Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: martya Sen developed his capabilities approach because of problems
he saw with other concepts -- notably utility, opportunity and
resources -- in providing the right objective of maximization and
measure of equality. This paper examines Sen's criticisms of those
other concepts and then subjects his capabilities and functionings
to the same searching questions. We find that many of the problems
Sen identifies with those other concepts can also be applied, albeit
in subtly different ways, to his own capabilities approach. For
example, attempting to attain scarce or positional goods may affect
the capability of individuals to attain other goods. We find this
mirrors for capabilities the expensive tastes objection to utility
maximization. In general, the problem for the capabilities approach
is that each person's capabilities depend upon the capabilities of
others. This relational aspect which might apply to opportunity or
resources, or to versions of utility - pervades the capabilities
approach. The paper concludes that this relational aspect cannot be
avoided in discussion of maximization and notions of equality.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Human impacts on large-scale ecological interactions effectively confer fundamental advantages of wealth and power to some members of society and not to others. As illustrated here by reference to a 1993 Cholera outbreak resulting from degradation of aquatic ecosystems, these impacts can pose barriers to the normal channels through which one might pursue individual advantage, thereby raising tensions for liberal theories of justice that are committed both to basic liberties and to distributive fairness. I first illustrate these tensions by reference to John Rawls’s theory. I then argue that although Nussbaum’s theory, which emerged in dialogue with Rawls’s, improves upon it in this regard, it remains subject to the same basic tensions. Instituting “capability ceilings” that impose a limit on the set of basic opportunities available to people would help resolve this tension. Thus, in addition to Nussbaum’s proposal for establishing capability thresholds, I defend capability ceilings as a friendly amendment to her theory. Although my argument follows Nussbaum’s discussion of “tragic tradeoffs” in treating the capabilities approach as a framework to guide pubic deliberation and reasoning about public policies, I close by providing justification for a more prescriptive application of the capabilities approach, in which it provides the criterion and justification for prohibiting public policies that are detrimental to the ecological preconditions of democracy.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In thirty years, disabilities have gone from being seen as falling outside the scope of justice to being regarded as a central challenge for theories of justice. Moreover, that challenge has come to be framed in terms congenial to, and influenced by, disability scholars and activists. This paper examines two very different proposals for simplifying distributive justice that reflect this shift. While one seeks to limit the scope of distributive justice, the other to enlarge it, they share four important features: they are motivated to a significant extent by the inapt response to disability offered by earlier theories, they view the misguided treatment of disability as symptomatic of a wider failing to understand the scope of distributive justice, they see the first requirement of justice as the achievement of certain thresholds of capability by all or most members of the political community, and they take education as a paradigm case. Though I argue that neither proposal is successful in achieving the desired simplifications, I believe that both contribute significantly to the current debate on distributive justice, and to the integration of disability scholarship into political philosophy.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper assesses the impact of the European Union’s Open Method of Coordination (OMC) on Italy’s institutional capability in the employment and social inclusion policy fields. Institutional capability is defined as the extent to which a system of collective action is able – by means of interactive dynamics – to elaborate ‘satisficing’ responses to environmental challenges; transform such responses into decisions of a political nature; implement such decisions; and learn from experience.
Both in employment and social inclusion, Italy has suffered from a twofold handicap: initial congruence of its policymaking process with that presupposed by the OMC was low in both fields, and there have been internal dynamics of change which have significantly interacted with the push related to the OMC. However, the evidence provided in the paper points towards a clear strengthening of institutional capability as an OMC-induced effect in the employment field, while the OMC seems to have had little – if any – impact on institutional capability in the social assistance field. This variance is put to work in order to identify clusters of factors that have plausibly affected the impact of the OMC on Italy’s institutional capability, and could be exploited to generate general hypotheses about the impact of the OMC on national institutional capabilities.

Publication Type: Proceeding