25 March 2013, pp 142-158
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Summary
The market economy is the central institution of the modern world, affecting the nature and quality of human life more than any other. Consequently, it is the internal structures of the market that draw our attention in the search to understand how human well-being is produced and distributed. This in turn takes us to the essential, and in large measure, defining features of the capitalist economy, which we have already had ample occasion to see: economic activity depends on an inherent asymmetry in power between two classes of persons, one of which depends for its livelihood on the sale of its labor power as a commodity, and another who purchases that commodity in order to so profit by. To be sure, the latter class relies on the labor of the former in order to generate the riches it enjoys, but it remains in a superior position because its very ownership over the capital resources that allow production ensure that it itself need not engage in wage or salary labor in order to survive or flourish.
To say that capital enjoys an asymmetrical power relationship with the wage and salary workers it hopes to profit by is not, of course, to say that workers are entirely powerless. Indeed, the theoretical and practical integrity of the market system requires that workers cannot be compelled to work in the way that serfs, slaves, or indentured servants are. Instead, workers and employers must negotiate the wages and other terms of work, through contracts that are enforceable by law. That employers enjoy a natural advantage in the negotiation of the terms of employment by no means suggests that such terms are anything other than the process of a genuine negotiation. The “struggle” between worker and employer, each of whom wishes to maximize his or her position relative to that of the other, then, takes places first and foremost in this process of negotiation, in which not only wages and benefits but also the conditions, hours, and other rules of work are determined. If so, it is natural to look to such details of the labor market itself as a principal aspect of people's lives, and thus, potentially, of the quality of their lives.
Frontmatter
- Benjamin Radcliff, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Political Economy of Human Happiness
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- 05 March 2013
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- 25 March 2013, pp i-iv
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3 - Citizens or Market Participants?
- Benjamin Radcliff, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Political Economy of Human Happiness
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- 05 March 2013
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- 25 March 2013, pp 55-76
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Summary
Before proceeding to examine empirically the consequences for human happiness of Left versus Right economic and social policies, it is necessary to first clarify what, precisely, the argument between these ideological poles is about. This requires in turn an appraisal of the arguments that the Right and Left make about the wisdom of attempting to manage or displace the market through political means. As will become apparent, the underlying axis of conflict ultimately concerns where sovereignty should be presumed to reside: in a self-regulating market of free individuals making free choices or in a democratic process of authoritative allocation through free political competition.
IN DEFENSE OF THE MARKET
The Grand Argument for the Market Economy
The market economy is a fact. The dominance of market ideas in the economic realm inevitably encourages citizens to interpret the wider world in ways that are consistent with market principles. There is thus a tendency for the market outcomes that surround us to appear as part of the natural order, and as such, deserving of respect and, perhaps, even reverence. Socially, we become accustomed to conceiving of the free market as the normal state of affairs, such that the burden of proof appears to be on those who advocate changing or “intervening” in the natural order it seemingly provides. Arguments in favor of markets, then, generally adopt a strategy of discrediting the arguments made against it, resting in effect upon the presumption of innocence that the market has come to enjoy. I examine a variety of such claims presently. In the interim, it may be instructive to actually consider the intellectual case for the market.
