Should Happiness-Maximization be the Goal of Government?

Recent social surveys of happiness (subjective well-being) have given a new stimulus to utilitarian political theory by providing a statistically reliable measure of the ‘happiness’ of individuals that can then be correlated with other variables. One general finding is that greater happiness does not correlate strongly with increased wealth, beyond modest levels, and this has led to calls for governments to shift priorities away from economic growth and towards other social values. This paper notes how the conclusions of this research help to address some of the traditional objections to utilitarianism. The question of how happiness research findings can be used to set happiness-maximization goals for public policy needs careful examination, as the translation from research to policy is not always straightforward. Some empirical and ethical objections to this ‘new utilitarianism’ are raised. The complicating factors of public expectations of, and trust in, governments pose obstacles to any proposal that happiness research may lead to changes in public policy and hence to ‘happier’ populations.     

Religious Organizations and Government: An Ecclesial Lutheran “Take”

Sharp debates exist today about the appropriate relationship between religious organizations and government, with views ranging from Christian nationalism to strict secularists. This essay explores a mediating position expressed in the conceptual phrase that religious bodies should “work with civil authorities in areas of mutual endeavor, maintaining institutional separation and functional interaction.” The essay uses historical and ecclesial sources to describe the struggles and underpinnings that lead to this position and then unpacks its meaning and import. While originating from within the conceptual and ecclesial American Lutheran tradition, the essay points to this approach as a public proposal for sound relationship between religious communities and political authority in the United States.     

Tricking or Benefitting the People? Guanzi on Objective Government and Subjective Preferences

This paper discusses Guanzi’s philosophy regarding how the state should levy taxes. As Guanzi writes, people react individually to what they perceive as taxes, whereas government wants people not to react at all and simply pay the levies. Based on a philosophical analysis of human action, Guanzi suggests introducing a consumption tax on salt and iron. First, people have no way of evading them; second, because of the implicit character of the tax, people will not notice it. Therefore, these taxes will not influence behavior. This paper uses this discussion as a case study in order to show how Guanzi’s philosophy differs from other forms of Legalism. It will be shown that Guanzi is foremost a pragmatic thinker willing to use Confucian and Legalist elements, amalgamating them into policy-advice. The paper, however, does not discuss issues of Sinology as they relate to the text of the Guanzi, taking the text instead as a philosophical body.     

Rhetorics of Health Citizenship: Exploring Vernacular Critiques of Government’s Role in Supporting Healthy Living

This article explores how older adults negotiate and partially counter normative expectations of “health citizenship” that stress individual responsibility for maintaining health and preventing health problems. Based on interviews with 55 participants in Canada and the U.K. about what healthy living means to them in their everyday lives, we examine how the dominant discourse of personal responsibility in participants’ responses is counterpointed by a more muted, yet significant, alternative critical perspective on the relative roles and responsibilities of government and citizens in making healthy living possible. Drawing on Hauser’s (1999) concept of vernacular rhetoric along with recent theories of environmental citizenship, we analyze how participants exercise their civic-political judgment by using a logic of dissociation to argue that what government says about the importance of healthy living is incompatible with what government does to support citizens’ abilities to eat healthily and live actively. By deploying this technique of argumentation to address structural-political-economic dimensions of healthy living, participants enact, in modest ways, an alternative, critical-collective mode of health citizenship that complicates and, at least partially, disrupts neoliberal constructions of the individually responsible, “good” health citizen.     

What can Prudent Public Regulators Learn from the United Kingdom Government’s Nanotechnological Regulatory Activities?

This contribution discusses the United Kingdom (UK) government’s regulatory activities related to nanotechnological development. The central question is what other prudent public regulation can learn from the UK government’s regulatory strategy, its regulatory attitude and its large variety of regulatory measures. Other public regulators can learn from the interactive and integrative UK regulatory approach. They can also draw lessons from the critique on the UK government’s regulatory attitude and its problems to cope with specific nanotechnological challenges. These lessons are based on an evaluation of the UK government’s regulatory activities from the viewpoint of prudent regulation. The notion of responsive regulation, which provides basic ideas for the evaluation methodology, refers to a view on prudence that focuses on moral constitutional values. Interestingly, a similar view on prudence has been discussed in nanoethics.     

Pan-Islamism in Afghanistan in the Early Twentieth Century: From Political Discourse to Government Policy, 1906–22

The idea of pan-Islamism in Afghanistan emerged after the foundation of the Constitutional Party in the early 1900s. The party was an underground organization which had cells in an educational institution, the royal court and among the foreign group (Indians) employed in government departments. Pan-Islamism served to unite various political forces toward certain political and cultural goals. After the accession of Amanullah to the throne in 1919, pan-Islamism became a state policy. It served as the key to the government's foreign policy, especially towards the two imperial powers in the region, Britain and Russia. Amanullah used it as a means to fulfil his political expansionist ambitions. This article examines what pan-Islamism meant to the Constitutional Party and to King Amanullah, the reasons behind their approaches, and the political context that made pan-Islamism the most appealing ideological and political strategy for them. The article also explores the means the party and Amanullah used to propagate pan-Islamism.     

Evidence‐Based Practices Reduce Juvenile Recidivism: Can State Government Effectively Promote Implementation Among Probation Departments?

California places tens of thousands of juveniles into its 58 county-based justice systems every year. The offenders do not generally experience reduced rates of recidivism. Evidence-based practices can reliably and significantly reduce these rates. Probation departments have infrequently chosen to implement these practices, in large part because of the training, data collection, and organizational change required. Current state law does not effectively mandate these practices and more importantly fails to recognize and fund the substantial and ongoing training and technical assistance that would be required to implement these practices. State government could best promote evidence-based practices by working collegially with probation departments to obtain and distribute private and public funding to support effective implementation.     

Consider Stages of Development in Preventing Terrorism: Does Government Building Fail and Terrorism Result when Developmental Stages of Governance are Skipped?

Countries, governments, and cultures must move through each of the stages of human development (Commons et al. (1998). Developmental Review, 8(3), 237–278) sequentially. Each stage must be achieved, and failure to recognize this may be a major contributing factor to the rise of terrorism and crime in a society. For example, in a war-like situation, an occupying country’s attempts to have the conquered country jump developmental stages will fail more often than not, possibly resulting in negative sentiment and terrorist behavior among those in the occupied country. Although the US is great at winning small wars such as those against Afghanistan, Grenada, Haiti, Iraq, and Panama, it fails at making and maintaining peace and, in turn, creating democracies. This article will address the reasons why this may be, and what can be done to improve upon our current “hit or miss” policies. We will address some of the developmental stages of the tasks of governing, and some of the means by which government activities may move up in stage. Finally, we suggest reasons why the US has had its various successes in preventing or reducing terrorism when it helped itself and other countries move up in stage and failures when it did not, and why governments in general should move up to more complex stages to reduce the number of terrorists generated.