Este articulo tiene como objetivo defender la necesidad de incluir la dimensión de la agencia política en un criterio de legitimidad democrático, especialmente si este es un criterio deliberativista. Para lograr tal objetivo se desarrolla un argumento intuitivo en el cual se muestra que si la agencia política no es considerada como relevante para la legitimidad democrática, podrían aceptarse como legítimos esquemas de decisión política que no requieran ningún grado significativo de participación política. Una vez demostrada esta necesidad, se muestra (...) que aunque el Enfoque de las Capacidades de Amartya Sen ha intentado mostrar la conexión intrínseca entre la dimensión de agencia y la democracia, su definición de la primera debe modificarse a fin de incorporar la agencia de los otros individuos de la sociedad como límite a los objetivos políticos. In this article, I defend the need to add the political agency dimension to the democratic legitimacy criterion, especially when it is a deliberativist criterion. In doing so, I develop an intuitive argument to show that if political agency is not deemed as relevant for the democratic legitimacy, some political schemes that do not require a significant degree of political participation will be accepted as legitimate at the end. Having shown this, I argue that although the Senian Capability Approach has tried to show the intrinsic connection between the political agency dimension and democracy, it lacks a precise definition of political agency, which should include the others' individual agency as a limit to the political objectives. (shrink)

Journal of Global Ethics, Volume 9, Issue 3, Page 249-262, December 2013.

In The Idea of Justice , Amartya Sen argues for an approach to justice that is comparative and realization-based rather than transcendental and institutional. While Sen’s arguments for such an approach may not be as convincing as he thought, there are additional arguments for it, and one is that it provides a unique and valuable platform on which an account of justice as a virtue of social and political actors (including institutions and social movements) can be built. Hence new dimensions (...) of comparison are opened up: some actors are better disposed and more successful than others at leading social change in the direction of greater justice. The main objective of this article is to use the capability approach to construct such an account. Six dimensions of acting justly are identified: (1) reducing capability shortfalls; (2) expanding capabilities for all; (3) saving the worst-off as a first step towards their full participation in economy and society, (4) which is also to be promoted by a system of entitlements protecting all from social exclusion; while (5) supporting the empowerment of those whose capabilities are to expand; and (6) respecting ethical values and legitimate procedures. I conclude by sketching some underlying moral psychology. (shrink)

There has been the recurrent suspicion that community, harmony, cohesion, and similar relational goods as understood in the African ethical tradition threaten to occlude difference. Often, it has been Western defenders of liberty who have raised the concern that these characteristically sub-Saharan values fail to account adequately for individuality, although some contemporary African thinkers have expressed the same concern. In this chapter, I provide a certain understanding of the sub-Saharan value of communal relationship and demonstrate that it entails a substantial (...) allowance for difference. I aim to show that African thinkers need not appeal to, say, characteristically Euro-American values of authenticity or autonomy to make sense of why individuals should not be pressured to conform to a group’s norms regarding sex and gender. A key illustration involves homosexuality. (shrink)

(Conference proceedings 2014) This presentation (International Development Ethics Association, July 2014) considers economic vulnerability, exploring the risk of deprivation of necessary resources due to a complex and rarely discussed vulnerability that arises from hope. Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological account of French petit-bourgeois aspiration in The Social Structures of the Economy has recently inspired Wendy Olsen to introduce the term “aspiration paradox” to characterize cases wherein “a borrower's status aspirations may contribute to a situation in which their borrowings exceed their capacity to (...) repay,” leaving the individual much the worse, due to an aspiration to betterment. If such financial opportunities were not made available to these people – if some were denied loans due to a careful assessment of their vulnerability – would they be better off? We should seriously consider that they might be. I will hazard the straightforwardly paternalistic suggestion that limiting access to lending to those who are vulnerable to their aspirations can be a just policy. Because aspiration paradox is a cross-cultural phenomenon, and because lending frequently involves asymmetries in mathematical education between borrowers and lenders, I hope to elude at least some of the charges of colonialism that have gained a stronger purchase on adaptive preference arguments. (shrink)