آزادی یا شادی؟ آژانس و رفاه ذهنی در رویکرد توانایی

Human agency is a pivotal part of freedom and happiness. This article outlines two aspects of agency – power and control and self-establishment of goals – and situates it in the capability approach and vis a vis SWB. One can view the CA as an integration of ‘agency’ and ‘outcome’ oriented approaches. When agency is possible, it has primacy. When not, it is valued achievements (among others SWB) that acquire importance. Therefore agency is key for understanding how SWB fits in the general policy framework as a valued outcome. Two important functions of SWB information in this respect are outlined: as a frame of problem and as a signalling device on the effectiveness of policy.

Both the subjective well-being and the capabilities approach to well-being take individuals who are the beneficiaries or the victims of policy outcomes and the workings of social structures serious. Both take an interest in how individuals are actually doing and their actual circumstances, as opposed to the arcane and abstract structures of ‘neo-classical welfare economics’. The Subjective well-being approach does so by investigating and propagating the antecedents and facilitators of positive psychological functioning and human happiness and satisfaction. The capability approach prioritizes human freedom: the ability and liberty to live the life one wants to live. These are two prominent recent approaches to well-being and important contenders as bases for policy thinking. Both approaches touch upon dimensions of human life and well-being that are fundamentally important for and to individuals, and no researcher working within one of these fields would deny the relevance for human well-being of the concerns of researchers working in the other field. Yet Comim (2005: 162) notes: “this seemingly obvious overlap in their object of research does not appear to be accompanied by any considerable acknowledgment of the vast work that has been produced in the two fields. It is in fact quite remarkable how both CA and SWB theories seem to turn their backs on each other's contributions.” How are we to understand this gulf? How might we bring these two approaches into closer contact with one another? The aim of this paper is to integrate the concerns of both approaches. It does so by taking agency as a focal point of departure. Once the meaning and place of agency is established, it becomes more straightforward to see how the work done under the heading of these two approaches can inform and complement each other in a constructive way. Section 2 sets out to determine the necessary elements of the concept of human agency. The aim here is to present a reasonable concept of agency that is capable of sustaining consensus on the necessary elements of human agency. This working definition will then be used in Section 3 to situate agency within the general framework of the CA. It is argued that the CA is an integration of an ‘agency’ and ‘outcome’ oriented approaches, among the latter is the happiness approach. Finally Section 4 establishes the place of SWB in the CA with reference to agency. Two important functions of SWB information in this respect are outlined: as a frame of problem and a context of discovery and as a signalling device on the effectiveness of policy. Section 5 concludes the article.

In libertarian thought, freedom is procedural. In the CA freedom is substantive: what can an individual actually do and be? For example the liberty of ‘freedom of speech’ is certainly part of one's freedom, but the capabilities framework would also acknowledge that if one can not read or write or if one lacks access to the media and the means for having one's voice heard, that there is not much freedom of speech. So freedom of speech, for example, involves inter alia among others the freedom to enjoy education. It is this awareness that freedom is more than liberty alone, that it requires means, processes and abilities that gives the capabilities approach its power. In defining development as an increase in freedom, in the real options one has for experiencing valued doings and beings, the CA breaks with an idea of development that sees people in poverty as cattle that need to be feed. The same goes for subjective well-being: by accepting and integrating the emotional and mental experience of life in policy setting and the evaluation of social structures it potentially opens up to a more human centered economy. The merit of the CA as a framework lies in the fact that it does not preclude any functioning, any state of being and doing, and thereby not legitimizing any status quo or inequality in advance. A freedom approach that integrates subjective well-being explicitly is furthermore less likely to introduce distortions in policy formulation and implementation. To put it shortly: a freedom plus happiness approach is better than either alone. The way to go about this is to use SWB-data as a context of discovery, namely the discovery of inequalities in options for experiencing valued doings and beings, the discovery of the lack of power and control to influence one's situation in line with one's preferences. And also to use SWB-data after policy implementation, as a check whether policies have had the intended consequence. The idea behind which is that an increase in the power to influence one's circumstances in line with self-established goals, that is an increase in agency, will on average increase subjective well-being. This is however not a necessity within the freedom approach, as long as the situation is in line with whatever individuals have reason to value. Still, a decrease in SWB would signal serious negative consequences for the freedom of individuals. Subjective well-being coupled to freedom and agency forms a powerful tool for better policy and against false promise.