The Entrepreneur's Apprenticeship

How did Sen's academic training equip him to develop his ideas on capability?

His was certainly a broad apprenticeship – in economics, development, philosophy and the theory of social choice.

He took his first degree (economics major, mathematics minor, first class honours) at the University of Calcutta and writes that he found the academic ethos of his college (Presidency) “captivating”. He enjoyed the excellent teaching and the mathematical approach to economics, and was bowled over by reading Arrow's newly published book, Social Choice and Individual Values. At the same time, his thinking was being influenced by the political situation in India: this made him acutely aware of “foundational disputes” between pursuit of distributional equity on the one hand and tolerance of plurality on the other. His awareness in his early student days of this inbuilt tension seems already to prime him for exploring ways of addressing it in his work on capabilities.

On coming to Cambridge in the mid-1950s, he was obliged to complete a second BA in pure economics on top of his first-class Indian degree before being entered for the PhD; and although saying this was “fair enough” in view of his young age, he also commented wrylyFootnote ⁵ that there was actually “quite a drop” in the sophistication of the subject after the teaching he had benefitted from in Calcutta.Footnote ⁶ Moreover, he describes how – in contrast with the atmosphere of friendly debate among the economists in his college (Trinity) – he encountered in the Cambridge faculty not a stimulating forum for constructive discussion (such as this conference aims to achieve) but rather a “desert of constant feuding” between “contending armies” (passionate proponents of Keynesian macroeconomics and neoclassical economists who were unconvinced). This was an awkward battleground to traverse for someone with “close relations with economists on both sides”, who keenly felt the absence of the spirit of tolerance in which more constructive interchange might have been possible. However, the difficult balancing act required to find a considerate course through the civil war situation prevailing in the faculty may have been another importantly formative experience. Many of Sen's subsequent arguments seek to steer what, in the Aristotelian mould, may be seen as a middle way, preferring the golden mean to extremes at either pole – an approach that may also be at home in Confucian and Buddhist philosophy but that for all its distinguished antecedents tends to be hard to put across – one might say, hard to sell – on account of being open to fierce attacks from two opposing directions.

Sen would have chosen to write his doctorate on the theory of social choice but, extraordinary as this may seem in retrospect, could find no supervisor in Cambridge willing to countenance taking that topic on. However, Joan Robinson agreed to supervise him, not on social choice theory (which she slammed as “ethical rubbish”) but on a topic in development economics,Footnote ⁷ this feeding another element into the early academic experience. Sen found Joan Robinson “totally brilliant but vigorously intolerant”, his views often meeting with “stern reproach … for not being quite true to neo-Keynesianism”. She tried to talk him out of his continuing interest in social choice theory and welfare economics but, fortunately we may say, did not succeed.

Where next then in this ‘apprenticeship’? It is just as well that Sen says, “the peripatetic life seems to suit me”, for – the doctoral thesis essentially complete but not yet due to be examined – he escaped the acrimony within the faculty by heading back to India (and, as it happened, straight into a professorship at a new university) – before returning to Cambridge to take up a prize fellowship at Trinity, and then a college lectureship there (visiting MIT and Stanford also during a year's leave).

The Trinity prize fellowship was again surely strategic in the formation of his later thinking. He writes that it gave him several “years of freedom to do anything I liked (no questions asked)”, a delicious prospect it is easy to understand him relishing. What he ‘liked to do’ was to branch out from economics and development into philosophical analysis, which he enjoyed for its own sake as well as for its bearing on the logic of social choice and on the related issues of equity and democracy that had already captured his attention in his first student days. My sense that this research time in philosophy had strategic significance for Sen's subsequent work is buttressed by the Nobel prize committee's judgment that: “By combining tools from economics and philosophy, [Sen] has restored an ethical dimension to the discussion of vital economic problems”. Whether that restoration was needed is questioned by Dasgupta, who does not think economics ever lost its ethical dimension – in the broad sense of its shared concern with betterment of the human lot.Footnote ⁸ Yet readers of Graaff's classic 1957 study of Theoretical Welfare Economics would not readily escape concluding that this vehicle of economic thought had driven itself into a dead-end: it is from this blockage that Sen has so successfully piloted us away.

Sen punctuated his prize fellowship time with a visiting spell at MIT (“an inspiring place”) and then before long returned to India, to a professorship in Delhi where he savoured the “dynamic … intellectual atmosphere” and was able at last properly to indulge his passion for working on social choice. There were more visits to the United States, this time to Berkeley and Harvard, and it was at Harvard that he started teaching a renowned joint course with Arrow and Rawls on social justice.Footnote ⁹ Phase One now complete, this brings us to Phase Two.

Engagement in R&D

Sen was now deeply involved in path-breaking research on social choice – as it turned out perhaps not so much engaged in as driving its, so to speak, R&D department. In 1970, his masterful text Collective Choice and Social Welfare was published. As Flavio Comim will argue in Chapter 8, and as the 2017 publication of a new expanded edition testifies, this classic book, both inspired and provoked by the problem Arrow had uncovered, embodies crucial rethinking on social choice that not only set a new and constructive course for that body of theory but would turn out also to underlie much of the subsequent development of Sen's ideas on capability and justice. Many seeds of his later approach to capabilities can be found in this book and in papers published at a similar time. Themes already well apparent are the importance of gaining a better understanding of the role of reasoned scrutiny in individual and social choice, concern with its informational base, and recognition that in the absence of ideal decision conditions appropriate ways forward will often still exist.

Sen's research led him to conclude Collective Choice and Social Welfare with the comment that it may be more useful to work not with ‘pure’ systems of social choice, however theoretically appealing, but rather with the ‘impurities’ of “partial interpersonal comparability … partial cardinality … restricted domains … intransitive social indifference … incomplete social preference … and so on … while purity is an uncomplicated virtue for olive oil, sea air and heroines of folk tales, it is not so for systems of collective choice” (1970a: 200, 2017: 265). For instance, progress can be made in reaching welfare judgments without access to full information on exact interpersonal comparisons, once it is seen that there is room for “partial comparability”, occupying the extensive space between “full comparability and no comparability at all”. Sen memorably illustrates the point through reference to Nero fiddling happily while Rome burnt and “all other Romans were plunged into misery”. Here merely some comparability may be quite enough to do the trick, for as Sen argues it can be entirely reasonable to conclude “that the sum total of welfare went down … while Nero played his fiddle” even if we do not know the precise “one-to-one correspondence” of every Roman's welfare units with every other Roman. And similarly, says Sen, it can be reasonable notwithstanding our incomplete knowledge of interpersonal comparatives to assert that the sum total of welfare under the existing distribution of money income “is less than what could happen with a more equal distribution” (1970a: 99–100, 2017: 153–4). This opening up of possibilities for decision in spite of incomplete information is a current which flows strongly through his later discussions of how a capability approach might be applied.

