There are three concepts that I find especially important for discerning meaning and values in societal stuctures and systems. These pertain to welfare state accountability; ethically sustainable policies and agency as a structuring principle.
The concept of Welfare state accountability
In the end of 2018 we gathered collaborators to apply for a large-scale Strategic funding project from the Academy of Finland. While we were not lucky enough to be picked for funding, it is important that we proceed with the project idea as it can greatly further knowledge on how the welfare state works as a collective contract framework in contemporary societies. The objective of the project is to answer to the pressing societal need of an ‘evidence-based’ solid proceeding when developing, assisting and evaluating mixed-sectorial services (MSS) in the social and health field. The toughest test is set up for trialing the societal costs and benefits of new MSS by the inquiry into their reach and validity for the most vulnerable populations with complex problems. In this, we have integrated the concept of welfare state accountability (WSA).
The WSA-construct functions as a compass when evaluating a general welfare state value-alignment of welfare service provision. The assessment is made in a synthetization that weighs in the four principle pillars of rule of law (division of power; the legal liability of the welfare state institutions; the basic rights and the parity principle) as well as the historical and executively embedded value base of the Finnish welfare state (such as those of governmental platforms, see Hellman et al. 2017). The welfare state accountability construct is also important for carrying out the work of CEACG’s next contract with the Finnish Institute of Health and Welfare (FIHW). In this, we have integrated plans of explanatory case studies and larger conceptual inquiries into some of the most pressing questions in the subject of social and public policy (social justice, inequality, participation) furthering e.g. knowledge on how gambling revenue-based public good shifts and concurs with civil society interdependency, role divisions and democratic sectorial tasks. This is an important part of conceptualizing societal gambling-related harm.
Ethically sustainable policies
In an ongoing international consortium on ethical implementation of addiction science in governance, we are together with colleagues from Canada and Germany developing an ethics of societal institutions. While including similar elements as the concept of WSA, its primary focus is not jurisdictions’ accountability to citizens. Instead, it is used as a point of reference for transformation of science into ethically sustainable policy (see Hellman 2018). In this, the adherence to certain epistemic dogmas when orienting or interfering in people’s lives is approached and weighed in not only in a view of classic ethical deliberation on autonomy/ freedom of the individual perspective, but also in view of a collective morale and affected sensitive / vulnerable populations (Hellman 2016; Hellman 2017; Hellman et al. forthcoming).
Ethical deliberation can be spelled out as striving towards decisions that sets limits of interference by domination (Gracia 2003). In the case of domination and influence over peoples’ eating, substance use, gambling, screen time, physical exercise etc, the interference is acted out and counteracted simultaneously from many directions: by commercial stakeholders; marketers; the science community; mental health advocates; different NGOs; schools; public influencers (see Hellman 2010). A core question becomes what parts of science and other kinds of knowledge are to be referred to and transferred into policy and practice in order to be ethically justifiable in view of principles of both individuals’ and collectives’ wellbeing?
We define the concept of ethically sound governance as the kind of proceeding that incorporates principles of justifications that do not jeopardize the aims set within the social contract of the common good and does not jeopardize the accountability to the weaker groups that may be harmed by the proceedings. In this work we draw for example Sen’s Capability Approach (CA) and Martha Nussbaum’s (2006) work on facilitating social contexts that promote and secure dignity for all members of society. The same template of collective morale can be used in researching different questions such as cannabis policies and screen time-associated ill mental health.
Agency as a structuring principle
Some of the biggest ideological tensions in the core of societies of today stem from contradictions in our views on peoples’ agency. In ongoing work, which has partly been conducted as a visiting scholar at Harvard University in 2018-2019, I am arguing that agency (capacity, action capability) can be seen as the main principle of governance of our time. In the book “Agency as a Structuring Principle: Unfolding cultural distinction-based control and capability” (work name, forthcoming, hopefully 2020) my main claim is that the ideas surrounding the capacity for individuals to act are central to the moral and cultural apparatus that underpins all policy-making and governance in contemporary society – and increasingly so. It is not action as such, but the idea of agency that is being negotiated whenever we envision change in ourselves or collectives of people.
In the book, I discuss three institutional manifestations of agency thinking, which serve stratifying, disconnecting and representative functions. Agency-based stratification involves the classification of people according to whether or not they possess agency. For example, substance use policy interventions group people according to ability to control the amounts of drinks they consume at a certain level of costs and availability. In disconnected agency understandings, the same distinction is used to turn humans into biopolitical subject-objects. They are presented as governable as objects – biological and physical – that are disconnected from capability and ability assessments, and therefore from stigma. I show that the latter claim is inaccurate and unjustifiable. Finally, notions on representative agency channels views on agency in the form of a substance through which people are empowered or bring about abilities to advocate for populations who lack agency. It involves the idea that it is possible to regain agency and represent others who lack agency and therefore it also has come to permeate service development such as co-production and user engagement.
In the picture below I present the status of our project the A-BRAIN, Lisbon September 2019. (Pic by Christian Hendershot)
