Ethics of Global Development by David A. Crocker

Author:David A. Crocker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2013-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

One of the ways open to these active citizens is that of the central capability of controlling their environment, including “being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one’s life; having the right of political participation, protections of free speech and association.”81

There is much with which to agree in these passages, but it is notable that Nussbaum’s focus is on individual agency to shape one’s life through personal choice rather than on the collective choice of political values (for instance, valued capabilities and functionings) and policies. Although Nussbaum does include in her central capabilities the individual’s capability and right to participate politically, the emphasis is on the individual’s political rights rather on two themes increasingly prominent in Sen. Sen emphasizes each citizen’s “social commitment” to deliberate and decide policy together as well as the important role of political freedom in furthering public debate, rational scrutiny of options, and social choice of priorities: “One of the strongest arguments in favor of political freedom lies precisely in the opportunity it gives citizens to discuss and debate – and to participate in the selection of – values in the choice of priorities.”82

Nussbaum does ample justice to one side of the “two‐way relation” between individual freedom and societal arrangements, namely, the way in which social arrangements and political actions can and should “expand individual freedoms.” She misses, however, Sen’s more capacious perspective in which individual freedoms “make the social arrangements more appropriate and effective.”83 Sen is convinced that “the direction of public policy can be influenced by the effective use of participatory capabilities by the public.”84 Whether deliberating collectively as citizens of a polity or as members of an association, individuals acting collaboratively and through public discussion shape their preferences and arrive at remedies to practical problems.

We drive home the difference between Sen and Nussbaum on this point in relation to Nussbaum’s one‐sided interpretation of a recent idea of Sen’s. In “Freedom and Needs,” Sen says: “Political rights are important not only for the fulfillment of needs, they are crucial also for the formulation of needs. And this idea relates, in the end, to the respect that we owe each other as fellow human beings.”85 Nussbaum interprets this passage as meaning exclusively that each citizen has the right to decide on her own needs and whether to avail herself of government provisioning. Sen, however, by the “constructive role” of “basic political and liberal rights,” also means that “our conceptualization of economic [and other] needs depends crucially on open public debates and discussions, the guaranteeing of which requires insistence on basic political liberty and civil rights.”86

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