A further seed from which an extensive branch of Sen's later thinking would grow – planted in 1967 and nurtured in the 1970 text – was his case to show that what he calls “nonbasic” value judgments are not purely subjective but are rather premised on an understanding of underlying analytical assumptions and relevant factual information,Footnote ¹⁰ and are thus subject to revision in the light of shifts in that understanding, for example on new information becoming available. In the 1970 text, he illustrated the point with a person making the value judgment that: “A rise in national income measured both at base and final-year prices indicates a better economic situation”. This only qualifies as a basic judgment in that individual's value system if it is held “to apply under all conceivable circumstances”; so the classification depends on whether there are any circumstances – one such might be “if the poor were much poorer” – in which he would revise it. Value judgments that may be revised according to circumstance are categorised as nonbasic; and the significance of this for Sen's wider argument is that this class of value judgments can be the subject of reasoned discussion.

But how extensive is this class? Very extensive, contends Sen. He holds that “many of the value judgments we habitually express are not basic”, and suggests that judgments of this kind encompass most if not all value judgments. It is hinted that the complementary set of basic value judgments – those not amenable to reasoned discussion – might be empty. Sen points out that even where situations liable to change a person's value judgment are improbable, this allows the possibility of change – along with inviting factual assessment of its (admittedly small) likelihood – and renders the judgment nonbasic; and he argues that while “some value judgments are demonstrably nonbasic … no value judgment is demonstrably basic”. On the other hand, it may be “establish[ed] that [a] judgment is not nonbasic in any obviously relevant way” (my emphasis), and Sen does not explicitly assert that it is impossible to reach a point where there can be no further “rational disputation” of the basis of a value judgment. But he insists on there being an inescapable problem – that “there is no sure-fire test which tells us that this ultimate point has in fact arrived” (1970a: 59–64, 2017: 109–14). (This unconventional view on the extensive reach of the nonbasic might perhaps be buttressed in respect of moral value judgments by the contention that moral evaluation necessarily depends on facts about the human condition and human well-being, a philosophical position attractively presented by Foot and defended by Warnock.)Footnote ¹¹

Sen's general conclusion is that “it seems impossible to rule out the possibility of fruitful scientific discussion on value judgments” (1970a: 64, 2017: 114). This is a factor crucial to his later accounts of the scope for reasoned scrutiny of individual and social evaluations. And it presages the role he goes on to champion for the Impartial Spectator in The Idea of Justice in furthering “objectivity [of] ethical and political convictions”, where the witness of “others who are far as well as near” is celebrated for contributing fresh perspectives to discussion, introducing new observations into processes of both private and public reasoning (2009a,: 45, 126).

Identifying a Gap in the Market

To the development of these constructive arguments on enhancing the possibility of social choice in the absence of complete interpersonal comparability in utility and in the presence of differing value judgments, Sen added in the early 1970s a forthright series of analyses of limitations in the moral, economic and political philosophies then prevailing in policy discussions, indicating – in the metaphorical framework of this chapter – that existing products did not fully satisfy market needs.Footnote ¹²

First, Collective Choice and Social Welfare spearheaded another form of informational broadening, exposing shortfalls in utility-focused preference data by introducing us to the would-be Paretian Liberal and diagnosing the cause of his discomfiture, and indeed collapse. The aspiring Paretian Liberal, new to the scene in 1970, is now a familiar if chimerical figure, yearning to square the circle. Sen obliged him to confront the impossibility he faces by presenting him with two memorable characters with rhyming appellations, the Prude and the Lewd.Footnote ¹³ Suppose that the Prude would prefer that an available copy of some distinctly risqué bookFootnote ¹⁴ is not read by anyone, including him, but nevertheless would prefer reading it himself to opting for this access to depravity to be given to an individual whom he regards as already all too lewd. And suppose that the Lewd person, very keen that the opportunity to peruse the available copy of the book should not be left untaken, and eager to read it himself, would nevertheless prefer that the Prude be given what the Lewd expects to be an eye-opening experience for him. Then it is apparent that if the book is to be read by one of them, both individuals share a preference for this being the Prude, making that outcome Pareto superior to the Lewd reading it. Yet on liberal principles, as commonly understood, what a person reads, there being no harm to others, is a matter for that individual's own choice only, and then the book would indeed be read – but by the Lewd person who relishes the prospect, not the Prude who emphatically does not. In these circumstances and on the apparently very mild demands made in the given assumptions and definitions, it is impossible simultaneously to meet both Paretian and liberal requirements.

There has been a wealth of discussion both of the strength of this argument and of ways in which the problem it poses might be dealt with. One suggested way out of the impasse could be to side with the parties’ mutual preference that the reading be done by the Prude, perhaps even through them contracting so (but as the Prude's first preference was that the book be left unread, why should he agree to the scheme; and if he does, what is to stop him cheating the spirit of the contract by turning the pages without absorbing the text?). An alternative escape route might be to disallow in Paretian calculation the anti-liberal preferences each is entertaining – ‘meddlesome’ preferences over what the other does in what should be a private domain. Numerous other solutions and challenges have been proposed in a substantial literature on the issue. Sen discusses various possibilities himself but concludes that the potential for conflict between personal liberty and overall desire fulfilment should be recognised, with acknowledgement of the importance, but not the unqualified importance, of each. An “evaluative view of the acceptable priorities” between the competing principles will be needed, and it must be “sensitive to the trade-offs on this that the persons may themselves endorse” in the light of their relative valuations of liberal principles and utility-based Paretian ones (1999aFootnote ¹⁵). And he draws the general moral that social choice theory should be enriched by taking non-utility information into account.Footnote ¹⁶

A paper later on in the decade took further Sen's critique of informational shortcomings in the standard preference approach, introducing us this time to the Rational Fool, who obscures the richness of human agency as he frequents microeconomic models “decked in the glory of … one all-purpose preference ordering” (1977: 335–36). The single ordering conceals the “distinctions between quite different concepts” that may motivate choice. It may invite the simplistic assumption, fostered by ambiguity of the term ‘prefer’, that choices always reflect self-interest (in the sense of increasing the chooser's utility, either directly or through sympathy with someone else). But, Sen argues, a significant class of actions is performed from ‘commitment’, not for utility gain: there is a risk of being blind to this if we are distracted by the Rational Fool who, for all his cleverness in other ways, does not recognise the distinction.