Index
- Benjamin Radcliff, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Political Economy of Human Happiness
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- 25 March 2013, pp 199-205
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Introduction
- Benjamin Radcliff, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Political Economy of Human Happiness
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Summary
In 1949, Albert Einstein published an essay in which he asked “how the structure of society…should be changed in order to make human life as satisfying as possible?” This is, of course, the question that has always enlivened and informed democratic politics: What should government do to best contribute to a world in which citizens lead positive and rewarding lives? It is here that we find the foundational issue over which candidates and political parties ultimately base their philosophical appeals to the public – what specific public policies contribute to better lives? Of course, given that the structural conditions that promote happiness are political goods, there is naturally political conflict – which is to say ideological conflict – over what policies we should adopt in furthering the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
This ideological competition is inherent, as we will have ample occasion to see in the pages that follow, because the production and distribution of human well-being takes place within the context of a market economy. As the most basic and important aspects of the “structure of society” are inevitably economic, any approach to “making human life as satisfying as possible” will itself of necessity depend upon the fundamental social choice between the two approaches available for governing a market economy. The Right suggests that we leave well-being to the individual choices of free citizens in a free market, with politics largely limited to maintaining those liberties. The Left, by contrast, maintains that happiness is best served by an activist state that consciously seeks to improve the human lot by grafting principles of equity and justice to market outcomes. For the Right, the economy should be self-governing, and thus ultimately outside the purview of democracy. For the Left, the economy is a center of public power, and thus must be considered as subject to democratic principles, so that its power can be used in the public interest. It is this core distinction that has been the most persistent and contested axis of political debate from the birth of the modern liberal democratic state at the close of the eighteenth century to the present.
4 - The Scientific Study of Happiness
- Benjamin Radcliff, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Political Economy of Human Happiness
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- 05 March 2013
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- 25 March 2013, pp 77-109
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Summary
Before we can begin our empirical appraisal of the effects of political outcomes on human happiness, we must first familiarize ourselves with the social scientific literature on subjective well-being. This chapter is thus devoted to developing the intellectual infrastructure needed to approach well-being in the way we study more conventional topics in the human sciences. I begin with the obvious question of measurement, considering if such a seemingly complex and multifaceted issue as happiness can be studied with survey data. As we shall see, it is now widely agreed that subjective appreciation of life can indeed be approached using such methods.
Given that we can measure subjective well-being, we are in a position to propose and to test theories about its nature and causes, using both individual- and national-level factors as our explanatory variables. I review two types of such theories, before providing the synthesis which informs the present analysis. The first suggests that happiness is largely a function of inner psychological processes, depending variously on genetic inheritance, general personality structures, adaptation to environment, or social comparison. The other suggests just the opposite by maintaining that our happiness depends in the main on the extent to which our needs as human animals are gratified. Although these approaches are sometimes sharply contrasted (see, e.g., Veenhoven, 2009), I argue that they are, for present purposes, complementary.
5 - The Size of the State
- Benjamin Radcliff, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Political Economy of Human Happiness
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- 25 March 2013, pp 110-141
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Summary
For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness. Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of government.
– Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1936)Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.
– Ronald Reagan (1981)In this chapter, we commence our empirical analysis of the political determinants of happiness, beginning with the most obvious and significant question in the traditional debate between Left and Right: Does “big government” improve or impoverish human life? Given the metric of life satisfaction adopted here for assessing quality of life, this seemingly imponderably complex philosophical question reduces itself to a relatively simple empirical question that is within our means to answer: Does a large, activist state tend to make people more or less satisfied with their lives? To use the formula frequently evoked in the United States over this question, is government the solution or the problem?
The size of government, in turn, can be conceived of as having three aspects. The first is the scope of the welfare state, which directly transfers income from its a priori market distribution to a politically determined distribution. The welfare state dispenses unemployment and sickness benefits, family allowances, pensions, and other kinds of income maintenance to those in need. By decommodifying persons in this way, it fundamentally alters, as we have seen, the basic relationship between workers and employers, with what both defenders and detractors agree are profound consequences for individual and society. It remains for us to determine whether, and how, the changes affected by the welfare state influence human happiness.
7 - The American States
- Benjamin Radcliff, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Political Economy of Human Happiness
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- 05 March 2013
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- 25 March 2013, pp 159-176
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This chapter completes the empirical analysis of the political determinants of life satisfaction by shifting geographical focus from the universe of industrial democracies to domestic politics in the United States. Whereas I previously attempted to deduce the consequences of different public policy regimes for quality of life by searching for statistical relationships between these phenomena over countries, I here attempt to find similar evidence when considering only variation across the states of the American federal system. The initial rationale for this strategy is simple enough: this approach allows tests of my basic propositions about the effects of the welfare state, economic regulation, and organized labor using data of an entirely different sort. If these data confirm prior results, this can only improve our confidence in them.
