4.9: Why ‘human development' is not the same idea

Some believe that the terms ‘human development approach’ and ‘the capability approach’ are synonymous, or else scholars talk about the ‘capability and human development approach’. Although I will argue that this usage is misleading, the equation of ‘human development’ with ‘capability approach’ is often made. Why is this the case? And is that equation a good thing?

First, the Human Development Reports and their best-known index, the Human Development Index, have been vastly influential in making the case for the capability approach, and in spreading the idea of ‘functionings’ and ‘capabilities’ both inside and outside academia (UNDP 1990). In other words, one of the main series of publications within the human development approach, and the corresponding analyses and indexes, is arguably one of the most politically successful applications of the capability approach. However, it doesn’t follow from this that they are the same thing.

A second possible explanation for this misleading equation is that both the international association and the current name of the main journal in the field have merged both terms: the Human Development and Capability Association (HDCA) and the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities. This seems to suggest that ‘human development’ and ‘capabilities’ necessarily go together. But this need not be the case: the use of a particular title doesn’t make the two things the same (and in a moment, I will give a few examples in which this isn’t the case).

Thirdly and most importantly, the equation of ‘human development approach’ and ‘capability approach’ shouldn’t be surprising because human development aims to shift the focus of our evaluation of the quality of life and the desirability of social arrangements, from material resources or mental states to people’s functionings and capabilities. The capability approach is thus a central and indispensable element of the human development paradigm.

Finally, one may believe that the two terms are equivalent given that some influential authors in the capability literature equate the two terms, or merge them into one idea (Alkire and Deneulin 2009a, 2009b; Fukuda-Parr 2009; Nussbaum 2011). Let me highlight two examples. Sabina Alkire and Séverine Deneulin (2009a, 2009b) do not distinguish between the reach of the capability approach and the human development approach; instead, they merge them into one term, “the human development and capability approach”. More recently, Martha Nussbaum (2011) has written on the distinction in her Creating Capabilities. Nussbaum has suggested that ‘human development approach’ is mainly associated, historically, with the Human Development Reports, and that the term ‘capability approach’ is more commonly used in academia. Nussbaum prefers the term ‘capabilities approach’ since she also likes to include non-human animals in her account. However, for those of us, like me, who are using the capability approach to analyse and evaluate the quality of life as well as the living arrangements of human beings, this is not a valid reason to make the distinction between ‘the human development approach’, and ‘the capability approach’.

So, should we use ‘human development approach’ and ‘capability approach’ as synonyms, and merge them together into ‘the human development and capability approach’? I believe we shouldn’t. I think there are at least four valid reasons why we should make a distinction between the two ideas.

The first reason is historical: while the capability approach has been very important in the development of the human development paradigm, the human development paradigm has derived insights and concepts from several other theories and frameworks. Human development has been defined as “an expansion of human capabilities, a widening of choices, an enhancement of freedoms and a fulfilment of human rights” (Fukuda-Parr and Kumar 2003, xxi). There are important historical ideas in the human development paradigm that are to a significant extent based on Sen’s capability approach. And Sen was closely involved in the development of the Human Development Reports that have been key in the maturing of the human development paradigm. Yet as some key contributors to this paradigm have rightly pointed out, it had other intellectual roots too, such as the basic needs approach (Streeten 1995; Fukuda-Parr 2003; Sen 2003a).

The second reason is intellectual. The capability approach is used for a very wide range of purposes, as the account I presented in chapter 2 makes amply clear. These include purposes that are only tangentially, or very indirectly, related to human development concerns. For example, the philosopher Martin van Hees (2013) is interested in the structural properties of capabilities, especially how the formal analysis of rights fits into the capability concept. This research allows us to see how capabilities, as a concept, would fit in, and relate to, the existing literature on the structure of rights. But it would be a big stretch to say that this is also a contribution to the human development literature; in fact, I would find such a statement an implausible inflation of what we understand by ‘human development’. Rather, it is much more plausible to say that the study by Van Hees is a contribution to the capability literature, but not to the human development literature. If we were wrongly to equate the capability approach with the human development paradigm, this would create problems for understanding such a study as part of the capability approach.