And Sen found classical Benthamite utilitarianism wanting with respect to issues of income distribution. Back in England from 1971 in a professorship at the LSE, it was in his 1972 Radcliffe lectures at the University of Warwick and the subsequent book On Economic Inequality (1973, expanded edition 1997) that he drew attention to the share of a given income ‘cake’ that an individual at a marginal utility disadvantage would be liable to receive in a simple utilitarian model. Needing more resources than a second individual to achieve the same level of utility, an equal division of income between them would leave the first person worse off in utility terms; yet, regarding him in relation to the goal of maximising the utilitarian sum as a less efficient generator of utility from income, this model would compound that utility deprivation by giving him less income too. Under this account of the utilitarian approach then, such individuals face a double disadvantage, their lower quantum of utility from a given income being compounded by receipt of a less-than-equal income share, with more income directed at those better placed to boost utility overall. Sen motivated the discussion by considering a person with disabilities who might happen to be in such a position and presented utilitarianism as being “fundamentally … very far from an egalitarian approach” (1973: 18).Footnote ¹⁷

However, Sen acknowledged merits in the utilitarian distribution criterion as well as shortcomings. This even-handedness in critique was apparent in his 1974 paper which brought Rawls's approach to distribution into play: the paper, ‘Rawls versus Bentham: An Axiomatic Examination of the Pure Distribution Problem’, showed that, while each of the systems comparedFootnote ¹⁸ did capture an important aspect of distribution, neither Benthamite sum-ranking nor the Rawlsian ‘maximin’ criterion could fulfil a seemingly modest and reasonable set of axioms. Consequently Sen judged each of these systems to be “essentially incomplete”, classical utilitarianism neglecting the significance Rawls perceived in relative welfare levels between different people, and Rawlsian maximin being blind to the significance Bentham recognised in the magnitude of gains and losses in aggregate welfare. Sen concludes: “It is not surprising that the utilitarian approach and the maximin approach both run into some fairly straightforward difficulties since each leaves out completely one of the two parts of the total picture … [A] more complete theory is yet to emerge” (1974: 309).

In these various ways Sen's analysis of the leading ‘products’ of the day led him to conclude they were not adequate in themselves (or indeed together) to meet the extensive range of market needs.

Launching the Product: The USP

What might fill or at any rate narrow the market gap? Sen's now prominent but then unfamiliar proposal was an approach based on capabilities.Footnote ¹⁹ It is tempting to say that Sen created the capability approach; but he firmly rejects that contention, modestly stressing the long tradition of concern for human flourishing which stretches back through Karl Marx and Adam Smith to Aristotle. To pursue the metaphor of this chapter, the capability ‘product’ proudly bears an Aristotelian hallmark and adopts principles of revered designer Smith: yet, while not wholly new, it was new to the twentieth-century post-war market. For generations, this focus on flourishing had been overshadowed by the ubiquitous and towering presence of utilitarianism, not to be repositioned in the light until Sen – in company it might be said with some reflective basic needs theorists – took it up again.Footnote ²⁰

The restoration of this approach was not without the risk typical of the launch phase of a new enterprise, an especially hazardous endeavour when the market is effectively commanded by acclaimed established business. Entrepreneurial courage is to be detected in Sen's investment of time and effort in essentially interdisciplinary work on capabilities, when a conventional and prestigious academic career with more reliable rewards was energetically beckoning: he could easily have opted for a comfortable life in economics by staying within the orthodox club standing ready to embrace him. In the terms of Leijonhuvud's entertaining and tongue-in-cheek report on mainstream economists’ tribal practices in 1973 – ‘Life among the Econ’ – Sen had already risked the wrath of the higher Econ castes by breaking the taboo against associating with other tribes (thus “endangering … moral fibre”) and by mingling with the lowly “Devlops” caste (who are “suspect[ed] … of relinquishing modl-making”) (1973: 329). But at this point, having earned immense respect from ‘high caste’ colleagues for his seminal work on social choice and his pronounced facility with the techniques of formal proof, he could surely have overcome the supposed stigma of those early indiscretions and settled down to be feted by the highest “priestly” caste – the Math-Econ – as one of their own. Nobel Prize notwithstanding, his reception within some quarters of the tribe might yet be warmer had he chosen a less adventurous career path.

Instead in 1979 (now in an Oxford professorship) he made the ‘pitch’ for being concerned with equality in “basic capabilities” in his Tanner lecture, ‘Equality of What?’, which set the frame for much of the enterprise to come.Footnote ²¹ Referring again to the possible case of a person with special needs who is at a marginal utility disadvantage, Sen expands his argument into the thesis that neither utilitarian nor other ‘welfarist’ (i.e. solely utility-reliant) nor Rawlsian approaches, nor any combination of the three, are sufficient templates for social arrangements. The charge against traditional sum-maximising utilitarianism on grounds of the diminished share of the cake accorded to the disadvantaged person is as before.Footnote ²² However, this charge does not hold against all welfarist approaches: for instance, on the assumptions of the model so far, the principle of equalising individuals’ levels of total utility would entail his receipt of a more than equal income distribution share. But Sen now modifies the model and points to a new difficulty (1980a: 217). What if the person with disabilities is so buoyant (as Sen puts it, has such a “jolly disposition”) or alternatively has come to expect so little (has such a “low aspiration level”) that in spite of severe practical difficulties in achieving, say, basic mobility in a poor community, his utility level at the initial income distribution is not low? This will pose no worry to an ardent welfarist, to whom utility is what counts, no matter what the source – a happiness pill, or what you will: if a cheerful nature can hold its own in hard times, this is simply good news. But others might want to recognise a special need for resources, in spite of the admirably buoyant temperament.Footnote ²³ When J. K. Rowling's sage Dumbledore offers comfort to Harry by saying, “Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light”Footnote ²⁴ this does not mean the dark times themselves do not matter.

Sen reasons then that, although welfarism's utility focus has the welcome attribute of directing attention to people rather than resting with resources, it accords no direct attention to their needs and therefore falls short. Whether those needs gain attention indirectly through the service of utility concerns will depend not only on the decision rule used but also on the influence of both mental and physical factors on ‘efficiency’ in utility generation. As there can be no guarantee under either rule that special needs for resources will be met, welfarism is judged insufficiently robust.

