What do British banks and prisons have in common? They are both part of systems designed to manage risks and that are now part of the problem. We need to break the cycle by opening up policy-making to more experimental, less familiar forms of intervention and regulation. What is there to lose, tha
The fall-out from the financial crash is continuing to destroy lives around the globe, yet the power of economists is being entrenched, rather than questioned. In this debate, we bring together anthropologists, sociologists, historians and heterodox economists to ask and answer the big questions.
As Britain publishes its first 'national wellbeing indicators', OurKingdom wraps up our debate on happiness. Here, the editor of the debate looks back on the series of articles inspired by the growing interest in happiness shown by politicians, economists, statisticians and psychologists.
Democratic states want to prove their success to their citizens and one way to do this is to incorporate the feedback from them about their 'wellbeing'. Is personalised government about making citizens happy or pleasing the state?
William Davies interviews the co-founder of Action for Happiness to explore the philosophy, politics and economic implications of the happiness agenda
The happiness 'movement' has the potential to transform society, but do its proponents know what they're doing? William Davies sets out four strands of the debate - philosophical, statistical, economical and psychological - and shows how confusion between them is hindering progress
What is progress? Could our societies grow richer but everyone get more miserable? Is output the best measure of a nation's success? Such questions bring OurKingdom and openEconomy together to launch the Happiness Debate, which opens with an essay by Will Davies on the relationship between happine
A brief critique of the abuse of the term 'fairness' in British politics.
Will Hutton’s latest book on British political economy is uncannily of its time. In arguing that ‘fairness’ should be the measure of all political and economic relations, writes William Davies, he has performed a crucial service in erecting some principles by which the ‘fairness’ of coalition poli
Fairness is all the rage, it was Gordon Brown's mantra, is claimed by the Lib Dems and advocated by the UK's new one-nation Tory premier David Cameron. What chance does the concept have with friends like these? As Labour prepares for opposition it might be advised to try and different approach.
