Subjective Social Indicators and Urban Political Analysis: Or, What Do We Need to Know About Who’s Happy?

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Abstract
One consequence of an interest by social scientists in the policy process is, or ought to be, a tendency towards subversion of the established boundaries of their disciplines, involving both a more pragmatic choice of conceptual approaches or techniques and a questioning of the boundaries of the ‘systems’ with which they are concerned. The argument of this paper is that recent work in the field of subjective social indicators has both implications and potential for students of urban policy-making – but it lies outside the mainstream political science traditions in its generally psychological orientation and its concern for the non-political feelings or attitudes of non-élite actors. Compared with other attitudinal approaches which some political scientists have adopted, its distinguishing features are an emphasis on the affective rather than the cognitive dimensions and a central concern for the measurement of overall states of happiness or quality of life enjoyed by individuals. Its interest for normative analyses of community performance is obvious, as is its potential as a general framework for organizing attitudinal data. However, it is less clear that the areas of experience (domains) or the dimensions of attitudes which are emphasized are particularly suited to the needs of urban political scientists.

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