Social choice and individual capabilities

Politics, Philosophy & Economics

Volumn 6, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 169-192

  Qizilbash, Mozaffar ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF YORK   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

capability; democracy; social choice; welfare

Indexed keywords

EID: 41849131079     PISSN: 1470594X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1470594X07077271     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. Amartya Sen, ‘The Possibility of Social Choice’, American Economic Review 89 (1999): 349-78.
2. A.K. Sen, ‘Capability and Well-Being’, in The Quality of Life, edited by M.C. Nussbaum and A.K. Sen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 31.
3. Kenneth J. Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values (New York: Wiley, 1963), p. 23.
4. A.K. Sen, Development as Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 77.
5. A.K. Sen, ‘Individual Preference as the Basis of Social Choice’, in A.K. Sen, Rationality and Freedom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 318.
6. Indeed, Arrow notes that preferences can even be interpreted in terms of ‘well-being in some more-or-less objective sense’, which, he thinks, might include capability or functioning. See K.J. Arrow, ‘Freedom and Social Choice: Notes in the Margin’, Utilitas 18 (2006): 53.
7. Sen, Development as Freedom, p. 63.
8. Jon Elster, ‘Sour Grapes: Utilitarianism and the Genesis of Wants’, in Utilitarianism and Beyond, edited by B.A.O. Williams and A.K. Sen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 219.
9. Sen, Rationality and Freedom, p. 588.
10. Jon Elster, ‘The Market and the Forum: Three Varieties of Political Theory’, in Foundations of Social Choice Theory, edited by J. Elster and A. Hylland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 106-9.
11. K. Basu, ‘Achievements, Capabilities and Well-Being: A Review of Commodities and Capabilities by Amartya Sen’, Social Choice and Welfare 4 (1987): 69-76; A.K. Sen, Commodities and Capabilities (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1985).
12. Basu, ‘Achievements, Capabilities and Well-Being: A Review of Commodities and Capabilities by Amartya Sen’, p. 69.
13. Sen, Rationality and Freedom, p. 300.
14. For example, P.K. Pattanaik and Y. Xu, ‘On Ranking Opportunity Sets in Terms of Freedom of Choice’, Recherches Economique de Louvain 56 (1990): 383-90; A. Chakraborty, ‘On the Possibility of a Weighting System for Functionings’, Indian Economic Review 31 (1996): 241-50; K. Basu and J. Foster, ‘On Measuring Literacy’, Economic Journal 108 (1998): 1733-49; Sen, Rationality and Freedom; Y. Xu, ‘Functioning, Capability and the Standard of Living: An Axiomatic Approach’, Economic Theory 20 (2002): 387-99; W. Bossert, C. D'Ambrosio and V. Peragine, ‘Deprivation and Social Exclusion’, Cahier 02-2004 (Montreal: CIREQ); P.K. Pattanaik and Y. Xu, ‘Minimal Relativism, Dominance and Standard of Living Comparisons Based on Functionings’, Oxford Economic Papers (forthcoming).
15. A.K. Sen, Inequality Reexamined (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 48.
16. C.R. Barrett and P.K. Pattanaik, ‘Fuzzy Sets, Preference and Choice: Some Conceptual Issues’, Bulletin of Economic Research 41 (1989): 229-53; M. Dasgupta and R. Deb, ‘Fuzzy Choice Functions’, Social Choice and Welfare 8 (1991): 171-82; M. Dasgupta and R. Deb, ‘Transitivity and Fuzzy Preferences’, Social Choice and Welfare 13 (1996): 305-18; E. Chiappero Martinetti, ‘A New Approach to the Evaluation of Well-Being and Poverty by Fuzzy Set Theory’, Giornale Degli Economisti e Annali di Economia 53 (1994): 367-88; E. Chiappero Martinetti, ‘Standard of Living Evaluation Based on Sen's Approach: Some Methodological Suggestions’, Notizie di Politeia 12 (43/44) (1996): 37-53; E. Chiappero Martinetti, ‘A Multi-Dimensional Assessment of Well-Being Based on Sen's Functioning Theory’, Rivista Internationale di Scienzie Sociali 2 (2000): 207-31.
17. Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values, p. 17.
