Well-being is what is “good for” somebody. Surely it is a good thing if people’s well-being increases. But this is a challenge for public policy because “the good” is not something we can determine scientifically. Liberal democracies empower citizens to make such value judgements through the political process instead.
At the same time, there are better and worse
theories of well-being and their elements can be studied empirically.
Psychologists, for example, associate meaning in life with well-being and study
it with surveys; and economists often use statistical techniques to study the
possible contributors to well-being. Policies should also have a sound basis in
evidence.
This means that well-being public policy (WPP)
has both technocratic and democratic elements—two modes that typically clash.
How can these be balanced? And what methodology could the public policy process
adopt to turn this tension into an asset rather than a threat?
In his recent book, “The
Good Life: Unifying the Philosophy and Psychology of Well-Being”,
Philosopher Michael Bishop proposes fostering collaboration across academic
disciplines with differing views of well-being. His “inclusive approach” has
interesting lessons for WPP.
Bishop notes that there is a theoretical
impasse. The main theories of well-being all have adherents and centuries of
debate has not resulted in conclusive victory for any one account. Part of the
problem is that philosophers rely on “intuitive judgements” for evidence, and
there are many reasonable intuitions about well-being that are incompatible
with other reasonable intuitions.
For example, consider someone who is dying of a
terminal disease at the end of a good life. They say they’ve had a good innings
and are satisfied with their life. Some theorists argue that this
subjective judgement is what matters for this person’s well-being. But they’re
dying! Surely they are not well?
Now consider Lester Burnham, the protagonist of
American Beauty. He is wealthy, successful, and was happily married with
a family. Now he’s having a mid-life crisis with attendant depressive episodes.
Objectively he’s in a great situation, but subjectively he’s depressed. Surely
he is not well?
Bishop thinks that arguing over such intuitive
judgements will never conclusively determine what is and is not
well-being. A more practical approach is to be ‘inclusive’. Let’s assume that
everyone studying well-being is in fact studying the same phenomenon,
just from a different perspective. They are like the proverbial blind men and
the elephant—each mistakes the part they feel for the nature of the whole
creature. Let’s then set about analysing where perspectives overlap, where they
clash, and in what ways they can be unified.
This “inclusive” approach can be readily
applied in contemporary WPP efforts. Experts from many disciplines are often consulted
regarding what well-being is and how it should be measured. Unhelpfully, the
experts disagree. Psychologists, for example, insist that well-being is some sort
of mental state and should be measured with psychometric surveys. Economists
are affronted, replying that well-being must be defined as the ability to
satisfy one’s preferences, and should be measured objectively.
Adopting the inclusive approach in these
debates could help experts to appreciate the unique perspective of each
discipline. The economists’ penchant for preference satisfaction, for example,
is driven by a desire to protect liberal political norms that aren’t often
considered by psychologists. Preference satisfaction in turn is largely useless
to a psychologist interested in things like mood and optimism.
A problem for the inclusive approach is that
while it is reasonable it is not pragmatic. WPP needs some ways forward urgently.
A parallel approach was recently proposed by
Anna Alexandrova in her book “A
Philosophy for the Science of Well-Being”,
namely ‘mid-level theories’. Alexandrova argues
that a one-size-fits-all grand theory of well-being is not forthcoming. Taking
an inclusive approach to finding one might therefore be a waste of time. We
should instead embrace contextualism and develop many theories and
metrics of well-being for specific policy areas. Mental health is salient issue
in social policy, for example, but less relevant to infrastructure spending.
An advantage of mid-level theory building is
that by breaking WPP up into chunks it makes policy manageable and
democratisable. The development of WPP does not need to be a top-down
enterprise driven by government and national statistical agencies. It can be
delegated to line areas to develop theories and metrics that suit their work.
These line areas can use their service delivery
arms and ‘street-level bureaucrats’ to engage the public directly in
participatory processes like mini publics and other coproduction fora. In this
way, the value-laden notion of well-being and how it is measured for WPP can be
democratised. Such procedural justice can indeed be a
source of well-being in its own right.
WPP has until now tried to achieve such
democratisation through wide ranging consultations with citizens. While
somewhat effective, this process is plagued by the same problems of clashing
intuitive judgements and perspectives as academic debates. The size of these
ventures also makes it difficult to distil nuanced theories of well-being for
narrow but complex policy contexts like adult education, industrial strategy,
or climate change policy.
A challenge for a bottom-up approach like
mid-level theory building is scaling and generalising results for benchmarking
and budgeting decisions. But recall that top-down processes in WPP are
characterised by deep disagreements. What they produce is therefore likely to
be determined by the most powerful voices in the room, especially if the
process is rushed. This is not a recipe for democratic or even technically sophisticated
outcomes. A mid-level approach to policy is therefore pragmatic even if less
exciting than a grand theory.
This article is adapted from “Improving
Interdisciplinary Research in Well-Being: A Review, With Further Comments, of
Michael Bishop’s The Good Life: Unifying the Philosophy and Psychology of
Well-Being”, in Journal of Happiness Studies. Read the full article here.
A version of this article originally appeared here, at the What Works Centre for Well-Being blog.
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