As to Rawls's alternative to utilitarianism, Sen detected “an element of ‘fetishism’”Footnote ²⁵ in Rawls's own metric of “primary social goods” – described by Rawls as “things that every rational man is presumed to want”, including “rights, liberties and opportunities, income and wealth, and the social bases of self-respect” (1971: 62). Sen accepts that this list is “broad and inclusive” but protests that, although the disabled person on this goods-focused basis would not be penalised in the distribution of these well-specified resources, no special provision would be made for his needs.

So if the contention was that such provision should be made, “despite there being no marginal utility argument (because it is expensive), despite there being no total utility argument (because he is so contented), and despite there being no primary goods deprivation (because he has the goods that others have), the case must rest on something else”. That “something else” is, Sen believes, “the interpretation of needs in the form of basic capabilities”, “a person being able to do certain basic things [including] the ability to move about … to meet one's nutritional requirements … to be clothed and sheltered … to participate in the social life of the community” (1980a: 218) – where what is necessary to meet these needs will vary among individuals and between communities (all these considerations deeply relevant as Schrage and Huber argue in Chapter 15 to suitably defining the ‘living wage’).

Sen acknowledges technical complexities in indexing capability bundles, including culture-dependence in how different capabilities are weighted, and also notes that equalising basic capabilities is not the only way in which capability considerations might be utilised. Nor does he bill the “constructive thesis” he advances alongside his central critique as more than a “partial … guide to the moral good” or as rendering other approaches entirely redundant (1980a: 219–20): the ‘brochure’ takes care not to overreach. But though the publicity is suitably balanced and restrained, the launch here of a capabilities ‘product’ – or at least its prototype – proved pivotal.

Sen's selection of a special needs case as an effective example for the purpose of his “case-implication critique” accords with his deep concern for the well-being of persons with disabilities. In his 2004 keynote speech, “Disability and Justice”, to the World Bank's second international conference on disability, he stressed that, while the vast numbers of people with disabilities living in developing countries (more than 400 million) were often “the poorest of the poor in terms of income”, their restricted income was “reinforced and much magnified by … the difficulty in converting income and resources into good living” (2004: 6).Footnote ²⁶ The value of a capabilities approach to addressing disability issues is evident (as will be reflected in Chapter 23 in relation to Special Educational Needs).

But as Sen also explains in ‘Equality of What?’, the significance of diverse needs runs across the board: “people … have very different needs varying with health, longevity, climatic conditions, location, work conditions, temperament, and even body size (affecting food and clothing requirements)”. How resources affect what different people can achieve will depend on personal, social and environmental conversion factors, and the “evidence [is] that conversion of goods to capabilities varies from person to person substantially”. Sen allows that the established ‘products’ might work well enough with respect to addressing needs fairly if people “were basically very similar”. It is because they are not that Sen claims there is indeed a “gap [that] can be narrowed by the idea of basic capability equality … [This] has virtues that the other characterisations of equality do not possess” (1980a: 215–16, 219–20). A key virtue lies in taking due account of how these individual human differences, in a variety of social and environmental settings, impact on what people are able to be and do. This can be seen as the Unique Selling Point – the USP – of the capabilities ‘brand’.Footnote ²⁷

By the mid-1980s product design and testing had advanced a good deal further. Important philosophical papers by Sen in this period probed and developed the conceptual framework with respect to, inter alia, interpretations of liberty, consequence-sensitivity of rights, positional valuations, partial orderings, the nature of well-being, identity and goals, and many key aspects of agency, the insights notably drawn together in the Dewey lectures on ‘Well-being, Agency and Freedom’ delivered at Columbia University in 1984.Footnote ²⁸ And in a very succinct yet remarkably comprehensive handbook, including what might be seen as an early ‘instruction manual’ for product operation and use, Sen's monograph, Commodities and Capabilities (based on his 1982 Hennipman lecture at the University of Amsterdam, first published in 1985) combined more precise specification of the capabilities ‘product’ with explicit extension and generalisation, supplying also reports on some initial applications.Footnote ²⁹

In Commodities and Capabilities all the expected components remain in place – emphasis on the role of partial orderings (“many economic and social relations are inherently partial and incomplete … evaluation of well-being can plausibly be seen as belonging to that category”); faith in the potential but not unbridled reach of objectivity (“I do believe that the ‘limits’ of objectivity extend well into the assessment of well-being”); recognition of the plurality of considerations in judging whether a person is doing well (“each has an importance of its own”); expression of caution about “the scope for uncontroversial assessment of well-being” when people's well-being rankings vary; positivity in showing this does not eliminate scope for some agreement; reference to the restrictiveness of assuming pursuit of self-interest as the sole motivation behind choice (“a very narrow view of human beings”); insistence on the deficiencies of purely resource-based approaches to well-being (“confounding … the state of a person with the extent of his or her possessions”) while giving the role of commodities due importance; stress on the (“serious”) limitations of utility-based approaches, as well as acknowledgement of happiness as a contributor to well-being (to be “included in the list of some important … [and] relevant … functionings”), with desire fulfilment also serving an “important role” in offering evidence – albeit indirect and “tentative” – on a person's valuations (“we must not spurn the insights we get from utilitarian moral philosophy, even as we reject utilitarianism”); and presentation of a capability approach to assessing interest, well-being and advantage not as providing a single measure “superior to all others and applicable in all contexts” but rather as “fill[ing] in what may well be important gaps in the [existing] conceptual apparatus”.

But much was added. Functionings are defined as the “achievement[s] of a person: what he or she manages to do or be”. Capabilities are defined as “the freedom that a person has in terms of choice of functionings, given her personal features (conversion of [commodity] characteristics into functionings) and her command over commodities (‘entitlements’)”. In as it were ‘technical’ passages of the ‘handbook’, issues of relevant data are discussed; and the mechanics are spelt out, linking the person's (constrained) choice of commodity vector (with its implied commodity characteristics) to her available set of “utilisation functions”, each of which reflects “one pattern of use of commodities that [the person] can actually make”, patterns which she then values in terms of her well-being. Her selected utilisation function – where the choice need not be utility or self-interest based – generates a functioning vector from the vector of commodity characteristics, where the achieved functions “can be thought to be the person's being (e.g. whether well-nourished, well-clothed, mobile, taking part in the life of the community)”. There is detailed illustration of how “the conversion of commodity-characteristics into personal achievements of functionings depends on a variety of factors – personal and social”: in the case of the nutritional and social-related characteristics of bread, Sen suggests at least thirteen, ranging from metabolic rates, parasitic diseases and climate to familial situation, social convention and presence of seasonal festivals. The handbook rounds off with two appendices showing the capability ‘product’ in action: the first gives an illustrative and revealing application, so far as limited data allowed, of its traction in international comparisons of five developing countries (India, China, Sri Lanka, Brazil and Mexico) – demonstrating, in the business metaphor, ‘proof of concept’, while the second explores its potential in relation to investigating well-being in India, where a gendered aspect becomes apparent, the evidence “seem[ing] to confirm … the inferior position of Indian women in terms of some of the most elementary functionings and capabilities”.

