Good Governance and National Well-being: What Are the Linkages?
- John F. Helliwell, Haifang Huang, Shawn Grover, Shun Wang
- Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
- International
A qualitative assessment of the sense of well being, this paper first sets the stage by making an evidence-based case that people’s own evaluations of the quality of their lives provides reliable and inexpensive new ways to show how, and how much, good governance matters. These well-being measures complement and encompass more established indicators of economic and social progress. The paper then brings together the largest available sets of national level measures of the quality of governance, and assesses the extent to which they contribute to explaining the levels and changes in life evaluations in 157 countries over the years 2005-2012, using data from the Gallup World Poll already analysed in some detail in the World Happiness Report 2013. Lastly, it uses subjective well-being research to suggest ways in which governance can be changed so as to improve lives in all countries, as measured by peoples’ own evaluations.
