State Intervention and Life Satisfaction Reconsidered: The Role of Governance Quality and Resource Misallocation

To what extent does state intervention in the market condition how individuals subjectively experience the lives that they lead? Prevailing attempts to understand the relationship between state intervention and subjective well-being have yielded mixed empirical results. However, these differences result from omitted variable biases, not different methodological choices. Drawing on insights from the new social risk and quality of governance literatures, this article contends that the policy orientation and administrative quality of welfare state programs jointly condition the effect of state intervention on life satisfaction. State intervention exerts a strong positive effect on perceived satisfaction with life when the quality of administrative institutions is high and policy interventions focus on insuring individuals against newer, post-industrial forms of market risk. This main hypothesis is tested and confirmed against an empirical analysis of survey data taken from Wave 5 of the World Values Survey. Related Articles: Flavin, Patrick, Alexander Pacek, and Benjamin Radcliff. 2011. “State Intervention and Subjective Well-Being in Advanced Industrial Democracies.” Politics & Policy 39 (2): 251-269. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2011.00290.x/abstract Dekker, Fabian. 2010. “Self-Employed without Employees: Managing Risks in Modern Capitalism.” Politics & Policy 38 (4): 765-788. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2010.00257.x/abstract Ariely, Gal. 2011. “Why People (Dis)like the Public Service: Citizen Perception of the Public Service and the NPM Doctrine.” Politics & Policy 39 (6): 997-1019. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2011.00329.x/abstract Related Media: Film Clips: Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. 2009. “Videos of Morning Sessions.” http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/en/index.htm Veenhoven, Ruut. 2013. “World Database of Happiness.” http://www1.eur.nl/fsw/happiness/ ?En que medida condiciona la intervencion estatal en el mercado la forma en la cual los individuos perciben subjetivamente su vida? Intentos predominantes de entender la relacion entre intervencion del estado y bienestar subjetivo han producido resultados empiricos mixtos. Argumentamos aqui que tales diferencias resultan de sesgos omitidos de variables, no de diferentes elecciones metodologicas. Recurriendo a desarrollos de la literatura reciente sobre riesgo social y calidad de la gobernanza, este articulo plantea que la orientacion de las politicas y la calidad administrativa de los programas de bienestar condicionan de manera conjunta el efecto el efecto de la intervencion estatal en la percepcion individual de satisfaccion de vida. La intervencion del estado ejerce un fuerte efecto positivo sobre la percepcion de satisfaccion de vida cuando la calidad de las instituciones administrativas es alta y las intervenciones de politicas se enfocan en asegurar a los individuos contra nuevas formas de riesgo posindustrial. Esta hipotesis central es probada y verificada en un analisis empirico de datos tomados del estudio Wave 5 of the World Values Survey.