The formal and general statement of definitions and relationships brings out the contrast between what a person is achieving – her actual functionings – and the ‘real’, i.e. constrained, opportunities (‘functioning bundles’) from which she is able to choose – the extent of her capability set. This calls attention to the concept of capabilities being “a ‘freedom’ type notion”; and the ‘handbook’ already points up some resultant complexities, occasioning what might perhaps be called product safety warnings. One concerns the degree of freedom experienced by different members within a single household. Another relates to freedoms (e.g. from being free from an infectious disease) which can only be achieved by collective action (e.g. “through anti-epidemic public policy”). A third is the difficulty that the evidence of what has been chosen does not show what might have been, yet evidence on breadth of choice matters (compelled outcomes, whether through compulsion or lack of options, lack freedom even if achieving a desired functioning): Sen suggests it may be a good move, though not a simplifying one, to “incorporate[e] aspects of freedom among the functionings”.

In this monograph, Sen does not claim to have solved all the difficulties: “the approach needs to be pursued a good deal more … many issues remain unclear … [this] somewhat different perspective … [on] well-being and advantage … from the ones typically used … is … no more than a beginning”. But there is much in this central ‘manual’ (and the contemporaneous batch of philosophical articles) that foreshadows future development, arguably defusing some later tensions.

A Digression: Taking Stock

The narrative of Phases One to Four has shown the historic build-up to the capability endeavour becoming a going concern in 1979 and, in the 1980s, an established enterprise with a distinctive product, meeting a market need. The next three decades see spectacular expansion. Sen is at the heart of this but very many others join in the business of consolidation, refinement, application, extension, partnership and spinoff. And there are challenges from competitors and analysts. With these subsequent phases crowding in thick and fast, doing full justice to them would require a whole book (and in the keynote speech would sorely have tried the patience of participants). Instead, much of the rest of this chapter stands back from a detailed account of the subsequent phases of the enterprise, often only sketching the outlines of their succession and interrelations.Footnote ³⁰

Product Differentiation

Scherer and Ross's authoritative text, Industrial Market Structure and Economic Performance, notes several forms that product differentiation can take. Perhaps the most straightforward is to provide a product with truly different attributes. Sen had taken pains to spell out what I am dubbing the USP of the capability approach to well-being assessment – its sensitivity to the diversity of individuals and their context of life. A key way in which his reintroduction of concern for individual human flourishing differentiates the ‘product’ is by giving prominence to the impact that the varying personal, social and environmental conversion factors will have on translating means for well-being into realisable options of well-being achievement. In this way the capability product is seen as contributing to filling a market gap.

But is the product really so different? ‘Image differentiation’ is another form of product differentiation, in which the strategy is to create and reinforce in consumers’ minds the subjective image of a uniquely desirable product. This opens the possibility that the product might be more distinct in its advertised appeal than in reality. Suggestions have been made that the capability approach is only superficially distinctive from orthodox welfare economics, with doubt whether capability sets amount to anything more than conventional opportunity sets – ‘old wine in new bottles’. Perhaps the reply might be, see the ‘handbook’ for functionings, conversion factors, comments on valuation, and so on – can you really have tasted this wine?

Taking note of Sen's own description in ‘Equality of What?’ of his focus on capabilities as a “natural extension of Rawls's concern with primary goods”, Rawlsians might wonder if the distance from Rawls's non-welfarist approach has been overstated. True, the extension is to be in a “non-fetishist direction”, “shifting attention from goods to what goods do to human beings” (1980a: 218–19), and is driven by giving due consideration to “hard cases” – Rawls earlier having admitted he felt “hard cases” can “distract our moral perception” (1975: 96). But there was considerable further interchange between the two authors, each appreciative of the other – their exchange of view facilitated by Sen taking up a Harvard post in 1987 (where he has principally been based since then, holding Philosophy, Economics and Thomas W. Lamont University professorships, with a six-year interlude in England as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1998–2004).Footnote ³¹ Sen had already noted in his Tanner lecture that Rawls “motivate[d] judging advantage in terms of primary goods by referring to capabilities”, although then – the fetishism complaint – “focussing on goods as such” (1980a: 219). By 2001, Rawls was saying that his “framework does recognise the fundamental relation between primary goods and persons’ basic capabilities” (2001: 169); and in 2009 Sen wrote of Rawls's “underlying concern for capabilities” – still holding, though, that he “does not give [it] enough room” (2009a: 262),Footnote ³² so that a degree of product differentiation remains. What Sen regarded by that stage as a deeper characterisation of his fundamental divergence in approach (while still paying tribute to Rawls’ formative influence on questions of liberty and reason) was between Rawls's idealised “transcendental institutionalism … aiming only at the characterization of perfectly just societies” and his own concentration on “a theory of justice that can serve as the basis of practical reasoning”, with “ways of judging how to reduce injustice and advance justice” in the world in which we live (2009a: ix, 7–8).

More closely allied to capabilities was the basic needs approach, which in some versions might even be held to have occupied to some extent the gap in the market that Sen was seeking to fill. Stewart puts up a forceful defence against the fetishism charge that he again lodges, holding that there is more concern with human flourishing and individual achievement in the basic needs approach than Sen has realised. But there are genuine product differences. Sen had extended his approach beyond basic capabilities to capabilities in general whereas the basic needs approach, though starting from a wide concern with human needs, had tended to become squarely focussed on the poor. Stewart acknowledges the greater generality of Sen's approach and also allows that it is simultaneously less “broad-brush”, paying greater attention to variation in individual needs and to “the special needs of certain groups”. And she gives generous praise to its “much more elegant philosophical foundation” (2006: 18).

Building the Brand in Different Markets

The aggressive for-profit entrepreneur with a premium product, intent on quickly expanding his business further and entrenching brand image, might be expected to invest heavily in marketing of various kinds in order to bolster market share and construct barriers to entry.Footnote ³³ But – to refer back to the qualification with which the framing metaphor was introduced – this was far from the purpose of the capability ‘enterprise’ and Sen's modus operandi is very different. Yet his considered case for viewing well-being and development through the capability lens was soon influential in a wide range of ‘markets’. An unusual factor was his ability to convey his arguments on capabilities with equal facility to mathematical economists, applied economists, mainstream or heterodox economists, moral philosophers, political philosophers, development economists and other development studies academics, development practitioners, global institutions, feminist thinkers and educationalists – and this is not an exhaustive list. With its mention in many of his books, articles and speeches and in associated comment and review, the term ‘capabilities’ began to come into common currency.

