Relational goods and direct purchase from farmers: estimating the value of the relationship between consumers and producers

Personal relationships can affect economic life, more importantly in alternative food networks. Estimating the value of enjoyment of the relational good produced by consumers’ personal relationship in direct sales from farmers is important to assess how much personal interactions can affect food purchases. We employ different stated preferences models to estimate from a consumer survey in open-air markets in four towns in Italy the value consumers buying directly from farmers attach to their particular choice of a specific vendor. Contingent on the chosen model, the average value of the personal relationship is 13.5-24.4% of their expenditure for fruits and vegetables.

Relational Equality beyond Non-Domination

Non-domination is not the only demand of relational equality. This chapter rejects two important attempts to make sense of demands for other kinds of egalitarian relations, based on the goods of community, friendship, trust, and self-respect. The first is a pluralist, free-standing approach, according to which social equality goes beyond, and sometimes conflicts with, social justice. This approach either leads to egalitarian perfectionism, which should worry liberals, or fails to yield a mandate to shape society according to its demands. The second approach extends distributive theories of equality by incorporating fair shares of the various goods at stake in egalitarian relations. The chapter shows how resulting variants of relation-sensitive distributivism either fail to capture what is distinctive about relational goods, or to yield recognizably egalitarian demands. This result confirms the case for the liberal approach, while underscoring the need to extend it to matters of social status and self-respect.

THE ECONOMICS OF HAPPINESS IN ROBERT MICHELS BETWEEN BENTHAMIAN UTILITARIANISM AND CIVIL ECONOMY

The paper thematizes the problematic relationship between economy and happiness covered by economist Robert Michels (1876-1936) in his book “The Economics of Happiness” written in 1918. In this book Michels, as a true frontier scholar, provides, well in advance of the acquisitions of the modern “science of happiness”, an interdisciplinary reading of the different determinants of happiness and of their interactions, courageously refuting the monistic and reductionist paradigm of neoclassical economy dominant in his epoch. The hedonistic conception of happiness conceived by Michels echoes that formulated by Jeremy Bentham, but Michels, unlike the Utilitarians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, gives it an unexpected twist, by postulating heretically that happiness is the ultimate goal of economy and that wealth is only a means to achieve it. In establishing the primacy of happiness as the main purpose of economic activity, Michels follows in the footsteps of Neapolitan and Milanese Civil Economists of Enlightenment with whom he had other theoretical points of consonance which the paper highlights. However Michels’ conception of happiness differs from Civil Economists’ notion because it is primarily based on individual pleasure and not on relational goods, because it is disconnected from those components of gratuitousness which are immanent to sincere relational goods, because it is detached from the search for Common Good. Finally the paper illustrates the multidimensional and innovative public policies which Michels suggests for the achievement of happiness by invoking a wide range of integrated interventions to be carried out by the State and by the workers’ unions. Keywords: Happiness Economics, Benthamian Utilitarianism, Civil Economy

Why do voters vote? Theoretical concepts and experimental results

The article examines the evolution of the analysis of voters’ behavior when searching for an answer to the question: Why does the a voter vote? It is shown how the approach to the voter as a rational egoistic investor gave rise to what is commonly called the “voter’s paradox” in political and economic theory. Further search was aimed at explaining this paradox. On the one hand, the concept of an expressive voter appears, who expresses himself through participation in elections, on the other hand, we are talking about an altruistic voter who overcomes egoism. The latest theoretical finding was the explanation of participation in voting by attracting “relational goods” that differ in their qualities from both public and private goods. With this approach, the “voter’s paradox” finds the most consistent solution. And it is in this approach the shift from methodological individualism to institutional individualism is most clearly manifested. The authors of the article highlight this shift as a new trend in explaining the reasons for voting. At the same time, it is argued that the considered conceptual diversity is a reflection of the multidimensional features of human nature, and it is this fact that gives rise to the ambiguity and contradiction of experimental results.

The Closer, the Better? Comparing Advisory Councils at Different Government Levels

Advisory councils exist at diverse government levels, making them especially appropriate to address the discussion about scaling up participatory institutions, by comparing their differences across different government levels. We analyze the characteristics of advisory councils in Spain, where they are quite similar at the national, regional, and local levels, allowing a controlled comparison of their functioning and results. Results show similarities across territorial levels and also signs of a better performance of the local and regional ones, especially regarding the satisfaction of participants. Relational goods and different understandings of what policy influence means are crucial explanations of these patterns.