Ian Carter

The development of capability indicators

This paper is motivated by sustained interest in the capabilities approach to welfare economics combined with the paucity of economic statistics that measure capabilities at the individual level. Specifically, it takes a much discussed account of the normatively desirable capabilities constitutive of a good life, argued to be comprehensive at a high level of abstraction, and uses it to operationalize the capabilities approach by developing a survey instrument to elicit information about capabilities at the individual level. The paper explores the extent to which these capabilities are covariates of a life satisfaction measure of utility and investigates aspects of robustness and subgroup differences using standard socio‐demographic variables as well as a relatively novel control for personality. In substantial terms, we find there is some evidence of quantitative, but no qualitative, gender and age differences in the capabilities–life satisfaction relationship. Furthermore, we find that indicators from a wide range of life domains are linked to life satisfaction, a finding that supports multi‐dimensional approaches to poverty and the non‐materialist view that people do not just value financial income per se. Our most important contribution, however, is primarily methodological and derives from the demonstration that, within the conventions of household and social surveys, human capabilities can be measured with the aid of suitably designed statistical indicators.

IS THE CAPABILITY APPROACH PATERNALIST

Capability theorists have suggested different, sometimes incompatible, ways in which their approach takes account of the value of freedom, each of which implies a different kind of normative relation between functionings and capabilities. This paper examines three possible accounts of the normative relation between functionings and capabilities, and the implications of each of these accounts in terms of degrees of paternalism. The way in which capability theorists apparently oscillate between these different accounts is shown to rest on an apparent tension between anti-paternalism (which favours an emphasis on capabilities) and anti-fetishism (which favours an emphasis on functionings). The paper then advances a fourth account, which incorporates a concern with the content-independent or ‘non-specific’ value of freedom. Only the fourth account would remove all traces of paternalism from the capability approach. Whatever reasons advocates of the capability approach might have had for rejecting this fourth account, those reasons are not internal to the capability approach itself.

Interpersonal Comparisons of Freedom

This paper is about the relevance, to the definition of freedom, of values or goods other than freedom. In this respect,its subject matter is not at all new. However, I do believe that new light can be thrown on the nature of this relationship by paying more attention to another relationship – one which exists within the concept of freedom itself. There are two senses in which we can be said to possess freedom. Firstly, there is the sense in which we can be said to be free to do a certain particular thing. Secondly,there is the sense in which we can be said to possess a certain ‘amount’,‘degree’ or ‘quantity’ of freedom, in some overall sense.1 I believe that most recent accounts of the relationship between freedom and other goods are inconsistent, because they see those other goods as affecting the truth value of claims about freedom in the second sense, but not in the first.

HOW CHANGES IN ONE'S PREFERENCES CAN AFFECT ONE'S FREEDOM (AND HOW THEY CANNOT): A REPLY TO DOWDING AND VAN HEES

How is a persons freedom related to his or her preferences? Liberal theorists of negative freedom have generally taken the view that the desire of a person to do or not do something is irrelevant to the question of whether he is free to do it. Supporters of the “pure negative†conception of freedom have advocated this view in its starkest form: they maintain that a person is unfree to I¦ if and only if he is prevented from I¦-ing by the conduct or dispositions of some other person(s) (Steiner, 1994; Carter, 1999; Kramer, 2003). This definition of freedom is value-neutral in the sense that no reference is made to preferences over options or indeed to any other indicators of the values of options, either in the characterization of “I¦-ing†itself (any conduct fits the bill) or in the characterization of the way in which I¦-ing can be constrained (any prevention counts as a constraint on freedom).

The Measurement of Pure Negative Freedom

Examining the question of whether or how far freedom is measurable contributes to the analysis of the concept of freedom in two ways. First, it involves attempting to establish criteria for answering questions about ‘how free’ individuals or societies are. Secondly, it helps to show how far different definitions of freedom really conflict, in as much as those definitions are themselves motivated by intuitive extent-of-freedom assessments in the first place. Critics of the ‘pure negative’ conception of freedom (freedom as the absence of purely physical impediments to action) have argued either that freedom is unmeasurable on such a conception, or that such a conception is counterintuitive, because the measurements of freedom implied by it conflict with the intuitive comparisons which we normally make. Closer examinations of the nature of measurement and of the nature of act individuation show both of these criticisms to be ill founded.