A possible role for more deliberate ‘product promotion and presentation’ strategies for scholarly work with important policy implications may be one of the morals of Gasper's revealing comparison of alternative analyses of the state of Indian development in Chapter 12, including the most recent of Dreze and Sen's thoughtful studies of India, An Uncertain Glory – India and its Contradictions (2013). With rival and sharply divergent policy diagnoses on offer for that country, a degree of ‘marketing’ and customer focus could have its place in capturing political attention.

Customer Complaints and Trading Standards Issues; Design Modifications

It would be unlikely for a new product with such impact on the market to have a wholly smooth run. The complaints outlined below are a selection from the range of potential difficulties raised (arranged by content rather than listed in priority or chronological order). Some challenges seemed mistaken, some could readily be met, some related to admitted limitations on the product's scope, yet others raised ‘product performance’ issues that were addressed by means of developments in design to increase power and allow the introduction of more sophisticated features.Footnote ³⁴ The sketch below does not detail the sequencing of modifications, treating them instead as if embodied in a single new model from Sen, dubbed ‘Mark II’.Footnote ³⁵

Complaint 1: the product is not usable in practice – it doesn't work.

The complaint that the capability approach was not “operational” (Sugden, Reference ++Sugden1993) seemed more substantial in the product's early days, when on first acquaintance some obstacles did appear daunting. As several commentators have remarked, it is hard to sustain in the light of ongoing use (to be illustrated in this conference, with a notable sequence of papers on applying the approach scheduled to start when I stop). Sen acknowledged from the first that putting the approach to use involved significant challenges: experience has shown they can be overcome more than enough to dismiss any claim it is ‘unusable’. The literature has grown rich in examples of empirical studies, as well as in constructive discussions of ways of using the approach in different contexts. Aspects of measurement and empirical application have been explored in substantial projects. Major international statistical comparisons increasingly draw on the approach.Footnote ³⁶

One aspect of sometimes unfavourable review of the product's ability to deliver in practice may relate to heightened expectation of what it is designed to do – perhaps based on misconception of what was offered for delivery, perhaps on a more exacting opinion of what should be offered. This may be relevant to Dasgupta's harsh comments that “discussions on capabilities end nowhere”, the approach being “altogether too flabby” (2009: 624). Sen himself says in effect that some discussions on weightings and valuation trade-offs – it could be a fair proportion – will “end nowhere”; but the case he makes is that this does not rule out enough of them ending somewhere to make capabilities sufficiently fit for use. Key limitations, qualifications and stratagems in the approach were already flagged up in Commodities and Capabilities, but perhaps it is still worth emphasising its overall pragmatism. There is no pretence that strategies for reasoned resolution will always succeed on Sen's approach, with its unashamed pluralism in values and its down-to-earth recognition of “the possible plurality of robust and impartial reasons that can emerge from searching scrutiny”Footnote ³⁷; but he holds this is no reason to scorn the array of conclusions that may be feasible: “We go as far as we reasonably can” (2009a: 401). This combines with focus on areas of patent injustice where overlapping evaluation consensus is more likely, and with “the practical need to make do with whatever information we can feasibly obtain … [taking care to avoid] empirical overambitiousness” (1985a: 32).

A further – and deeper – answer to the ‘not operational’ complaint came from Atkinson when he wrote: “There is … more than one way in which an idea of this kind can be operationally effective … [A] concept is effective if it causes people to think in a different way” (1999: 185–6).

Complaint 2: the product is advertised as superior to the dominant economic product on matters of agency, but it isn't and has been missold.

This persistent complaint goes back to 1977 and the discussion of commitment and self-interest that centred on the Rational Fool. One limited protest concerns an initial example of acting from commitment. One boy offers another the choice of large or small apple, rather than taking the large one himself, the offer evidently being from commitment not sympathy since when left with the small apple he is put out; but mightn't the offer just have been a sneaky strategy to get the large apple for himself without seeming greedy, which would have worked if only the second boy had stuck to the etiquette? Yes; so the ‘advertisement’ was changed, with less contentious examples and the 1997 introduction of a specific “strategic nobility” category of action (in which apparent commitment could be disguised self-interest).Footnote ³⁸

A more general ‘misselling’ complaint, first voiced by Hahn (Reference Hahn and Meeks1991), was that although Sen was right about possible motivations, there was no call for a more complex meta-ranking structure, such as Sen had proposed, since the usual single ordering model of preference already incorporates the result of any motivational trade-offs.Footnote ³⁹ But Sen does not deny that the matter can be approached in that way: his argument is that, given the importance of valuation issues which go beyond self-interest, there is an advantage in proceeding differently. The traditional approach is less explanatory, and with information on reasons for the ranking hidden behind the scenes, there is risk of misinterpretation. In favour of the status quo, Hahn just murmurs in passing about relating his view to “a theory of the integrated personality: a man knows what he wants” (1991: 8, see also Sen, Reference Sen and Meeks1991a).Footnote ⁴⁰

Complaint 3: there is a faulty component in the commitment concept.

The component in question had been added to counter suggestions that a person acting considerately to allow for the goals of another, inconveniencing herself, must in some sense have adopted the other's goals as her own. Mark II saw a person, say Sen, complying with a request to lower a plane window blind – shutting out an attractive view of sunlight on the clouds – so that his neighbour could see his computer screen better as he continued to play a silly computer game, when Sen's opinion is that the player would be better off shutting the game down. It would seem odd then to say that Sen has adopted his neighbour's playing of the game as a goal of his own. Indeed, the act of compliance can simply be a case of “let[ting] others be” (Sen, Reference Sen2009a: 193). But can it? This contention led to a chorus of philosophical voices demanding as it were a product recall. Mustn't Sen then have had some other goal – why else would he have acted? Other goals can be imagined here; but Sen maintains there is no necessity for a further goal to be involved – unless it is true that if you hold back from what you aimed to do, you must still be doing what you aim. There seems a loss of descriptive richness if self-denying acts of restraint must come under the banner of acting on one's own goals, just as much as acts of gross self-indulgence do. If Sen is right, the component does its job and the product is safe to use (see Sen, 2005, 2007, 2009a).Footnote ⁴¹

Complaint 4: in dealing with the adaptation issue, the product is liable to break down and is dangerous in use.

