Gross National Happiness

Chapter 5 examines Bhutan’s singular approach to economic development; pursuing Gross National Happiness rather than the maximization of Gross National Product. “Happiness” in the Bhutanese context does not equate with Western notions of hedonic (“feel good”) pleasure, nor is it fully analogous to Aristotle’s notion of happiness as eudemonia, the sense of deep contentment arising from living a virtuous life. Rather, in the Bhutanese approach, true happiness comes from relieving the suffering of others, living in harmony with nature, and realizing the potential of one’s mind. This deep philosophical and soteriological difference in meaning is what makes the pursuit of “Gross National Happiness” so profound and why it is not merely a multi-dimensional measure of development as it is seen in the West. This chapter explains how Bhutan translates this unique orientation into policies that seek to modernize its economy without sacrificing its cultural traditions.

The Dragon’s Roar

What insights, if any, might modern Western democracies extract from Bhutan’s approach to the challenges of democratization and development? Bhutan’s very distinctiveness, while warning against simplistic attempts to extend Bhutan’s experience beyond its borders, also makes Bhutan particularly intriguing and possibly instructive. Simply put, Bhutan’s approach to democracy and development is “outside the box” of prevailing approaches and therefore, to the extent it is not wholly culturally specific, could provide a genuine alternative way of thinking about longstanding and emerging challenges facing democracies today, including: increasing political polarization, economic inequality, low levels of citizen confidence in the efficacy of governmental institutions, and the environmental and psychological sustainability of the prevailing economic-development model, which is oriented to the goal of ever-increasing national production and consumption. This chapter offers a limited and an extensive view of Bhutan’s relevance to social thinking and practice.

A Buddhist Approach to Politics and Economics

Because Buddhists view political and economic systems as an instrument to a higher end not an end in themselves, Buddhist teachings do not offer a systematic prescription for social organization that one might expect from a Western treatise. Instead, Buddhist social theory can be distilled from a collection of axioms, instructions, and observations that guide possible forms of political and economic organization and practice that can provide conditions conducive to the transcendence of suffering—the uniquely Buddhist dimension of “happiness.” Buddhist political and economic thinking parallels Western thought in many ways, but differs in its emphasis on virtuous government, the duty of care owed to others (not just individual freedoms), and its environmental sustainability ethos. This chapter identifies the points of congruence and departure between Western and Buddhist notions of the good polity and economy.

Current Challenges

Can a small, landlocked country sandwiched between the world’s two most populous countries open itself to the global economy without losing the values that make it a separate sovereign nation? Chapter 6 looks at critical challenges facing contemporary Bhutan such as maintaining its spirituality in the face of global consumer culture, the transmission of traditional values to its next generation, and the protection of minority rights. These assessments draw from longitudinal data on Bhutanese society and its national happiness surveys to offer a real-time assessment of the country’s well-being. The chapter concludes with a historical examination of the impact of Bhutanese government policies on Nepali Bhutanese.

Bhutan’s Nascent Democracy

Moving from theory to practice, Chapter 4 considers Bhutan’s approach to democracy. Beginning with a brief historical sketch, this chapter concentrates on Bhutan’s adoption of a democratic constitution and its early years of implementation in the 21st century. In its structure and function, Bhutan’s democratic constitution and institutions resemble Western parliamentary systems in many ways. But, here too, Bhutanese democracy offers many unique approaches to perennial issues such as checks and balances, the role of political parties, and the integration of cultural values in policy that suggest an alternative to Western democratic practice. The chapter concludes by assessing the status of Bhutan’s democracy and determines that by most measures of democratic consolidation Bhutan has successfully transitioned from a monarch to a democracy in less than a decade.

Introduction

This study asks, “How does democratic governance and economic development differ when founded on Eastern, Buddhist principles, rather than dominant Western, liberal, and Enlightenment values and beliefs?” The small, remote country of Bhutan, the only democratic, market-based state in the world rooted constitutionally and culturally in Mahayana Buddhist principles and ethics, provides a heuristic case study for comparing two distinct approaches to democracy and development. Because the two approaches—Eastern and Western—are based on distinctive philosophical traditions that differ on important, first-order principles, comparison can bring to light new questions, frames of inquiry, and alternative approaches to contemporary democratic theory and practice and broaden our conceptualization of, and policies directed toward, human development.

A Buddhist Philosophical Foundation for Social Theory

Because all political and economic theory and practice are founded on specific, axiomatic convictions and doctrines, this chapter discusses the unique Buddhist philosophical principles that form the foundation for Bhutan’s democratic and development theories and compares this foundation with Western, liberal, Enlightenment principles. The chapter demonstrates that, because of their distinctive ontological, epistemological, and ethical stances, Bhutanese Buddhist and Western liberal conceptualizations of the status of the individual “self,” “human nature,” and “the pursuit of happiness”—the building blocks of democratic theory—are profoundly different. Hence, what constitutes “good government” differs in critical ways, even though both Buddhist and liberal approaches are “democratic.” Likewise, because of their distinctive conceptions of what constitutes human flourishing and happiness, their respective approaches to “appropriate economic development” also differ significantly. The method used here will be dialogical or hermeneutical—relying on interpretation of core teachings.