World Happiness Report 2023 80 step, namely the conditions for the delivery of welfare-enhancing policies. It also stresses that political institutions are vital, not only because they play a key role in policy choice, but also because they can help to sustain state capacities in the long run. Besley and Persson’s framework spells out a theory, which does not rely on simple one-way causation. Its stress of two-way processes and feedback effects makes it difficult to tell a simple story in terms of ultimate drivers, as we explain in the discussion to follow. One of the key ideas is the emergence of development clusters – i.e., different aspects of state effectiveness that tend to appear together. In particular, the data suggest that there are three broad clusters of states in the world today. We order these clusters in a hierarchy and label them (from the top down) as common-interest states, special-interest states, and weak states. Based on this typology and our earlier discussion, we frame the key long-run challenge to promote well-being as the challenge of transitioning to a common-interest state. However, the difficulty of making such a transition cannot be underestimated, given the complementary elements that maintain the three clusters. Indeed, such transitions are extremely rare. Photo by Giammarco Boscaro on Unsplash
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