Organization and Strategy Seminar（2016-02）

Topic：The Political Economy of Human Happiness

Speaker: Benjamin Radcliff,University of Notre Dame

Time: Tuesday, 14 June, 10:00-11:30 am

Location: Room 218, Guanghua Building 1

Abstract:

The study of subjective well-being ("happiness") has emerged as one of the most vibrant research programs in the social sciences. I begin with a brief over-view of the general contours of this field before moving to the main focus of my own research: how different ideological approaches to public policy affect well-being in OECD countries (and across the American States). Working within a class-analytical framework, I find strong theoretical and empirical reasons to conclude that in a market economy context, traditional social democratic policies best promote human happiness. In particular, a generous welfare state, strong labor unions, and economic regulation in the interests of workers and consumers all promote higher levels of well-being, and do so across all income groups. I close with some questions about how this kind of research might be limited by its Western orientation, and how it might be expanded profitably by considering the Chinese experience.

Introduction:

He is an American political scientist and a professor at the University of Notre Dame. He is also affiliated with the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy and the Higgins Labor Studies Program. Best known for his work on the connections between politics and human happiness, his research also encompasses democratic theory, political economy, and the study of organized labor. In a series of scholarly articles in the 1990s, Radcliff attempted a radical reinterpretation of the implications for democratic thought of social theory in general, and Arrow's impossibility theorem in particular. Rather than the familiar suggestion, associated most closely with the work of William H. Riker, that Arrow’s work suggested that democracy must by logical necessity be limited to the minimal form associated with classical Liberalism, Radcliff argued that social choice theory actually supported more robust or populistic conceptions of democracy. This work culmuninated in a 2000 article in TheJournal of Politicsand won the award for best article published in TheJournal of Politicsin that year. Radcliff’s recent work has focused on the social scientific study of happiness within the multi-disciplinary field sometimes labeled as happiness economics. He has also devoted a series of papers to the role that labor organization plays in promoting human happiness. Radcliff's research program has culminated in the publication of his bookThe Political Economy of Human Happiness: How Voters' Choices Determine the Quality of Life. Cambridge University Press (2013).

//politicalscience.nd.edu/faculty/faculty-list/benjamin-radcliff/

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