Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice The Capability Approach Re-Examined, 2017a
Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice The Capability Approach Re-Examined, 2017a
Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice The Capability Approach Re-Examined, 2017a
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
4. Critiques <strong>and</strong> Debates<br />
207<br />
<br />
When Amartya Sen introduced the capability approach in economics,<br />
there was some scepticism about its potential for empirical research. For<br />
example, Robert Sugden (1993, 1953) famously wrote:<br />
Given the rich array of functionings that Sen takes to be relevant, given<br />
the extent of disagreement among reasonable people about the nature<br />
of the good life, <strong>and</strong> given the unresolved problem of how to value<br />
sets, it is natural to ask how far Sen’s framework is operational. Is it<br />
a realistic alternative to the methods on which economists typically<br />
rely — measurement of real income, <strong>and</strong> the kind of practical cost-benefit<br />
analysis which is grounded in Marshallian consumer theory?<br />
What Sugden <strong>and</strong> other early welfare economic critics of the capability<br />
approach, such as John Roemer (1996, 191–93) were looking for, is<br />
a theory that is fully formalised <strong>and</strong> provides a neat algorithm to<br />
address questions of evaluation <strong>and</strong>/or (re-)distribution, resulting in<br />
a complete ranking of options. That requires two things: first, to be<br />
able to put the capability approach in a fully formalized model which<br />
can be econometrically estimated. This requires us to move beyond<br />
the welfare economic models as we know them, <strong>and</strong> may also require<br />
the collection of new data (Kuklys 2005). In addition, it requires us to<br />
accept that the different dimensions (functionings <strong>and</strong>/or capabilities)<br />
are commensurable, that is, have a common currency that allows us to<br />
express the value of one unit of one dimension in relation to the value<br />
of one unit of another dimension. One-dimensional or aggregated<br />
evaluative spaces are, ultimately, a necessary condition for conducting<br />
empirical work in contemporary mainstream welfare economics. Yet<br />
there may well be a trade-off between the number of dimensions <strong>and</strong> the<br />
informational richness of the evaluative space on the one h<strong>and</strong>, <strong>and</strong> the<br />
degree to which the theory can be formalised <strong>and</strong> can provide complete<br />
orderings of interpersonal comparisons on the other h<strong>and</strong>. Some<br />
welfare economists are working on the question of how to aggregate<br />
the many dimensions such that one has, in the end, one composite<br />
dimension to work with, but it should be obvious that this is not the<br />
only way to develop capabilitarian welfare economics. <strong>The</strong> alternative<br />
is to stick to the view that wellbeing is inherently multidimensional,