The Capability Approach

From Theory to Practice

S. Ibrahim,M. Tiwari

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137001436
• Topic: Volkswirtschaftslehre
• Subtopic: Entwicklungsökonomie

How can human capabilities be articulated and promoted in practice? How can the challenges encountered in its application be addressed? This volume answers these research questions through nine country case studies from the Global North and the Global South.

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Introduction: The Capability Approach: From Theory to Practice – Rationale, Review and Reflections

Solava Ibrahim

Introduction

In recent years, the human development and capability approach (HDCA) to development studies has gained increased attention from academics, practitioners and policy-makers. Its freedom-centred view of development, its accounting for interpersonal and intercultural variations, its emphasis on social justice and its stress on public discussion and deliberative democracy have rendered the capability approach (CA) a wider and more comprehensive framework for designing and assessing development policies.

Despite these contributions, one of the main critiques against the capability approach is the difficulty of its application. Only a few attempts have sought to render the capability approach more ‘policy-friendly’ by focusing on the measurement of functionings or by using the capability approach as a framework for assessing well-being, poverty and inequality. Nevertheless, to date no book has been written to exclusively document these attempts nor to explain how the capability approach can be ‘brought out of the realm of ideas’ to the ‘realm of policy’. What does it mean in practice to enhance the capabilities of the poor? Is the capability approach applicable only in the Global South or is it also relevant for policy-makers in the North? What are the difficulties and challenges faced when applying the capability approach in different contexts and how can these challenges be overcome?

This book seeks to address these research questions. The book bridges the gap between development theory and practice, not only by demonstrating how the capability approach can be applied, but also by presenting various case studies from the Global South and the Global North, where scholars have tried to apply the capability approach in diverse contexts and in different domains. The case studies presented in this book cover at least eight country case studies: India, Egypt, Brazil, Ghana, Mongolia, France, Germany and the UK. The case studies sought to explore how the capability approach can be applied in diverse domains, such as gender, health, trade, urban poverty, education and the environment. The chapters are not meant to provide blueprints for how the capability approach can be operationalised; they aim, however, at providing – to a large extent – successful examples of different ways by which the approach can be applied in diverse socio-economic and cultural contexts and with various marginalised groups. Each of the chapters has a particular focus on one or more of these marginalised groups to highlight the CA’s contribution to our understanding of the deprivation and suffering of these groups, such as the ultra-poor women in India and Egypt (Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, respectively), street children in Ghana (Chapter 4), the poor in Brazil and Germany (Chapter 5 and Chapter 8, respectively), the elderly and disabled in the UK (Chapter 7) and small agricultural producers in France (Chapter 10). This rich theoretical and empirical grounding renders the book particularly attractive to development practitioners and academic scholars alike.

The aims of this introductory chapter are fourfold: (a) to review briefly the main contributions of the capability approach to development thinking and explain the importance of rendering it more ‘policy-friendly’; (b) to examine the different ways in which the CA has been operationalised and explain why the application of the CA can be difficult; and (c) to present the conceptual framework of the book and link it to each of the following chapters.

1 The capability approach and its contributions

1.1 What is the capability approach?

The human development and capability approach developed as an alternative development paradigm that challenges standard economic frameworks (Clark, 2006). It puts people at the centre of development discourse and views them as the means and ends of development. The development process itself is conceptualised as the widening of people’s choices and capabilities to help them achieve the lives they have reason to value (Sen, 1999; UNDP, 1990). The capability approach goes beyond incomes and basic needs to highlight the importance of people’s freedoms and agency. Capabilities are the choices and opportunities available to individuals to lead the lives they have reason to value. A capability set reflects the various functioning bundles an individual has the freedom to choose from to achieve the life that she or he has reason to value (Sen, 1987, 1992). The conversion of capabilities and their availability depend not only on resources but also on a number of social, economic, cultural, political and personal conversion factors that can be influenced by development policies. Those choices that have been successfully achieved are called functionings. Functionings thus represent what the individual has succeeded in being or doing (Sen, 1987), whilst capabilities are the various opportunities she or he can choose from.

Although the CA acknowledges the importance of income as a means of development (Anand and Ravallion, 1993), it refuses to conceptualise development merely as command over commodities or resources. The CA also pays special attention not only to the ‘focus’ of development, but also to its processes. This is why the CA accounts for the diverse abilities of people to convert resources into valuable achievements (Clark, 2006). Its main contribution thus lies in its emphasis on people’s freedoms and on the role of people’s agency in achieving ‘development as freedom’.

1.2 Contributions of the capability approach – a brief summary

Conceptually, ‘there can be no doubt that the theory of capabilities is a distinguished contribution to normative economics’ (Sugden, 1993, 1961–1962). By moving beyond the utilitarian and commodity-centred views of human well-being and shifting the focus to human freedoms and capabilities, the CA is definitely a major contribution to development ethics. It reemphasises the primacy of the people as the main focus of development and shifts the attention from means, such as economic growth, to ends: that is, human development. Due to its unique conceptualization of the human good and its characterization of development as capability expansion, the approach led to a paradigm shift in development thinking. With its simplicity and intentional breadth, it constitutes an analytical framework to be operationalised in different disciplines, settings and policy areas. Alkire (2008a) distinguishes between two crucial roles of the human development and capability approach: its evaluative (normative) role and prospective (policy) role. The former explores which and whose capabilities were expanded and by how much, while the latter focuses on how and why capabilities did expand. This is how the approach can enhance not only development ethics, but also development practice.