There are, however, particulars that make this extension of the analysis an especially fruitful one. First, by concentrating entirely on a single country, we hold literally constant various cultural, social, and historical aspects of a nation that we controlled for only econometrically in the cross-national study. Although those controls should be more than sufficient for isolating the relationships in question, any refinement in the method of control can, again, only further confirm and extend the earlier findings. While there are certainly cultural variations across regions of the United States, these fade into triviality compared to the differences one observes across countries as disparate as France, Sweden, Ireland, New Zealand, and Japan. This is doubly so since the Second World War, where the sometimes lamented “nationalization” (or “homogenization”) of culture has further eroded what vestigial regional differences in sociocultural patterns existed in a country that has been since the Civil War undeniably a single country, with a single history and culture, at least in comparison to the differences between countries that have previously concerned us.
1 - The Democratic Pursuit of Happiness
- Benjamin Radcliff, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Political Economy of Human Happiness
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- 05 March 2013
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- 25 March 2013, pp 10-28
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Summary
In some of the most familiar and inspiring sentences in the English language, the American Declaration of Independence expresses the spirit of a new political age:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
However vital the first two elements in this trilogy of “unalienable Rights,” it is the last that strikes the most evocative chord in the human imagination. The idea that individuals have a natural right to “the pursuit of Happiness” has proven inspirational across centuries and cultures for an obvious reason: it suggests that the happiness of the ordinary person can be the foundation of a political order. Indeed, as Jefferson explicitly proclaims, the very reason that “Governments are instituted” is precisely to “secure” this right. Thus, the state exists not to serve the interests of a divinely appointed sovereign or a privileged commercial class, but to guarantee the right of all people to lead free and satisfying lives.
2 - Market Democracy
- Benjamin Radcliff, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Political Economy of Human Happiness
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- 05 March 2013
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- 25 March 2013, pp 29-54
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Summary
The prior chapter traced the historical evolution of the idea that the ordinary person has a political right to the “pursuit of happiness,” such that representative governments, which are instituted precisely to protect that right, are inevitably charged with the task of seeing to “the greatest happiness for the greatest number,” even by those who believe that this charge is best served by leaving the task to the market. This basic understanding of happiness and of the role of the state in fostering the conditions necessary for it was seen to be the product of a particular sociopolitical context that is conventionally understood, in today's lexicon, as market democracy. Having provided the structural conditions under which the question of how to maximize human happiness emerges as the central question of politics – that is, having defined the problem – market democracy also supplies the two strategies available for solving it: either (a) resisting popular demands for redistributive and regulatory policies on the hope that a relatively unrestrained market will actually best promote happiness or (b) consciously attempting to use the power of the state to improve human well-being by infusing principles of equity and justice into market outcomes through political means.
As students rather than practitioners of politics, we have the liberty of approaching this situation from an abstract and purely theoretical point of view. The present chapter thus develops a model of capitalist democracy, to illustrate the nature and logic of political competition over the production and distribution of human well-being within the context of the market society. I begin by considering how the essential feature of the market system – the commodification of labor – naturally produces, first, an inevitable division of society into social classes that the institution logically requires, followed by a liberal democratic political order that emerges to protect commodification (and resulting class division) as the market requires, and, subsequently, a pattern of political competition based upon class interests. As we shall see, normal politics within market societies naturally comes to be patterned upon the traditional Left versus Right dimension that was already apparent at the time of the American Founding and the French Revolution.
