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This man has found happiness. His, yours, and mine. Unlike the rest of us, Christian Bjørnskov, happiness researcher at Aarhus University, knows what we mean when we talk about being happy. There is the fleeting kind - like when our team wins, for once. The crucial long-term kind. The kind we find with that special someone or feel when reality surpasses our expectations - until we raise the bar, again. There is even the kind of happiness money can buy, provided we spend it on or with other people. Except our children, who don't really make us happy until they move out.
Many experts attribute the Nordic region?s high levels of happiness to factors such as greater relative national wealth, wellfunctioning institutions, or the welfare state model. Instead, economist Christian Bjørnskov argues that the true key to national happiness is social trust ? the ability to trust other people one does not know personally.00The populations in three of the five Nordic countries are also characterized by a very strong sense of personal freedom. These two factors contribute to a fuller and richer life. Bjørnskov ends by discussing to what extent these elements can be exported to other parts of the world. --
"In Happiness, researcher Christian Bjørnskov argues that the basic factors that constitute happiness are mostly universal across cultures. By evaluating studies and theories on happiness that test how family, genetics, religion, wealth, work, and trust factor into our happiness as well as how often we smile or compare ourselves to others, Bjørnskov outlines why our most important source of happiness may be the people around us."--Back cover.
Nine out of ten constitutions contain explicit emergency provisions. During the pandemic, half of the governments with such constitutions has made use of these provisions by declaring a state of emergency. State of Emergency is the first book to analyse the factors that lead to such provisions being included in newly drafted constitutions. It explores their use - as well as their misuse - and explains the effects that using emergency provisions has. Declaring a state of emergency is particularly challenging in federally constituted states as it endangers the balance of powers between the federal level and the states. This book, therefore, pays special attention to this topic. Focusing on two of the most important recent cases relating to emergency provisions: the Covid-19 pandemic and acts of terrorism, this book uses numerous examples to analyse emergency provisions with a rigorous empirical approach.
Foreign aid and overseas military intervention have been important and controversial political topics for over a decade. The government’s controversial target to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on foreign aid has been widely welcomed by some, but strongly criticised by others. Furthermore, the controversy of the Iraq war rumbles on, even today. This is all happening amongst much instability in many parts of the world. In this short book, a number of authors challenge the assumption that we can bring about economic development and promote liberal democracies through direct foreign intervention – whether economic or military intervention. The lead author, William Easterly, drawing on...
Study after study has shown that Scandinavia is the most trusting region in the world. Danes in particular trust other people and organizations--including strangers, businesses, governments, law enforcement, and media--more than the citizens of any other country. And countries with deep pools of social trust are populated by individuals who cooperate with each other in ways that allow public and private institutions to function more efficiently and cheaply. Is the Nordic countries' high level of social trust just as important for creating prosperity and happiness within a population as other, more tangible economic factors? If so, where does this stock of social trust in Scandinavia come fro...
Coups and regime transitions are events that typically are intended to change the basic institutional framework of a country. Which specific policies change and the consequences of these changes nevertheless remains largely unknown. Change after a coup or transition implies that some form of political or judiciary barrier has been erected or removed. We therefore focus on what happens to the quality of judicial institutions and political corruption around coup attempts and other types of regime transitions. We hypothesize that when coups are conducted by members of the incumbent political elite, they are likely to remove barriers to change while coup makers outside of the ruling elite are more likely to do the opposite and thus protect themselves from what remains of the elite in the political system. Using the Bjørnskov-Rode coup data, our results suggest that successful coups are associated with degradation of institutions, with successful military coups in particular having a significant negative effect. Results are more varied for civilian coups where we find indications of differences depending on whether the coup makers are part of a political elite or not.