What is a Capability-enhancing Social Policy? Individual Autonomy, Democratic Citizenship and the Insufficiency of the Employment-focused Paradigm

Abstract

Since the mid-1990s, global social policy discourse and practice has shifted from a focus on social protection and redistribution towards the promotion of people’s labour market participation and human capital enhancement. The capability approach significantly contributed to legitimize these developments. The aim of this paper is to criticize this dominant interpretation of the capability approach in social policy, which reduces people’s capability to their capacity to participate in the economy. An alternative conceptualization of capability-enhancing social policy is then proposed. At the individual level, social policy should increase the number and variety of valuable options open to individuals. On the one hand, this means supporting—alongside employment—also care work and political participation. On the other hand, since the benefits of employment cannot be taken for granted, this requires also reforming the workplace in order to expand citizens’ agency and wellbeing. At the collective level, social policy should establish the social preconditions for an effective and substantive democracy, providing the social bases of political equality through a focus on redistribution and equal respect. This alternative conceptualization has also implications for education policy: rather than people’s human capital, education should enhance individual and collective autonomy.

Keywords:

• Active social policy
• Autonomy
• Capability approach
• Democratic citizenship
• Inclusive growth
• Social investment

Acknowledgements

For insightful discussions on the subject of this paper, I am thankful to my colleagues of the Re-InVEST project, and especially to Jean-Michel Bonvin and Ortrud Leßmann. Moreover, I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers of this Journal for valuable comments and suggestions. All errors remain my exclusive responsibility.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

About the Author

Francesco Laruffa is Research Fellow at the University of Geneva, where he is member of the research network LIVES (“Overcoming Vulnerabilities—Life Course Perspectives”) and of the CESCAP (Center for the study of capabilities in social and health services).

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the EU H2020 Research and Innovation Programme [project ‘Re-InVEST—Rebuilding an Inclusive, Value-Based Europe of Solidarity and Trust through Social Investments’, grant number 649447] and by the Swiss Confederation. The information and views set out here are those of the author and do not reflect the official opinions of the European Union or of the Swiss Confederation.