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CAPABILITY PATERNALISM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2014

Rutger Claassen
Rutger Claassen*
Affiliation:
Utrecht University, the NetherlandsR.J.G.Claassen@uu.nl
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Abstract

A capability approach prescribes paternalist government actions to the extent that it requires the promotion of specific functionings, instead of the corresponding capabilities. Capability theorists have argued that their theories do not have much of these paternalist implications, since promoting capabilities will be the rule, promoting functionings the exception. This paper critically surveys that claim. From a close investigation of Nussbaum's statements about these exceptions, it derives a framework of five categories of functionings promotion that are more or less unavoidable in a capability theory. It argues that some of these categories may have an expansionary dynamic; they may give rise to widespread functionings promotion, which would defeat the capabilitarian promise that paternalist interventions will be exceptions to the rule of a focus on capabilities. Finally, the paper discusses three further theoretical issues that will be decisive in holding this paternalist tendency in check: how high one sets threshold levels of capability protection, how lengthy one's list of basic capabilities is, and how one deals with individual responsibility for choices resulting in a loss of one's capabilities.

Type
Articles
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 30 , Issue 1: ‘Themes from the Work of Amartya Sen: Identity, Rationality, and Justice’ , March 2014 , pp. 57 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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