From ‘Hume's Law’ to Problem- and Policy-Analysis for Human Development. Sen after Dewey, Myrdal, Streeten, Stretton and Haq

Abstract

Much of Amartya Sen's work has been policy-related, but his methodology of policy analysis has not been explained in detail. Action-related social science involves value-imbued procedures that guide choices. This theme was explored by Streeten and Stretton, and earlier by Dewey and Myrdal. Assisted by Jean Drèze, Sen has evolved a form of policy analysis guided by humanist values rather than those of mainstream economics. Features of this methodology include the following: (1) a wider range of values employed in valuation, with central attention on: how do and can people live?; (2) conceptual investigation of the wider range of values; (3) use of the wider range of values to guide choice of topics and boundaries of analysis; (4) a focus on human realities, not an arbitrary slice of reality selected according to commercial significance and convenience for measurement; (5) using a wider range of values to guide other decisions in analysis; thus, there is a focus on the socio-economic significance of the result; and (6) a matching focus on a wide range of potential policy means. This paper characterizes Sen's policy analysis methodology, its roots in earlier work, and its relations to the UNDP Human Development approach and kindred approaches.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank seminar audiences in Birmingham, Groningen and Rotterdam, and Bridget O'Laughlin, Steven Pressman, Ingrid Robeyns, Irene van Staveren, Paul Streeten and two anonymous referees for helpful reactions and advice.

Notes

¹ None of these authors figured in the Walsh-Putnam-Nussbaum discussion in this journal (Vol. 15, No. 3), except for one reference to Myrdal by Walsh. In his recent writings on Sen, Putnam (2002, 2003a) refers to Dewey but examines only the entangled linguistic nature of the inputs to inquiry, not the content and process of inquiry itself.

²Some people use the term ‘capability approach’ as incorporating entitlements analysis; but the formal presentations of the approach that are widely taken as authoritative include virtually nothing on entitlements analysis (Sen, 1993; Alkire, 2002, 2005; Robeyns, 2005).

³Pogge (2002) explains how in practice we would have to aim to equalize capability across persons as formulated in terms of basic capabilities that everyone has reason to value, not in terms of each person's idiosyncratic objectives.