BASIC EQUALITY AND THE SITE OF EGALITARIAN JUSTICE

The nature of basic equality (what it is that makes us all equals) can have implications not only for the question of the currency of egalitarian justice but also for that of its ‘site’. The latter question is raised by G. A. Cohen in his critique of John Rawlss theory of justice. In this paper I argue that Rawlsian liberals might provide an answer to Cohens critique by establishing two distinct kinds of basic equality, thus providing a ‘twofold account’ of basic equality. A first kind of basic equality gains moral relevance in the context of respectful relations between individuals, and establishes egalitarian duties between them. A second kind of basic equality gains moral relevance in the context of respectful relations between the state and individual citizens, and establishes egalitarian duties of the state toward citizens. The strength of Cohens critique depends, in part, on the fact that Rawls identified only one kind of basic equality while at the same time wishing to defend a dualist account of individual and state duties.

Social Power and Negative Freedom

The relation between social power and negative freedom is examined, assuming Stoppino’s formal classification of power and a ‘pure’ negative conception of freedom. The aim is twofold: first, to clarify whether and (if so) in what ways a person’s negative freedom is diminished when others exercise power over her, thus arriving at an exhaustive analysis of the power-freedom relation on the basis of Stoppino’s classification; secondly, to correct the common misconception according to which a person’s pure negative freedom is diminished only by violence or its threat, and not by less evident forms of power.

HUMAN NATURE AND THE UTOPIANISM OF THE NEW RIGHT

‘COMMUNISM is fine in theory, but you can’t force people to be equal. And where’s the incentive to work? Communism goes against human nature’. Such is the ‘pub talk’ criticism of communism we hear so often; the claim that communists have been unrealistic in their demands, both of human nature and of their own powers to manipulate it. Why do we not hear the same sort of criticism directed against right-wing libertarians and their ideological mentors such as Hayek, Friedman and Nozick? Why, that is, do we not hear it said that ‘right wing libertarianism goes against human nature’? Perhaps it is assumed that the radicals of the right do not have an underlying theory of human nature, standing as they do for the freedom of the individual and opposed as they are to any attempts by governments consciously to shape human nature. But such an assumption must surely be false, because there is a sense in which any prescriptive political theory rests on certain premises about human nature, however implicit. This article explores some of the assumptions which right wing libertarians make about human nature. It aims to show that the libertarian, like any other radical, has a conception of an ideal human, and that in this respect, he is as open as any other radical to the charge of utopianism. Right-wing libertarians call themselves the ‘New Right’ (Seldon, 1985), a term which will be adopted here. What we mean to claim, in accusing this New Right of ‘utopianism’, is that they ‘conceive, propose, or advocate impracticably ideal projects or schemes for social welfare’.’ This definition might be objected to on the grounds that it automatically casts utopianism in a bad light. However, its use here is not intended to suggest that utopianism cannot under any circumstances be defended, but only as a means to showing that certain grounds for criticising communism or socialism might also be grounds for criticising libertarianism; that a weapon wielded by the old right can now be wielded against the new. Another objection might be to say that the New Right is not composed exclusively of libertarians. But while this is true, it is also the case that many critiques of the New Right have been too general, playing on the contradictions between libertarianism and consematism, and have thus left the pure libertarian arguments standing.

Left-Libertarianism and the Resource Dividend

Libertarians are often classified by contemporary political philosophers as “right” or “standard” libertarians, on the one hand, and “left”-libertarians, on the other. Right-libertarians favor private property rights and market freedoms, and are opposed to any form of redistributive taxation. Left-libertarians similarly favor private property rights and market freedoms, but argue that these rights and freedoms are not incompatible with redistributive taxation.

‘Ought’ Implies ‘Practical Possibility’

It is common among moral, political and legal philosophers to claim or assume that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. By this, they mean that if an agent cannot perform a given action, then it cannot be the case that such an action is required of the agent. In short, one cannot have the duty to do the impossible.