“The view that the utilitarian approach takes of individual well-being … can be easily swayed by mental conditioning and adaptive attitudes … Our desires and pleasure-taking abilities adjust to circumstances, especially to make life bearable in adverse situations” (Sen, Reference Sen1999b: 62). How general a feature this is has been contested;Footnote ⁴² but, accepting that it exists, the complaint is that mental conditioning could sway a person's valuation of functionings in a similar way. If it does, the product ‘won't do what it says on the tin’.Footnote ⁴³ So Sen's capability approach (as set out in the ‘handbook’) can't be relied upon to fix the problem.

It might then seem that some paternalist intervention tool would be required in order to combat (what the capability theorist identifies as) entrenched deprivation of a person's objective circumstance accompanied by mental adaptation. This sparks complaint from commentators fearing a dangerous erosion of individual freedom.

But now there is a shift from speaking of the functionings a person values to those she has “reason to value”. The modification is not meant to be a matter of instructing her as to what she should value – what it is held to be rational for her to value – but rather of envisaging a process whereby reasoned discussion with the aid of non-parochial – “transpositional” – perspectives and data (such as the Impartial Spectator might bring to bear) creates the opportunity for her to revise her valuation if she wishes, on reviewing it through this wider lens. Similarly, where the deprivation issue relates to public policy, reasoned scrutiny with “open impartiality” can fruitfully inform (but not determine) choice. In this way and after elaboration in several presentations, Mark II is advanced as in this context providing a way for the ‘deprived adapted’ freely to re-adapt.

Mark II did not quell concern from Sugden that other people's judgment of what it is rational to desire might be allowed to “override individuals’ actual desires” (2006: 50); and, while accepting (under fire from Sen (Reference Sen2006a)) that the concept of ‘reason to value’ is not “paternalistic or elitist”, he still felt the theory “does not allow a robust formulation of each individual's freedom to choose how to live her own life” (2008: 305, 308).Footnote ⁴⁴ In a thorough refereeing of this contest, Qizilbash gives Sen a safe win on points but does not award him a knock-out blow and, in closing, hints there was reason for Sugden to mount his fight (2011: 51).

It had to be considered how Mark II might be engaged in widely different cultural contexts, whose relevance Sen had been sensitive to from the outset. He argues that truly “participatory freedom” will require universal availability of education.Footnote ⁴⁵ And an implicit prerequisite of Mark II must be a certain degree of Enlightenment respect for reason (without which Scanlon's criterion of what cannot reasonably be rejected could not well play a part). Sen indicates that in societies where there is “entrenched discrimination”, provision of wider information could be very powerful in changing locally based perceptions of feasible functionings (1999b: 32–3, 2009a: 161–3). Exposure to knowledge that opportunities previously believed infeasible are in fact feasible is a key mechanism in the operation of Mark II, as is acquaintance with an expanded range of possible evaluations (Sen's position on the nature of and relation between values and facts is very relevant here).Footnote ⁴⁶ The Impartial Spectator will be busy. She will need access. Even when she has it, not all reasons for valuing that have been influenced by deprived circumstances will necessarily respond: for example, a person deprived of educational opportunities who has adjusted to his lot may have lost the aspiration to go to college (especially if his peers have no such aspiration) and would not necessarily wish to take up a college place if the opportunity did arise, regardless of knowing others valued it.Footnote ⁴⁷ But completeness is not being claimed.

Complaint 5: product capability needs more demarcation.

This heading covers customer queries about how and where to use the product, and perhaps sums to a request for an updated set of instructions, to draw together sometimes scattered existing guidance.

One query is about equality. While “reducing inequality of capabilities … is a big concern”, The Idea of Justice spells out several reasons why the capability approach does not demand equality of capabilities. They include aggregative as well as distributional concerns, other possible moral bases for distribution, and the significance of process as well as opportunity freedomFootnote ⁴⁸ (2009a: 232–3, 295–8). Similar qualifications were applied to equality of basic capabilities in ‘Equality of What?’.Footnote ⁴⁹ Sen does connect seeking “equality of something” with lasting “approaches to the ethics of social arrangements” (1992: ix) but does not view the capability approach as an approach of that sortFootnote ⁵⁰ – it “does not, on its own, propose any specific formula for policy decisions” (2009a: 232).

Is it then left to public reasoning to decide, for example, whether or not public policy should seek to effect the looked-for expansion of at least basic capabilities in cases of special need? Will this give a secure enough basis for determining provision? We have seen that Sen supports a theory of “justice as practical reason” that tries to “identify manifestly unjust situations that can feasibly be bettered” (2009b: 299); and he is clear that “the prevention and alleviation of disability … [is] fairly central … to the removal of manifest injustice” (2009a: 259): requirements for achieving this would seem to include reaching agreement on acceptable policy measures after reasoned scrutiny under principles of open impartiality, non-discrimination and non-rejectabilityFootnote ⁵¹ – which are themselves in a sense egalitarian – with the reasoning process involving considerations of feasibility but also of rights claims, where “capability inescapably … generate[s] obligations”, and where social obligation can arise from the “responsibility of effective power” (2009a: 196–200, 205, 206, 271, 272, 292, 293, 379, 387). But this may not sufficiently draw together relevant factors in Sen's writing:Footnote ⁵² perhaps there is scope here for a Mark III?

Another query concerns the interrelationship of the concepts of capability and freedom. Capabilities are defined in Description as Freedom as “the substantive freedoms … to choose a life one has reason to value” (1999b: 74), so on this basis all capabilities are seen as freedoms – although Gasper and van Staveren suggest this overextends the freedom concept. But are all freedoms to be seen as capabilities, or would that overextend the capability concept? Sen suggested in the ‘handbook’, and subsequently, that achieving something freely could itself be seen as a valued functioning, drawing process aspects into the capability set;Footnote ⁵³ but recently he has given more emphasis to keeping process aspects distinct.Footnote ⁵⁴ Is it the position that, while the capability concept is in principle capable of encompassing everything that could possibly factor into a person's ability to be or do, stretching it to its limits may make useful distinctions begin to lose their grip?

Complaint 6: the product needs to be made stronger.

A very interesting series of papers, many appearing in a special issue of Feminist Economics in 2003, discuss ways in which Sen's treatment of capabilities might be bolstered by making much more allowance for the social and institutional factors that affect how freely an individual can in fact choose, absent obvious coercion. The issues raised include conflicting aspects of empowerment, the significant role of collective capabilities and the impact of various forms of familial and corporate power.Footnote ⁵⁵ It was not held in the main that these factors need undermine his approach, forceful though they are (a somewhat more pessimistic view can be found in Chapter 6 by Miller): the typical tone is well captured in Evans's closing remark that “Sen's capability approach provides an invaluable analytical and philosophical foundation … but it is a foundation that must be built on, not just admired” (2002: 60).