8 - Between Market and Morality
- Benjamin Radcliff, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Political Economy of Human Happiness
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- 25 March 2013, pp 177-188
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Summary
The empirical findings and theoretical arguments advanced in prior chapters do not by this point require further rehearsal. They can be summarized most succinctly. In the debate between Left and Right over the scope or size of the state, it is eminently clear that “big government” is more conducive to human well-being. As we have seen, the surest way to maximize the degree to which people positively evaluate the quality of their lives is to create generous, universalistic, and truly decommodifying welfare states. The greater the “social wage” that society pays its members, the happier people tend to be. Similarly, satisfying lives are best nurtured by larger state sectors, wherein a larger share of the economy is “consumed” by government in furtherance of the goal of providing public services beyond the immediate subsidies provided through cash subsidies (“transfer payments”) to individuals and families. Overall, it is clear that the quality of human life improves as more of the productive capacity of society comes under political – which is to say, democratic – control. This subjection of the market to democracy thus appears to promote human happiness in precisely the way that advocates of social democracy have always argued.
Similar conclusions emerge when considering political regulation of the economy. Labor market regulations that establish comparatively strong protections for workers appear to achieve their end of making life a more agreeable experience. The empirical evidence is unambiguous: the more we rely on the law to protect employees rather than trust in the market to do so, the more satisfied people tend to be.
References
- Benjamin Radcliff, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Political Economy of Human Happiness
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- 25 March 2013, pp 189-198
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Acknowledgments
- Benjamin Radcliff, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Political Economy of Human Happiness
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- 05 March 2013
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- 25 March 2013, pp vii-viii
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Contents
- Benjamin Radcliff, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Political Economy of Human Happiness
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- 05 March 2013
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- 25 March 2013, pp v-vi
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The Political Economy of Human Happiness
- How Voters' Choices Determine the Quality of Life
- Benjamin Radcliff
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- 05 March 2013
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- 25 March 2013
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Data, methods and theories of contemporary social science can be applied to resolve how political outcomes in democratic societies determine the quality of life that citizens experience. Radcliff seeks to provide an objective answer to the debate between left and right over what public policies best contribute to people leading positive and rewarding lives. Radcliff offers an empirical answer, relying on the same canons of reason and evidence required of any other issue amenable to study through social-scientific means. The analysis focuses on the consequences of three specific political issues: the welfare state and the general size of government, labor organization, and state efforts to protect workers and consumers through economic regulation. The results indicate that in each instance, the program of the Left best contributes to citizens leading more satisfying lives and, critically, that the benefits of greater happiness accrue to everyone in society, rich and poor alike.
The Political Market - Donald Wittman: The Myth of Democratic Failure: Why Political Institutions Are Efficient. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Pp. ix, 229. $29.95.)
- Benjamin Radcliff
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- Journal:
- The Review of Politics / Volume 58 / Issue 3 / Summer 1996
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 05 August 2009, pp. 657-659
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The General Will and Social Choice Theory
- Benjamin Radcliff
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- Journal:
- The Review of Politics / Volume 54 / Issue 1 / Winter 1992
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 05 August 2009, pp. 34-49
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The concept of the General Will has been criticized as being either tyrannical or empirically unattainable. From a social choice perspective, Riker (1982) and others have merged the substance of both perspectives. The new argument maintains that Arrow's Theorem and similar impossibility results imply that the General Will is both dangerous and “intellectually absurd.” While not denying the relevance of the collective choice literature, it is argued that such apocalyptic conclusions are premature.
Assessing the Welfare State: The Politics of Happiness
- Alexander Pacek, Benjamin Radcliff
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- Journal:
- Perspectives on Politics / Volume 6 / Issue 2 / June 2008
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- 09 June 2008, pp. 267-277
- Print publication:
- June 2008
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While there is a vast and highly contentious literature devoted to understanding the economic, social, and political consequences of the welfare state, little attention has been paid to the fundamental question of whether social security programs actually improve the overall quality of human life. We attempt such an appraisal, using the extent to which individuals find their lives to be satisfying as an evaluative metric. Considering national rates of satisfaction in the industrial democracies from the 1970s to the present, we find that citizens find life more rewarding as the generosity of the welfare state increases, net of economic or cultural conditions. The implications for social policy are discussed.