4.1: Introduction

In chapter 2 I gave an account of the capability approach that gave us a better sense of its necessary core and its scope, as well as describing the structure of a capability theory or capability analysis. While that account has aimed to be precise and comprehensive, it nevertheless raises some further issues.

Hence, this chapter is focussed on investigating those further questions and debates. We will look into the following issues. Section 4.2 asks whether everything that has been called a capability in the literature is genuinely so. Section 4.3 addresses a dispute that has kept capability theorists busy for quite a while over the last two decades, namely whether a capability theorist should endorse a specific list of capabilities. For many years, this was debated under the banner ‘the question of the list’ and was seen as the major criticism that Martha Nussbaum had of Amartya Sen’s work on the capability approach. Section 4.4 investigates the relationship between the basic needs approach and philosophical theories of needs, and argues that the capability scholars may be able to engage more fruitfully with theories of needs. Section 4.5 asks whether, as Nussbaum suggests, we should understand the capability approach as a theory that addresses the government; I will argue that we should reject that suggestion and also take other ‘agents of change’ into account. Section 4.6 analyses a debate that has generated much controversy, namely whether the capability approach can be said to be too individualistic. The next section, 4.7, focuses on a closely related issue: the scope for the inclusion of ‘power’ into the capability approach. Should the capability approach pay much more attention to political economy? Section 4.8 asks whether the capability approach is a liberal theory, and whether it can be anything other than a liberal theory. Section 4.9 argues that, despite the many references to ‘the human development and capability approaches’, these are not the same thing. Finally, section 4.10 discusses the potential and problems of a capabilitarian welfare economics.