What Informational Basis for Assessing Job-Seekers?: Capabilities vs. Preferences

The evaluative function of local public actors has been exacerbated in recent years with the individualisation of social policies. One of their tasks is to select the appropriate informational basis in order to assess welfare claimants. Amartya Sen's capability approach offers a theoretical and normative framework to analyse this evaluative function. In particular, it insists on the importance of “objectivating” people's preferences with reference to their capabilities. The weight that is to be attached to individual preferences in the course of public action can be a matter of controversy. Claimants “capability for voice”, we argue, should be developed. This capability refers to their effective possibility to express their concerns with regard to the choice of the informational basis. It is argued that local institutions prohibiting capability for voice will produce adaptive preferences, whereas procedural institutions promoting reflexive public evaluation and capability for voice will result in a fairer wording of individual preferences. At a situated level, the way to connect subjective and objective information when assessing people very much depends on the position of the evaluator. Several illustrations show that the fairness of evaluation, and its impact on the people's capability set, depend on this positional perspective.