Book Review: Development as Freedom

In early March, I had the opportunity to hear Professor Paul Collier, the development economist, speak about issues deemed critical to the future of Africa at a talk hosted by the U.S. Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany.  His observations focused on the primacy of managing economic processes, particularly resource extraction, upon which other social issues will ultimately depend.  Shortly thereafter, the British think-tank, Demos, hosted a lecture and live webcast by Amartya Sen, whose views on development are a marked contrast, and indeed conflict, with those of Collier.  Collier holds democracy to be a contingent benefit of economic growth, whereas Sen situates individual freedom and democratic processes as the foundation upon which sustainable economic growth is to be achieved.

Richard Reeves, director of Demos, has on a number of occasions referred to comments made by Sen following an acclaimed speech at Oxford in 2009.  Responding to why the practical economist had not delved more into pure philosophy during his career, Sen is said to have responded: "Because there are things to be done!"  Indeed, it is this pragmatic focus of Sen's analyses, all the while informed by broad ethical and moral dimensions, that sets him apart as one of the greater minds of our time.  Neither dismissive of the free market, nor satisfied with its limitations, Sen's dedication to answering questions about the manifest justness of specific arrangements (in economics, politics, and civil society) distinguishes him from development analysts of a more narrow focus.

The 18th century economist Adam Smith is perhaps most associated with notions of the "invisible hand" of the free market.  Elaborated upon in The Wealth of Nations, this view associates self-interested pursuits of wealth with an equitable distribution of the necessities of life.  Yet, in his foundational text, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith provided a much broader picture of moral existence than one defined strictly in economic terms.  In a new introduction to the 250th anniversary printing of the book, Sen has taken up Smith's cause of rooting economic considerations in an understanding of the greater good.

In this light, let us turn to Sen's Development as Freedom, wherein the Nobel laureate outlined the central place that "our capability to lead the kind of lives we have reason to value" (p. 285) must hold in the process of development.

Sen's economic philosophy is, above all else, based upon recognizing the heterogeneity of human co-existence.  That is to say, by establishing freedom -- and particularly the ability to exercise "free and sustainable agency" (p. 4) -- as the basis of development, he does not supplant market-driven or rational choice analysis as much as frame them in a larger context of justice, personal responsibilities, and individual choice.  A formulation that Sen has incorporated throughout his body of work relates to the "extent to which people have the opportunity to achieve outcomes that they value and have reason to value." (p. 291, [emphasis added])  According to Sen, how we go about valuing our pursuits, our choices, our desires, and our existence cannot be limited to one specific set of factors over another.  "To insist that there should only be one homogeneous magnitude that we value is to reduce drastically the range of our evaluative reasoning." (p. 77)

Because the capability to act -- that is, to choose rather than to be compelled to live a particular way -- is central to Sen, his position requires the removal of "unfreedom" from the world's destitute, and thus his distinction between "underdevelopment (seen broadly in the form of unfreedom) and development (seen as a process of removing unfreedoms and of extending the substantive freedoms of different types that people have reason to value)." (p. 86) Though accusations of anti-liberalism may be made against this argument (for example, that it diminishes the role of the free market), Sen counters with the Aristotelian notion that the market is but a mechanism for achieving the means "to lead the kind of lives we have reason to value." (p. 14) Specifically, the "merit of the market system does not lie only in its capacity to generate more efficient culmination outcomes." (p. 27)  Insisting upon one specific set of valuations over another (wealth, utilitarian happiness, etc.) creates a situation wherein "differences in the principles involved relate to the particular information that is taken to be decisive" (p. 55) without being able to make a specific claim (in terms of substantive freedoms) as to why one calculation ought to be preferred.

Conceiving the free market to be representative of substantive individual freedoms requires the removal of barriers to individual capabilities.  The market libertarian argument, for example, centers upon the responsibility of individuals to maximize value and shape the conditions of their life worth living.  Indeed, according to Sen, "there is no substitute for individual responsibility." (p. 283) However, freedom in the abstract is not the same as freedom in practical terms.  Thus, "the substantive freedoms that we respectively enjoy to exercise our responsibilities are extremely contingent on personal, social, and environmental circumstances." (pp. 283-284)  Without the freedom to actually act, there can be no expectation of the responsibility to act.  "Responsibility requires freedom." (p. 284)

Sen's commitment to democracy is not tied to specific democratic models or efforts to build just societies held together by perfect institutions, but instead approaches the matter from another angle: "using public scrutiny to arrive at agreed diagnoses of manifest injustices on the elimination of which a reasoned agreement could emerge."  The imposition of "perfectly just institutions," it would seem, is as much a problem for Sen as holding to universal ethics, insofar as both of these fall short in addressing the actual circumstances of local injustices.  Sen’s embrace of the heterogeneity of human life is interwoven with the freedom of individuals to order their lives according to their own valuations but does not expect a universality of values in consequence.  Thus, the practical freedom to live life according to what one may reasonably value is both a method and the purpose of development.

An emphasis on freedom in development policies does not imply that a specific set of criteria are available for alleviating the injustices of underdevelopment, nor that an insistence upon foundational freedoms is at all times possible.  Freedom "cannot yield a view of development that translates readily into some simple 'formula'." (p. 297) Yet, absent a specific recognition that freedoms are both means by which to achieve development as well as ends of development, the principles of development policies remain open to negotiation.  What are the measurable results of development policies in the world’s most troubled places if they are not rooted in the “removal of unfreedom”?  Increases in wealth, GDP, security, and so on, can be achieved under conditions of tyranny as well as liberty.