4.8: Is the capability approach a liberal theory?

Students of the capability approach often ask whether it is a liberal theory — something those who ask that question seem to think is a bad thing. Given the various audiences and disciplines that engage with the capability approach, there is a very high risk of misunderstandings of discipline-specific terms, such as ‘liberal’. Hence, let us answer the question: is the capability approach a liberal theory, and if so, in what sense?

In many capability theories and applications, including the work by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, there is a great stress on capabilities rather than functionings, as well as on agency and the power of people to shape their own destinies.¹² What is ultimately important is that people have the freedoms (capabilities) to lead the kind of lives they want to lead, to do what they want to do and be the person they want to be. Once they have these freedoms, they can choose to act on them in line with their own ideas of the kind of life they want to live. For example, every person should have the opportunity to be part of a community and to practice a religion, but if someone prefers to be a hermit or an atheist, they should also have this option. Now, it is certainly true that individual freedoms and agency are a hallmark of liberalism. But is this enough to conclude that the capability approach, in contrast to specific capability theories, is a liberal framework?¹³

First, given the interdisciplinary context in which the capability approach is operating, it is very important that the word ‘liberal’ is not confused with the word ‘liberal’ in daily life. In ordinary language, ‘liberal’ has different political meanings in different countries, and can cover both the political right or left. In addition it is often used to refer to (neo)liberal economic policies that prioritise free markets and the privatization of public companies such as water suppliers or the railways. In contrast, philosophical liberalism is neither necessarily left or right, nor does it a priori advocate any social or economic policies.

The first misunderstanding to get out the way is that capabilities as freedoms refer exclusively to the ‘free market’ and thus that the capability approach would always lead to an endorsement of (unfettered) markets as the institutions that are capabilities-enhancing. Sen does argue that people have reason to value the freedom or liberty to produce, buy, and sell in markets. This point, however, is part of his more general work on development, and it is very different to the highly disputed question in economics and politics regarding the benefits and limits of the market as a system of economic production and distribution. Functionings and capabilities are conceptualizations of wellbeing achievements and wellbeing freedoms, and the question of which economic institutions are the best institutional means to foster functionings and capabilities is both analytically and politically a question that can only be settled after we first agree what economic outcomes we should be aiming for: a question to which the capability approach gives a (partial) answer.

The question of what are the appropriate institutions to lead to capability expansions is a separate one, which cannot be answered by the capability approach in itself; it must be coupled with a political economy analysis. However, there is nothing in the (limited) literature that has undertaken this task so far to suggest that a capability analysis would recommend unfettered markets — quite the contrary, as the work by Rutger Claassen (2009, 2015) shows: capabilities theories give reasons for regulating markets, and for constraining property rights. In sum, if the word ‘liberal’ is used to refer to ‘neoliberalism’ or to ‘economic liberalization policies’, then neither the capability approach in general, nor Sen and Nussbaum’s more specific theories, are liberal in that sense.

Yet I believe it is correct to say that Sen and Nussbaum’s writings on the capability approach are liberal in the philosophical sense, which refers to a philosophical tradition that values individual autonomy and freedom.¹⁴ However, even philosophical liberalism is a very broad church, and Sen and Nussbaum’s theories arguably participate in a critical strand within it, since the explanatory theories that they use in their capability theories (that is, the choices they make in module C1), are in various ways aware of social structures.

Third, while the particular capability theories advocated by Sen and Nussbaum aspire to be liberal, it is possible to construct capability theories that are much less so. Take a capability theory that opts in module C1 for (1) a highly structuralist account of social conditions, and (2) theories of bounded rationality, that place great emphasis on people’s structural irrationalities in decision-making. In module C4, the theory accepts some degree of paternalism due to the acknowledgement of bounded rationality in decision-making. Similarly, one could have a capability theory of social justice that argues that the guiding principle in institutional design should be the protection of the vulnerable, rather than the maximal accommodation of the development of people’s agency. Such theories would already be much less liberal.

Is it possible for capability theories to be non-liberal? This would probably depend on where exactly one draws the line between a liberal and a non-liberal theory, or, formulated differently, which properties we take to be necessary properties of a theory in order for that theory to qualify as ‘liberal’. The capability approach draws a clear line at the principle of each person as an end, that is, in the endorsement of normative individualism. The principle of normative individualism is clearly a core principle of liberal theories. Yet it is also a core principle of some non-liberal theories that do not give higher priority to agency or autonomy (e.g. capability theories that merge insights from care ethics, and which give moral priority to protecting the vulnerable over enhancing and protecting agency). However, if a theory endorses functionings and/or capabilities as the relevant normative metric, yet violates the principle of each person as an end, it would not only not qualify as a liberal theory, but it would also not qualify as a capability theory. At best, it would qualify as e.g. a hybrid capabilitarian-communitarian theory.

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12 Sen’s work on identity testifies to the great faith he puts in people’s power to choose whether or not to adopt certain group memberships and identities. See e.g. Sen (2009b).

13 In earlier work, I argued that on those grounds we could conclude that the capability approach is a liberal theory. I now think this conclusion was premature.

14 Nussbaum (2011b, 2014) has written explicitly on the type of liberalism that her capabilities approach endorses: political liberalism. For arguments that Nussbaum’s capability approach is, upon closer scrutiny, not politically liberal but rather perfectionist liberal, see Barclay (2003), and Nussbaum (2003b) for a response.