The third reason is practical. Those who have written about the human development paradigm stress that ‘development’ is about all people and all countries, and not only about countries which are often called ‘developing countries’, that is, countries with a much higher incidence of absolute poverty, and often with a less developed economic infrastructure. For example, Paul Streeten (1995, viii) writes:

We defined human development as widening the range of people’s choices. Human development is a concern not only for poor countries and poor people, but everywhere. In the high-income countries, indicators of shortfalls in human development should be looked for in homelessness, drug addiction, crime, unemployment, urban squalor; environmental degradation, personal insecurity and social disintegration.

The inclusion of all human beings within the scope of ‘human development thinking’ is widely endorsed within human development scholarship and policy reports. However, it is also a matter of fact that most people, including policy makers, associate the term ‘development’ not with improvements to the lives of people living in high-income countries. This is unfortunate, but it is a fact one needs to reckon with. In high-income countries, some of the terms often used for what could also be called ‘human development interventions’ are ‘policies’, ‘institutional design’, or ‘social transformations’. While it is laudable to deconstruct the term ‘development’, at the same time we should be careful about using words that would lead to scholars and policy makers in high-income countries to neglect the capability approach if they (mistakenly) believe that it is a framework only suitable for ‘developing countries’ (as they would use the term).

The final reason is political. There are many capability scholars who would like to develop an alternative to neoliberalism, or, more specifically when it concerns development policies, to the ‘Washington consensus’. While more sophisticated analyses of both doctrines have been put forward, both doctrines focus on private property rights; the primacy of markets as an allocation mechanism; the focus in macro-economic policies on controlling inflation and reducing fiscal deficits; economic liberalisation with regard to free trade and capital flows; and, overall, restricted and reduced involvement of governments in the domestic economy, such as markets in labour, land and capital (the so-called ‘factor markets’) (Gore 2000; Fukuda-Parr 2003; McCleery and De Paolis 2008). The ‘Washington consensus’ refers to the development policy views propagated by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (two international institutions based in Washington, D.C., hence its name). The ideas of the Washington consensus spread in the 1980s and were endorsed as the consensus view by the IMF and the World Bank by 1990, and they dominated for at least two decades. Over the last decade, neoliberalism and the Washington consensus have been heavily criticised from many different corners, and there is a renewed recognition of the importance of considering the historical, cultural and institutional specificity of countries when deciding what good development policies look like; but it seems too early to conclude that any of those alternative views is now more influential then neoliberalism and the Washington consensus. Many citizens, scholars, policy makers and politicians are searching for alternatives, and some hope that the capability approach can offer such an alternative.

My suggestion would be that if one’s goal is to develop a powerful alternative to neoliberalism and the Washington consensus, one has to look at the human development paradigm, rather than the capability approach. The human development paradigm includes many specific explanatory theories that stress the importance of historical paths and local cultural and social norms in understanding development outcomes and options in a particular country. The human development paradigm is, therefore, much more powerful than the capability approach for this specific purpose.

Recall the modular view of the capability approach that I presented in chapter 2. The human development paradigm is a capabilitarian theory or capability application, because it endorses all the elements from module A. In addition, it has made particular choices in modules B, such as a strong notion of agency (B3) as well as an elaborate account of social structures (B4), and, importantly, it has chosen anti-neoliberal ontological accounts of human nature and explanatory theories about how the economy and societies work (C1), as well as the endorsement of additional normative principle and social ideals (C4) such as human rights and ecological sustainability. Hence the human development paradigm is much more powerful as a policy paradigm than the capability approach, since it is much more comprehensive (taking many more aspects into account then merely people’s functionings and capabilities) and it is much more powerful in policy or political terms (being informed about what works and what doesn’t).

In sum, I think it is not correct to equate the capability approach and the human development approach. The two are theoretically and historically related, but they are not exactly the same. For those who work within development studies and are endorsing a critical assessment of the development policies that have been pursued as part of the so-called ‘Washington consensus’, it is understandable that the two may seem to be the same, or at least so close that they can be merged. But that is only if one looks at the two notions from a specific perspective. Merging the two would do injustice to the work of other thinkers using the capability approach, and it would also ultimately hamper the development of the capability approach over its full scope.