Institutional foundations of global well-being: Democracy, state capacity and social protection

Published date01 November 2021
AuthorAxel Cronert,Axel Hadenius
DOI10.1177/0192512120917186
Date01 November 2021
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512120948917
International Political Science Review
2021, Vol. 42(5) 705 –724
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512120917186
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948917IPS0010.1177/0192512120948917International Political Science ReviewGwiazda
research-article2020
Article
Institutional foundations of
global well-being: Democracy,
state capacity and social
protection
Axel Cronert and Axel Hadenius
Uppsala University, Sweden
Abstract
This is an article about the foundations of human well-being. It makes two integrated
contributions. We first examine well-being around the contemporary world, finding a remarkable
correlation between subjective and objective measures and a considerable variation in overall
well-being among countries. We then argue that certain institutional conditions have laid the basis
for these differences. Integrating insights from several research strands, we outline a new
explanatory model of popular well-being that considers the interactions between three institu-
tional provisions: a well-functioning democracy, advanced state capacity, and an encompassing
social protection system. To test the relationships implied, we used a new dataset involving more
than 100 countries in the contemporary world that extends six decades back in time. Our
investigations indicated that all three factors play a role in promoting popular well-being.
However, to understand how, we need to consider the ways in which they can complement,
substitute and mutually reinforce each other.
Keywords
Well-being, democracy, state capacity, social protection, human development
An old argument
In his classic account in The Politics (Aristotle, 1981: 120–123), Aristotle maintained that a
prime objective of the public community ought to be the fostering of well-being among its
Corresponding author:
Axel Cronert, Department of Government, Uppsala University, Box 514, Uppsala, 75120, Sweden.
Email: axel.cronert@statsvet.uu.se
706 International Political Science Review 42(5)
members. He was content in asserting that his own home state, the city state of Athens, had
better potential to promote that goal than many other communities at the time. In his mind,
accordingly, communities’ ability to safeguard good living conditions for ordinary citizens
was unevenly developed, and a basic precondition, as he saw it, was the institutional struc-
tures that had been established.
This study follows up that contention, focusing on the contemporary situation. As we are
all aware, more or less, there are considerable differences in living conditions in the world.
The f‌irst aim of the article is to document the state of affairs, with respect to well-being
across the globe, shedding new light both on the current situation and developments over
time. The second aim is to propose, and make a f‌irst assessment of, a new explanatory model
of the institutional foundations of popular well-being. Drawing on existing work from
several f‌ields of research, we outline an integrated model focusing on the impact of – and
relationships between – three different factors of institutional nature: democracy, social
protection and state capacity. Using this model, we carried out two sets of statistical anal-
yses on contemporary and historical data from across the world. At odds with the assess-
ment of Ross (2006) and others, our results indicate that all three institutional factors –
including democracy – directly or indirectly play an important role in promoting popular
well-being.
Global well-being across space and time
In the f‌irst part of the study, we mapped the levels of well-being enjoyed by citizens in
different countries around the globe, in the present and over the last six decades. For the
contemporary analysis, we used two kinds of indicators. The f‌irst was of objective character;
it involves conditions that are regarded by experts as signs of a good standard of living. In
the interest of obtaining a relatively broad representation of adequate indicators, we settled
for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP, 2018a) Human Development
Index (HDI). This socioeconomic measure is based on data from three areas. The f‌irst is
the population’s standard of living, represented in the HDI by an indicator of gross national
income (GNI) per capita in constant purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. The second area
concerns access to knowledge, represented by a joint measure of the average and expected
years of schooling. The third is the prospect of a long and healthy life, gauged by an
indicator of life expectancy at birth.
Some earlier research focused on one of these three dimensions. For instance, drawing on
arguments put forward by Sen (1999), certain recent studies have concentrated on mortality
rates or life expectancy measures (Gerring et al., 2016; Touchton et al., 2017). The uphold-
ing of life, no doubt, is a fundamental sign of well-being. In addition, concentrating on one
aspect enhances measurement reliability. However, from the perspective of validity, we
preferred to employ a broader measurement. From this perspective, moreover, it made
sense to apply a mixed approach. Hence, we also included an indicator of subjective well-
being. In this case, people are given the opportunity to state how their life conditions are.
This information is gathered through standardized interviews with representative samples of
people from countries around the world and is summarized yearly in the United Nations’
publication World Happiness Report (Helliwell et al., 2018). This country-level measure of
subjective well-being is based on the average response among respondents when asked to
evaluate their life situation by placing themselves on a ladder between 0 and 10.

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