Nussbaum on the Capabilities Approach

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Nussbaum on the Capabilities Approach

Article in Journal of Human Development and Capabilities · February 2013

DOI: 10.1080/19452829.2013.762175

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Frances Stewart University of Oxford

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Nussbaum on the Capabilities Approach

Frances Stewart

To cite this article: Frances Stewart (2013) Nussbaum on the Capabilities Approach, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 14:1, 156-160, DOI: 10.1080/19452829.2013.762175 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19452829.2013.762175

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Nussbaum on the Capabilities Approach

FRANCES STEWART

Frances Stewart is Professor Emeritus in Development Economics at Queen Elizabeth House (Oxford Department of International Development), University of Oxford, UK

Martha Nussbaum’s Creating Capabilities (2011) provides an illuminating account of the capabilities approach (CA), written in a highly accessible way, by one of the two major originators of the approach. The book explores the intellectual origins of the approach, as well as its main features, and ends with a list of priorities for future work. It will be an invaluable guide to students of the approach.

To a considerable extent,Creating Capabilitiescan be read as a fascinat- ing dialogue with Amartya Sen, the other originator of the approach. There are, of course, central agreements between the two—notably in regarding progress as consisting of increasing the capabilities of people to be and do a variety of things; that human agency and human dignity are of foundational importance; and that there is a range of valuable capabilities that are essentially incommensurable—such that any evaluation of progress must be plura- listic and cannot be summed into a single number. This, in contrast to many approaches to evaluation, indicates that a society may experience progress on some fronts and regress on others; and, similarly, one society may be better than another in some respects but not in others. The utilitarian approach is rejected by both, for similar reasons—because utilitarianism aggregates achievements to a single number, and because of its neglect of adaptive and interactive preferences as well as its neglect of agency and of

‘physical’ conditions. Both Sen and Nussbaum centre the approach on the individual. However, unlike Sen, Nussbaum includes sentient animals in the population whose dignity should be respected and capabilities enhanced, although she is vague on how one might treat trade-offs between enhancing human and animal capabilities. Both say too little, in my opinion, on societal aspects, including social institutions and social norms, and their role in enhancing (or worsening) capabilities.

While there are differences of detail and nuance between Sen and Nuss- baum (and indeed in their thinking as it has evolved over time), the major difference is in how nearly the approach comes to being a theory of justice.

Nussbaum robustly asserts that the approach does present (or comes close to) a theory of social justice. It dictates what a just society is—in her view, one that ensures all 10 of her central capabilities are achieved for all individuals (and presumably sentient animals) above a (undefined) threshold level.

Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 2013

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She argues that the government has the duty to ensure that such justice is met at a national level, and that there are similar obligations at an international level, where in the absence of global government (an absence of which she approves), international treaties and organizations bear the responsibility. In contrast, Sen presents the capability approach as an evaluative framework, but denies that it represents a theory of justice—indeed, in The Idea of Justice(Sen, 2009) he rejects the possibility of a satisfactory comprehensive theory of a just society; and his approach is essentially participatory, leaving it to individuals and democracies to determine which valuable capabilities to pursue, and who (the government, civil society, the market) should pursue them in any particular context.

Nussbaum’s more normative approach renders her more open to the criticism of taking a paternalist (or perhaps Tiger Mother) approach. She claims that her list is the result of an overlapping consensus, but we need much more justification than is given in this short book before accepting the list. (She has, of course, provided more detailed arguments in Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach [Nussbaum, 2000].) But my reaction to what is presented in Creating Capabilities (and to an extent inWomen and Human Developmenttoo) is that a defini- tive acceptable list cannot emerge from the pen of just one person, however distinguished, but must be the subject of widespread discussion among philosophers, political scientists and, above all, people worldwide. The assertion that this list does represent an overlapping consensus implies that it is indeed the end point of such discussions—and the book provides some evidence that previous philosophers have taken a similar approach.

But we, and more particularly governments who are given the responsibility of executing the program, need more evidence that this is the case than is given here—although Nussbaum does leave governments and other local agents considerable leeway in interpretation of the central capabilities and in determining thresholds.

Creating Capabilities contains many invaluable insights and expla- nations—I was fascinated by the accounts of the philosophical antecedents going back to Aristotle and the Stoics. However, it is less good on the more recent origins, ignoring the many prior attempts to displace gross national product (GNP), including Dudley Seers (1972) who talked of ‘the dethrone- ment of GNP’, the Physical Quality of Life Index (Morris, 1977), and the Basic Needs approach (Ghai and International Labour Office, 1977; ILO, 1976; Stree- ten and World Bank, 1981). It also gives little attention to the socio-economic and political context that influenced the early attempts to displace GNP, and provided the context for the popularity of the CA and human development—

the way that growth in the 1960s and 1970s failed to eliminate poverty and discredited trickle-down, followed by prolonged depression in some regions in the 1980s, which was overseen by economists at the IMF and the World Bank and was associated with rising poverty and worsening human conditions.

The firstHuman Development Report, published in 1990, came at a time of a desperate need for an alternative approach (UNDP 1990).

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At the end of the book there is a list of priorities for future work in the CA framework. I have no objection to any of those listed, but my own priorities and/or emphasis would differ. First would be the role of social institutions, including social norms. These play a critical role in the achievement of vir- tually every capability: partly in the provision of services—health facilities, social clubs or micro credit, for example; partly in the way social norms influence how government-provided facilities are used or not (e.g. whether chil- dren go to school as well as health behavior and health outcomes; and partly because the formation of groups—including women’s groups, ethnic associations, and producer groups as well as a variety of political associations—forms a vital influence over government policy and market shares.