18. Sen, Rationality and Freedom, p. 593.
19. A.K. Sen, ‘The Possibility of Social Choice’, p. 359.
20. A.K. Sen, Collective Choice and Social Welfare (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1979), pp. 33-46.
21. See, among others, K.O. May, ‘Intransitivity, Utility and the Aggregation of Preference Patterns’, Econometrica 22 (1954): 1-13; K.J. Arrow and H. Raynaud, Social Choice and Multicriterion Decision-Making (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986); S. Hurley, Natural Reasons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); M. Qizilbash, ‘Pluralism and Well-Being Indices’, World Development 25 (1997): 2009-26.
22. In Arrow's own exposition, transitivity and ‘connectedness’ are taken to be the defining properties of an ordering (or ‘weak ordering’). The connectedness of O is the property that for all x, y in X, xOy or yOx. In the definitions of completeness and connectedness, ‘or’ is used in the ‘inclusive’ sense. See Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values, p. 13.
23. Sen, Collective Choice and Social Welfare, p. 41.
24. Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values, p. 9.
25. There is now a considerable literature and debate about ‘incommensurability’ and ‘incomparability’, particularly in moral philosophy. See, among others, R. Chang, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); M. Qizilbash, ‘Rationality, Comparability and Maximization’, Economics and Philosophy 18 (2002): 141-56. While he has always allowed for incompleteness, Sen also explicitly discusses ‘incommensurability’ in his recent writings. See A.K. Sen, ‘Incompleteness and Reasoned Choice’, Synthese 140 (2004): 43-59.
26. Sen allows for this distinction between plurality and non-comparability of components in his ‘vector view’ of utility. See A.K. Sen, ‘Plural Utility’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 81 (1980-81): 193-215. The distinction is made much more explicitly by James Griffin, Well Being: Its Meaning, Measurement and Moral Importance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
27. Sen, Development as Freedom, p. 78.
28. Sen, Inequality Reexamined, p. 46.
29. Recent results about the measurement of capabilities can also be seen in the light of the result about an MAF. In Yongsheng Xu's attempt to develop an axiomatic capability measure (which imposes non-comparability of different functionings), the result is a quasi-ordering. Xu nonetheless accepts that if the informational base was richer (allowing for ‘inter-functioning’ comparisons) new possibilities might be opened up. See Xu, ‘Functioning, Capability and the Standard of Living: An Axiomatic Approach’, p. 398.
30. See Chakraborty, ‘On the Possibility of a Weighting System for Functionings’, p. 250. One reason for worrying about incompleteness is that in its absence rational choice is not possible, because alternatives cannot be compared. Sen himself has forcefully argued that incompleteness need not undermine rationality. See A.K. Sen, ‘Maximization and the Act of Choice’, Econometrica 65 (1997): 745-99. He has advanced a ‘maximization’ view of rationality which allows for such incompleteness. On this, see also Qizilbash, ‘Rationality, Comparability and Maximization’.
31. S. Anand and A.K. Sen, ‘The Income Component of the Human Development Index’, Journal of Human Development 1 (2000): 83-106.
32. A.K. Sen, ‘A Decade of Human Development’, Journal of Human Development 1 (2000): 22.
33. In other applications of the capability approach, comparability of the components of advantage is also implicitly assumed, since a capabilities or functionings index is taken to exist which allows for multidimensionality. See, notably, C. Herrero, ‘Capabilities and Utilities’, Economic Design 2 (1996): 71-2; Bossert et al., ‘Deprivation and Social Exclusion’, p. 3.
34. In discussing applications of the capability approach, he also refers to, and distinguishes between, various forms and degrees of interpersonal comparability (such as ‘non-comparability’, ‘unit comparability’, and ‘full comparability’) as well as referring to his work on social choice. Relevant parts of that work assume, however, that there is a numerical representation of welfare. For this work to be relevant to interpersonal comparisons of overall advantage, one would have to assume comparability of the components of advantage. Without such comparability, the relevant results about interpersonal comparability would only be relevant to comparisons in terms of specific components of advantage (such as literacy). See Sen, Inequality Reexamined, pp. 48-9; Sen, Rationality and Freedom, pp. 307-8.
35. Sen, Inequality Reexamined, pp. 46-9.
36. M.C. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); M.C. Nussbaum, ‘Capabilities as Fundamental Entitlements’, Feminist Economics 9 (2003): 33-59; M.C. Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2006).