The CA’s main contributions lie in its emphasis on the multidimensionality of human well-being and its acknowledgment of the heterogeneity of factors that are involved in the valuation of this well-being. Sen often distinguishes between the fasting monk and the starving child, not only to emphasise the importance of freedom and choice, but also to highlight the sensitivity of the approach to human diversity, interpersonal variations and cultural differences. Unlike Nussbaum (2000), Sen (1993) refuses to impose a specific set of valuable capabilities as he stresses the roles of public reasoning and deliberative processes in identifying these capabilities in each socio-cultural context. With this emphasis on information pluralism and the unique valuation of human well-being in terms of freedoms and choices, the capability approach has had a major impact on the conceptualisation of the human development paradigm and has led to its adoption by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as well as the development of different indices to reflect various aspects of human choice (Fukuda-Parr, 2003).

In addition to these conceptual contributions, Sen also stressed the practical relevance of the capability approach to development practitioners in various areas, such as the valuation of living standards, the analyses of inequalities (especially with regard to gender bias), the measurement of capability poverty and the focus on human rights. The deliberate breadth of the approach leaves room for development practitioners to use it in diverse policy areas (Comim, 2001). Whilst constituting one of the main advantages of the approach, this breadth, however, renders the application of the CA in the policy domain highly problematic. The next section explains in more detail why it is important to operationalise the capability approach.

2 Rationale of the book: Why operationalise the CA?

The difficulty of applying the capability approach discourages policy-makers and practitioners from adopting it as a policy framework. Despite this difficulty, this section presents ten reasons why it is still important to operationalise the capability approach and render it more ‘policy-friendly’. The capability approach needs to be operationalised for normative, theoretical, methodological and policy-related reasons.

2.1 From a normative perspective

First, the use of the CA as a framework for policy-making can help bring a new normative dimension into development policy and practice. The CA focuses on what people have reason to value, thus respecting cultural diversity while at the same time establishing common normative principles on which development can be based, such as inclusiveness, fairness, equality and justice. The interpretation of these principles in reality is the real challenge, which will be discussed later in this chapter and in the case studies presented in this book.

Second, unlike other development approaches, such as neo-liberalism and the basic needs approach, the capability approach does not focus on poor countries, but rather on poor people. The case studies in this book cover countries from the Global North and the Global South to demonstrate the flexibility of the approach and its relevance to diverse development contexts. By focusing on people’s freedoms, rather than on their needs or incomes, the approach overcomes the dominant (and false) dichotomy between the ‘rich’ and the ‘poor’ and challenges the asymmetric power relations that underlie dominant development discourses, such as aid and even the Milennium Development Goals (MDGs). By reinforcing the universality of ‘development as freedom’ and stressing the need for each country – at any stage of development – to expand the capabilities of its people, the capability approach challenges the claim that ‘developed’ countries can prescribe development paths for ‘developing’ countries. Instead, it calls upon policy-makers in both contexts to focus on the most deprived and marginalised groups in a society in order to expand their choices and help them strive to achieve the lives they have reason to value.

2.2 From a methodological perspective

Third, the application of the CA will also contribute to challenging standard methodologies to study human well-being and to emphasise the importance of human agency. It is one of the few approaches that considers people not only as the main ‘subjects’ of investigation, but also as the main generators of knowledge and agents of change. Chapter 5 presents an example of such an agent-oriented approach to knowledge generation – an approach adopted by the 2010 Brazilian Human Development Report (HDR). In addition to their role in knowledge generation, people can also induce change by exercising their human agency. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 examine how and why people (for example, women in India and Egypt) act as agents, and it explores the impact of these acts of agency on their wellbeing. Chapter 10, on solidarity economy, demonstrates how consumers in developed countries, such as France, can indirectly act as agents of change by making choices that support small producers in developing countries. The capability approach thus promotes bottom-up processes through which data can be generated by the people and for the people, thus enhancing the relevance and applicability of development policies.

Fourth, attempts to apply the CA are needed because the language of capabilities is still difficult and specialised. To apply the CA, one cannot ask respondents directly ‘how their capabilities are today’. Instead, thoughtful application is needed to capture the (realised and potential) choices of individuals and to identify the constraints on these choices. Designing methodological instruments in order to do so is challenging as it requires, in the first place, reaching a shared understanding of the concept of ‘capability’. To overcome this difficulty, it is important not only to use people as generators of knowledge, but also to account for the possibility of adaptive preferences (Elster, 1982; Teschl and Comim, 2005; Qizilbash, 2006, 2012; Clark, 2012).

Fifth, given the difficulties in identifying and measuring human capabilities (which will be discussed later), most surveys and existing national data sources are rarely suited for identifying or capturing human capabilities. In operationalising the CA, it is therefore important to start by creating disaggregated datasets on diverse dimensions of human well-being that can allow for inter- and intra-country comparisons. Such disaggregated datasets can also help in identifying disadvantaged groups and capturing vertical and horizontal inequalities. Since the CA pays special attention to human diversity, such disaggregated datasets can lead to more targeted policies to ensure that the problems of marginalised groups are addressed. Chapter 7 (Burchardt and Vizard) in this volume brings in age, class, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and other criteria for social stratification into the capability analyses, thereby not only helping to create such disaggregated data sets, but also using them to identify diverse trends of capability inequalities in the UK. Building such datasets is therefore necessary in order to get a broader and more nuanced picture of human well-being within each respective society. The lack of existing datasets to capture these ‘missing dimensions’ is no longer a valid excuse for ignoring them.

Sixth, the operationalising of the CA is necessary in order to go beyond the ‘list-no list’ debate. One of the main differences between Sen’s and Nussbaum’s ‘versions’ of the capability approach is the reluctance of the former to adopt a list. While Nussbaum (2000, 75) argues that ‘such a list gives us the basis for determining a decent social minimum in a variety of areas’, Sen (2004), however, rejects this idea and argues that...