Given the opportunity to respond to the 2003 collection, Sen was fully sympathetic to further ‘product development’ on these lines, but suggested there was rather more inbuilt strength in the specified dimensions than had been realised.Footnote ⁵⁶ Commodities and Capabilities had indeed already been sensitive to several of them; concern over restricted capabilities for women had been persistent; and Sen's view of individuals as indivisible from social relations was nearer to that of Marx than to the ‘atomised’ individual of orthodox economics. In The Idea of Justice, Mark II perhaps gives rather more prominence to some of the features highlighted in these discussions, as when Sen insists that “individual human beings with their various plural identities, multiple affiliations and diverse associations are quintessentially social creatures with different types of societal interactions” (2009a: 247).

Joint Ventures and Mergers

A successful brand can spark joint ventures, attracting other producers to work alongside.

From an early point, the commonalities between the capability approach and the basic needs approach made this a natural pairing, with relevance to answering Complaint 1. Combining forces without abandoning distinct identity, they contributed to the human development approach “pioneered by … visionary economist … Mahbub ul Haq” (Sen, 2009a: 226). Streeten and Stewart were among those working with Sen and Haq on the early United Nations Development Reports in which attention was switched from the traditional measure of development through per capita GNP to a measure aiming better to reflect well-being. The first Human Development Index was published in 1990, capturing (proxy) data on health, education and the standard of living in a single number. This was, as Sen puts it, a “heroic selection” of factors relevant to well-being (2006b), but he follows Haq in holding that it is the very “boorishness” of the index that allows it to pose a punchy challenge to the already boorish GNP statistics, with the detailed reports on human development painting a fuller picture.

A second joint capabilities venture had involved philosopher Martha Nussbaum. Originally a classicist, she could bring her expertise on Aristotle to bear on questions of capability (as in her paper in 1988). Together they edited The Quality of Life (1993). I need not elaborate on how her interest in capabilities grew into what might be billed as a spin-off business, developing a line of argument distinct from Sen's – and sometimes sharply different. It is well-known that she parts company most pointedly from him in her – much debated – assertion of the need to set out a list of central capabilities, with a minimum threshold to be guaranteed by government as a matter of human dignity. This may help to meet one of the twin elements in Complaint 4 – but at the price of exacerbating the other (similarly for the first part of Complaint 5).

One might speculate over whether closer working relationships of some sort will develop between proponents of the capability approach and a recently resurgent welfarism, given their common platform of advocating measures of national well-being that go beyond income – going beyond in ways that might seem more similar now that the primary concept of happiness used in international studies tends to be ‘life evaluation’.Footnote ⁵⁷ But with some pronounced disagreement remaining, for instance on the adaptation issue, acquisition bids might seem more probable than joint ventures. Each side might suppose it should take over the other. On the one hand, as the ‘handbook’ had indicated early on, happiness has its place in the list of important functionings; and it is appreciated in the capability reckoning for supplying prima facie evidence on people's other valued achievements. (This might court previous backers of Bentham.) Psychic adaptation to adverse circumstances is still held to give reason to resist welfarism. On the other hand, Layard wrote in 2005 that the seven factors identified in surveys as most affecting happinessFootnote ⁵⁸ were “similar to the personal ‘capabilities’ that … Sen has proposed as the goals of public policy”Footnote ⁵⁹ (2005: 113). (This might court previous backers of Sen.) The “real danger of paternalism” is held to give reason to resist the capability approach. Since neither reason for resistance to the rival approach is above challenge,Footnote ⁶⁰ future dialogue might conceivably open the door to joint enterprise after all, or even friendly merger. But continuing standoff looks at the time of writing a safer bet.

Could Global Dominance Come to Undermine Performance?

There are risks that a multinational enterprise gaining global dominance may become less robust if it faces substantially weakened competition and may be subject to problems of control and corporate social responsibility if new managers dilute or overlay the aims of the original owner-manager. And it is fair to say that the capability enterprise has become global – witness, for instance, the breadth and size of attendance at the most recent conference of the Human Development and Capability Association (formed in 2004 as a ‘global community of academics and practitioners’ in this field).

However, although interest in an approach through capabilities has mushroomed, competitive perspectives still remain strong – with Pogge on the Rawlsian wing, Layard, Helliwell and Sachs on the happiness front, and the still ubiquitous persistence of preoccupation with measures of per capita GDP alone – so there are plenty of issues to keep capability advocates on their toes.

Loss of control of the aims of the original enterprise might be a greater concern. Robeyns argues in a recent paper (2016) that there are already many different strands in the capability approach. To cover the even wider range of capability theories that could fit into the approach, she coins the term ‘capabilitarianism’ – a name that does not trip off the tongue but is an interesting move, in some ways reminiscent of the introduction of ‘welfarism’ to denote a broader class of utility based systems than utilitarianism alone. That extension of utility ideas might not have gone down well with Bentham: capabilitarianism would not be expected to go down well with Nussbaum, whose more restrictive conception of the capability approach it is designed to oppose. But the flexibility and plurality of the Robeyns design may fit better with Sen's thinking (unless the degree of open-endedness proves too extreme, with resulting ‘brand erosion’).Footnote ⁶¹ It could counteract what he has sometimes feared to be the emergence of a cult-like mind-set among some capability adherents, putting product reputation at risk. On the other hand, as he says he is not comfortable now with the phrase ‘the capability approach’, ‘capabilitarianism’ might be thought too grand. I believe his own preference has been to speak of “having concern for capabilities”.Footnote ⁶²

Appraisal of Future Prospects

The evolution of Sen's capability ‘enterprise’ since its launch some forty years ago has transformed the study of well-being and the understanding of development in terms of freedom. The course of its development charted above shows it being both stress-tested and enriched. It remains a work-in-progress, still developing, still being modified; and as Sen has stressed from the outset, it is not a panacea, offers a framework for assessing well-being not a formulaic policy decision rule, is compatible with aspects of the production of rival ‘firms’, and is neither designed to resolve, nor capable of resolving, all value conflicts. But it is capable of assisting significantly in the realisation of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 (agreed in 2015), with their diversity-conscious mantra: “Leave No-one Behind”. I think the audit report can safely say of this not-for-profit business: it is performing well and fulfilling its aims; there is no risk whatsoever of bankruptcy; its reputation stands high; there can be confidence in its long-term survival.