37. See S. Alkire, Valuing Freedoms: Amartya Sen's Capability Approach and Poverty Reduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); I. Robeyns, ‘Sen's Capability Approach and Gender Inequality: Selecting Relevant Capabilities’, Feminist Economics 9 (2003): 61-92. Lists of the components of well-being have also been advanced in related accounts. See J. Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979); J. Griffin, Value Judgment: Improving our Ethical Beliefs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); M. Qizilbash, ‘The Concept of Well-Being’, Economics and Philosophy 14 (1998): 51-73.
38. M.C. Nussbaum, ‘Aristotelian Social Democracy’, in Liberalism and the Good, edited by B. Douglass, G. Mara and H. Richardson (London: Routledge, 1990); M.C. Nussbaum, ‘Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defence of Aristotelian Essentialism’, Political Theory 20 (1992): 202-46; M.C. Nussbaum, ‘Human Capabilities, Female Human Beings’, in Women, Culture and Development, edited by M.C. Nussbaum and J. Glover (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 61-104; M.C. Nussbaum, ‘Aristotle on Human Nature and the Foundations of Ethics’, in World, Mind and Ethics, edited by J.E.J. Altham and R. Harrison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 86-131.
39. For example, Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach.
40. Nussbaum, ‘Human Capabilities, Female Human Beings’; Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach.
41. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach, p. 77.
42. Sen, ‘Capability and Well-Being’, p. 47.
43. A.K. Sen, ‘Human Rights and Capabilities’, Journal of Human Development 6 (2005): 159.
44. Sen, ‘Capability and Well-Being’, p. 31.
45. Sen has discussed the use of a minimal list of components in the context of the HDI and given his reasons for not advocating any ‘overarching’ list (of which the minimal list might be a part). These include the wish not to set himself against other lists which might be relevant in other contexts. See Sen, ‘Human Rights and Capabilities’, pp. 157-9.
46. Sen, Development as Freedom, pp. 80-1.
47. In earlier work, Sen listed three different categories of social choice exercise: (1) committee decision, (2) social welfare judgement, and (3) ‘normative indication’. See A.K. Sen, ‘Social Choice Theory: A Re-examination’, Econometrica 45 (1977): 53-89. Category (3) includes ‘measurement of national income. “poverty” and other “indicators” defined with normative motivation incorporating interpersonal weighting in some easily tractable way’. See A.K. Sen, Choice, Welfare and Measurement (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), pp. 158-9. Clearly, weighting issues relating to capabilities and functionings can fall under categories (2) and (3), but a committee might also be set up to deliberate the selection of weights (for example, in the context of a measure such as the HDI), so that these issues might also fall under (1).
48. Chakraborty, ‘On the Possibility of a Weighting System for Functionings’, p. 245.
49. Sen, Development as Freedom, p. 79.
50. A.K. Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity (London: Penguin, 2005), pp. 14, 182.
51. J. Rawls, Political Liberalism (Columbia, NY: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 212-13.
52. Cass Sunstein has advanced a view which is also concerned with agreement amid pluralism and which does not require that people share a political conception of justice. He suggests that when people ‘disagree on an abstraction, they move to a greater level of particularity’. Sunstein's views are broadly compatible with Sen's writings on public reasoning. See C. Sunstein, ‘Incompletely Theorized Agreements’, Harvard Law Review 108 (1995): 1736.
53. This point is important because social choice theory and public reasoning or deliberative democracy views can be seen as alternatives. On this, see Elster, ‘The Market and the Forum: Three Varieties of Political Theory’ and Sen's riposte in A.K. Sen, ‘Foundations of Social Choice: An Epilogue’, in Foundations of Social Choice Theory, edited by J. Elster and A. Hylland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 232-6.
54. A.K. Sen, ‘Democracy and Its Global Roots: Why Democratization Is Not the Same as Westernization’, The New Republic, 6 October 2003, p. 29.
55. Sen stresses the importance of participation in his co-authored work on development in India. See J. Drèze and A.K. Sen, India: Participation and Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). He also stresses this in his recent writings on Indian history, culture, and identity in which he discusses the importance of public discussion and heterodoxy for the sciences. See Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity, pp. 26-8.