Moreover, society, particularly but by no means only the family, is a critical element in the development of individuals, their attitudes and choices, in a way that goes way beyond influence over particular capabilities, to the actual formation of identity. As a subset of this area of enquiry I would give priority to the role of religious institutions in affecting norms, agency, and political choices, and how these can best be guided to be supportive of CA.

A second (and to some extent overlapping) priority for me would be the political economy of human development—going beyond the exploration of political institutions (which Nussbaum advocates) to understanding the power of interests and those of countervailing pressures. For example, as a result of corporate pressures, welfare states are being dismantled in some places, making regress on human development probable.

My third priority is further exploration of equality, both vertical and horizontal, in normative, descriptive, and analytic terms. Sen (1980, 1992) has, of course, made major contributions here, in arguing for a change in the space in which inequality is measured; and in developing indices of vertical (and, in relation to gender, horizontal) inequality. Nussbaum’s approach to equality issues is more normative. Like Kant, she starts from the fundamental premise that the dignity of each individual should be given equal respect;

and argues that in practical terms this implies that each individual should achieve the threshold level of each central capability. Yet this could be consist- ent with considerable inequality. I would argue that the fundamental principle of equal dignity could be interpreted to imply a more egalitarian conclusion.

More work is needed on normative analysis of inequality from a CA perspec- tive, on forces determining changes in inequality (in the space of plural CA), and on policy analysis to reduce inequality, although some has been initiated (for example, Samman et al., 2011; Cornia and Martorano, 2011; Stewart, 2009).

Of course, a list of topics on which further work is needed is potentially very long. But it is worth mentioning one further area: that is, to bring the growing empirical evidence to bear on the CA approach. Despite the Human Development and Capability Association, this book indicates how limited philosophers’ knowledge (or, perhaps, interest in or valuation) of this is, with the consequence that Nussbaum’s chief empirical example, to which she repeatedly returns, concerns the life of one poor Indian woman.

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Yet the randomized methods increasingly adopted by economists are produ- cing a great deal of empirical evidence at the micro-level that could shed considerable light on how to achieve particular capabilities, the restraints that are preventing successful outcomes, and the inter-linkages among different capabilities, enabling the identification of ‘fertile functionings’ (see, for example, Banerjee and Duflo [2012] for a summary of much of this research). Yet the micro-economists seem to lack an underlying theory—so what they choose to examine appears nearly as random as their methods. Hence, bringing the CA framework to bear on their work could greatly enhance its value. Similarly, there has been quite a bit of work at the macro-level, exploring linkages between human development outcomes and economic growth and the factors that are likely to lead to strong linkages between the two (see, for example, Ranis et al., 2000; Suri et al., 2011), which is highly relevant towards the design of policies towards CA, yet is ignored in this book.

These comments should in no way be taken to detract from my overall view: this is a highly stimulating and insightful book and a great introduction to the CA approach. It is likely to become essential reading for development practitioners and for students.

References

Banerjee, A. V. and Duflo, E. (2012)Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, Penguin, London.

Cornia, G. A. and Martorano, B. (2011) ‘Democracy, the New Left and income distribution: Latin America over the last decade’, in V. Fitzgerald, J. Heyer and R. Thorp (Eds)Overcoming Per- sistent Inequality and Poverty. Papers in Honour of Frances Stewart, Palgrave, London, pp. 172–199.

Ghai, D. P. and International Labour Office (1977) The Basic-needs Approach to Develop- ment: Some Issues Regarding Concepts and Methodology, International Labour Office, Geneva.

ILO (1976)Employment, Growth and Basic Needs: A One-world Problem, ILO, Geneva.

Morris, D. (1977)The PQLI: Measuring Progress in Meeting Human Needs, Overseas Develop- ment Council, Washington, DC.

Nussbaum, M. (2000)Women and Human Development: A Study in Human Capabilities, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Nussbaum, M. (2011)Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach, Belknap Press, Cambridge, MA.

Ranis, G., Stewart, F. and Ramirez, A. (2000) ‘Economic growth and human development’, World Development, 28, pp. 197–220.

Samman, E., Ranis, G. and Stewart, F. (2011)Inequality in Multiple Dimensions of Human Development, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford.

Sen, A. K. (1980) ‘Equality of what?’, in S. McMurrin (Ed.)Tanner Lecture on Human Values, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 197–220.

Sen, A. K. (1992)Inequality Reexamined, Clarendon Press, New York.

Sen, A. K. (2009)The Idea of Justice, Allen Lane, London.

Seers, D. (1972) ‘What are we trying to measure?’, Journal of Development Studies, 8(3), pp. 21–36.

Stewart, F. (2009) ‘Horizontal inequality: Two types of trap’,Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 10, pp. 315–340.

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Streeten, P. and World Bank (1981)First Things First: Meeting Basic Human Needs in the Developing Countries, Oxford University Press, New York.

Suri, T., Boozer, M., Ranis, G. and Stewart, F. (2011) ‘Paths to success: The relationship between human development and economic growth’,World Development, 39, pp. 506–522.

UNDP (1990) Human Development Report 1990: Concept and Measurement of Human Development, Oxford University Press, New York.

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