4.5: Does the capability approach only address the government?

Some capability scholars believe that the capability approach is a theory about public policy or state action. For example, Nussbaum (2011, 19) writes that it is an essential element of the (general) capability approach that it ascribes an urgent task to government and public policy. In her own capabilities theory of justice, Nussbaum makes very clear that she sees the government as the actor of change. But is it right to see the government as the only agent of change or of justice in the capability approach? I think the literature offers ample evidence that this is not the case.

The first thing to note is that, while the dominant view is that the capability approach is related to public policy and assumes the government as the main or only agent of change, and while Nussbaum highlights the government as the actor of change in her account of the capability approach in Creating Capabilities, not all capability scholars endorse this focus on the government. For example, as Frances Stewart (2005, 189) writes:

Given that improvements in the position of the poor rarely happen solely through the benevolence of governments, and are more likely to occur because of political and economic pressures, organisation of groups among the poor is important — even essential — to achieve significant improvements.

The view that the capability approach is government-focussed may thus be reinforced by the fact that Nussbaum makes this claim, but other capability scholars are developing theories or applications that address other agents of change. A prominent example is the work of Solava Ibrahim (2006, 2009) who has shown how self-help initiatives can play a crucial role in promoting the capabilities of the poor, by enhancing their ownership of development projects, and “overcoming their helplessness by changing their perceptions of their own capabilities” (Ibrahim 2009, 236). Similar research has been conducted in more informal settings in Khayelitsha, a South African township, by Ina Conradie (2013). These are just two studies that have been published in widely read scholarly journals — but there is a broad range of capability theories and capability applications that do not, or do not primarily, address the government. In conclusion, the first observation is that some of the capability literature does not address the government. But can we in addition also find reasons for not restricting the agents of change in the capability approach to the government?

The first reason relates to the distinction between the capability approach and capability theories and applications, which was introduced in section 2.3. As far as we are looking at the capability approach, rather than particular capability theories or applications, an exclusive focus on the government is clearly unwarranted. There is nothing in module A that forces us to see the government as the addressee of our capability theory, and module B1 (the purpose of the capability theory) gives us the choice between any addressee we would like to pick. One could also use the capability approach to analyse what neighbours, in a particular street or neighbourhood in a well-functioning democratic state, could do for each other and in their common interests, in order to improve the quality of life in their neighbourhood. The neighbours may prefer to keep the initiative for themselves, and not ask the government to solve their local problems.

Another example of a capability application in which the government is not involved at all is the case of parents deciding to which school to send their child (assuming they have options to choose from, which globally is not the case for many parents). Suppose that parents have the choice between two schools. The first school focusses more on making pupils ready to excel in their future professional life, endorsing a human capital understanding of education. In the other school, there is more attention paid to creative expression, learning the virtues of cooperating, taking responsibility for oneself, for others and for the environment, and a concern with the flourishing of the child as he or she is now, not just as a future adult. Clearly there is a different ideal of education in these two school. The parents may sit down and write two lists of the pros and cons of the different schools — and many items on that list will be functionings or capabilities. Parents choosing between these two schools will choose different future capability sets for their children. Although the terminology may not be used, capabilities are at work in this decision; yet very few people would argue that it is a task for the government to decide whether children should be sent to schools focussing on human capital training, or rather on human flourishing. The scholarship focussing on curriculum design using the capability approach, or on making us understand the difference between human capital and human capabilities is doing precisely all of this (Brighouse 2006; Robeyns 2006c; Wigley and Akkoyunlu-Wigley 2006; Walker 2008, 2010, 2012b).

Of course, one could respond to these examples by saying that there may be capability applications or theories that belong to the private sphere and that therefore the government is not the (only) agent of change — yet that capabilitarian political theories, such as theories of justice, should address the government.

But this response will not do either. As several political theorists have argued, the question of who should be the agents of justice is one that needs to be properly discussed and analysed, and it is not at all obvious that the primary or only agents of justice should be the government (O. O’Neill 2001; Weinberg 2009; Deveaux 2015). There are at least three reasons one could give for not giving the government the main role as agent of change, or indeed any role at all. The first reason is one’s general ideological commitment as regards political systems. Anarchism and (right-)libertarian political theories would either give the government no agency at all, or else only insofar as property rights need to be protected (Nozick 1974). There is nothing in the structure of anarchist or libertarian political theories that rules out their adoption of functionings and capabilities as (part of) the metric of quality of life that should guide the social and economic institutions that we choose for our societies. People have very different views on the question of what can realistically be expected from a government. Just as we need to take people as they are, we should not work with an unrealistic utopian account of government. It may be that the capabilitarian ideal society is better reached by a coordinated commitment to individual action or by relying on market mechanisms. Adherents of public choice theory would stress that giving the government the power to deliver those goods will have many unintended but foreseeable negative consequences, which are much more important than the positive contributions the government could make.³

A second reason why capabilitarian political theories may not see the government as the only, or primary, agent of justice, relates to the distinction between ideal theories of justice (which describe those normative principles that would be met in a just world, and the institutions that would meet those principles) versus non-ideal theory (which describes what is needed to reduce injustices in the world in which we live).⁴ In several areas of the world, governmental agents are involved in the creation of (severe) economic and social injustice, either internationally or against some of its own minorities, or — in highly repressive states — against the vast majority of the population (e.g. Hochschild 1999; Roy 2014). The government is then more part of the problem than part of the solution, and some would argue that it is very naive to construct capabilitarian political theories that simply assume that the government will be a force for the good (Menon 2002). Similarly, some political philosophers have argued that in cases of injustice in which the government doesn’t take sufficient action, as in the case of harms done by climate change, duties fall on others who are in a position to ‘take up the slack’ or make a difference (Karnein 2014; Caney 2016).

The third reason why capabilitarian political theories may not see the government as the only, or primary, agent of justice, relates to the question of how we decide to allocate the responsibility for being the agent of change.⁵ As Monique Devaux points out, we can attribute moral and political agency derived from our responsibility in creating the injustice (a position advocated by Thomas Pogge (2008) in his work on global poverty) or because of the greater capacities and powers that agents have, as Onora O’Neill (2001) has advocated. Devaux (2015, 127–28) argues that in the case of justice related to global poverty, the moral agency of the poor stems from their experience of living in poverty. This may not only make them more effective as political agents in some contexts, but it might also lead to the poor endorsing a different political agenda, often focussing on empowerment, rather than merely reducing poverty understood in material terms. This is in tune with the earlier-mentioned research by Ibrahim (2006, 2009) and Conradie (2013) on self-organisation by the poor.

It has not been my aim in this section to defend a particular way to answer the question of who should be the agent(s) of justice. Rather, my goal has been much more limited — namely, to show that it is not at all self-evident that a capabilitarian political theory, let alone another type of capabilitarian theory or application, would always posit the government as the only agent of change, or the primary agent of change. Pace what Nussbaum (2011) claims on this issue, there is no reason why this should be the case, and there are many good reasons why we should regard our answer to this question as one that requires careful reasoning and consideration — and ultimately a choice that is made in module B and module C, rather than a fixed given in module A.

---

3 For an introduction to the public choice literature, see Mueller (2003).

4 On the distinction between ideal and non-ideal theories of justice, see e.g. Swift (2008); Stemplowska (2008); Robeyns (2008a); Valentini (2012).

5 The second and third reasons may sometimes both be at work in an argument to attribute agency to a particular group or institutions.