56. A.K. Sen, ‘Rationality and Social Choice’, American Economic Review 85 (1995): 16-17; Sen, ‘Democracy and Its Global Roots: Why Democratization Is Not the Same as Westernization’, p. 35; Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity, p. 14.
57. J. Buchanan, ‘Social Choice, Democracy and Free Markets’, Journal of Political Economy 62 (1954): 120.
58. Sen, Development as Freedom, p. 153.
59. J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism. On Liberty. Essay on Bentham. Together with Selections from the Writings of Jeremy Bentham and John Austin, edited by M. Warnock (Glasgow: Fontana, 1962), p. 146.
60. For a related discussion of ‘laundered preferences’, see R. Goodin, ‘Laundering Preferences’, in Foundations of Social Choice Theory, edited by J. Elster and A. Hylland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 75-101.
61. J. Cohen, ‘Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy’, in The Good Polity: Normative Evaluation of the State, edited by A. Hamlin and P. Pettit (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), p. 22.
62. Sen, Development as Freedom, p. 63.
63. Cohen, ‘Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy’, p. 25.
64. While he does not focus on the issue of adaptive preferences, David Crocker also argues at greater length that ‘recent work on deliberative democracy has much to offer the capability approach’. See D. Crocker, ‘Sen on Deliberative Democracy’, in Capabilities Equality: Basic Issues and Problems, edited by A. Kaufman (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 155-97.
65. Sen, Development as Freedom, p. 18.
66. See Sen, ‘Human Rights and Capabilities’, p. 159. One might add that if it were divorced from this reality, social choice theory could hardly get far in this task either.
67. S. Freeman, ‘Deliberative Democracy: A Sympathetic Comment’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 29 (2000): 384-5.
68. McLean and Hewitt, Condorcet: Foundations of Social Choice and Political Theory, p. 132.
69. Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity, pp. 26-8.
70. Rawls, Political Liberalism.
71. Sen, ‘Democracy and Its Global Roots: Why Democratization Is Not the Same as Westernization’ and Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity.
72. Some argue that results in social choice theory (including Condorcet's observations about majority voting and Arrow's theorem) can undermine certain notions of democracy. See W.H. Riker, Liberalism Against Populism (San Francisco, CA: W.H. Freeman, 1982); J. Coleman and J. Ferejohn, ‘Democracy and Social Choice’, Ethics 97 (1986): 6-25. David Miller has argued that democratic deliberation might lessen this potential conflict, because, to the extent that such deliberation leads to consensus, it may lead to voters having singlepeaked preferences. See D. Miller, ‘Deliberative Democracy and Social Choice’, Political Studies 40 (1992): 54-67. For Sen, however, the impossibility results of social choice theory clarify the conditions under which social choice is possible. For this reason, Sen does not discuss the worry that social choice theory poses difficulties for democracy. See Sen, ‘The Possibility of Social Choice’.
73. F. Stewart and S. Deneulin, ‘Amartya Sen's Contribution to Development Thinking’, Studies in Comparative International Development 37 (2002): 66.
74. Sen, Development as Freedom, p. 280.
75. See, among other works, A.K. Sen, ‘Open and Closed Impartiality’, Journal of Philosophy 99 (2002): 445-69; A.K. Sen, ‘What Do We Want from a Theory of Justice?’, Journal of Philosophy 103 (2006): 215-38.
76. Sen, ‘What Do We Want from a Theory of Justice?’, p. 216.
77. Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 223.
78. Sen, ‘What Do We Want from a Theory of Justice?’, pp. 228-36.
79. J. Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 145.
80. See J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972); Rawls, Political Liberalism; Rawls, The Law of Peoples; J. Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2001).
81. Sen, Development as Freedom, pp. 286-7.
82. So Sen's writings on justice (including his writings on capability) do not generate principles of justice in the way that Rawls's do. Indeed, this feature of his writings also differentiates Sen's approach from Nussbaum's variation of the capability approach (the ‘capabilities approach’) which includes certain principles and comes closer to providing a ‘political conception of justice’ in Rawls's terms. See, in particular, Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach; Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership.
83. Sen, ‘What Do We Want from a Theory of Justice?’, p. 223.
84. Sen, Development as Freedom, p. 287.
85. Sen, ‘What Do We Want from a Theory of Justice?’, p. 228.