Correlates of Capacitating Solidarity

ABSTRACT

The expansion of social investment welfare provision, in areas of early childhood education, long-term care, work-life balance reconciliation across the OECD world, since the turn of century, has opened up a space for normative recalibration, away from an emphasis on freedom from want towards freedom to act, more in tune with the Aristotelean critique on John Rawls by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Access to public housing, a core social service provision is thus be scrutinized for its capability potential for secure functionings, which is indeed considerable. Be that as it may, in conclusion, the capability approach to 21^st century welfare provision runs into practical limits by inadvertently ‘personalizing’ welfare provision for the ‘good life’, absent of an understanding of the ‘good polity’ based on legitimate overarching value framework of capacitating solidarity in 21^st century advanced democracies.

KEYWORDS:

• Welfare state
• social investment
• solidarity
• capabilities
• polity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.