Ella: Sen and a Lexical Order for the Instrumental Freedoms?

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In Chapter 2 of Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen highlights how varying forms of freedom are interconnected and can be leveraged as the means of development, not just the ends. Sen affirms that there are two ways in which freedom can be used as a means of development: "support-led" and "growth-mediated." The latter "works through fast economic growth... and also on the utilization of the enhanced economic prosperity to expand the relevant social services" (46). The former "works through a program of skillful social support of health care, education, and other relevant social arrangements" (46). He cites examples of support-led growth, demonstrating how focusing on social arrangements increases prosperity as measured through life expectancy, and thus concludes that GNP per Capita is not an accurate measure of freedom and development. 


On page 48, he brings up a common rebuttal to support-led growth, which questions how support-led growth is only possible with economic growth providing the means for these programs. He responds to such by saying that in these countries, there are low-wage economies, and therefore a poor economy "needs less money to spend to provide [social] services, which would cost much more in the richer countries" (48). His assessment may be missing the mark because it does not consider a lexical order of instrumental freedoms, specifically in how the instrumental freedom of protective security lexically interacts with the other freedoms. Yes, Sen acknowledges how these instrumental freedoms are connected and interdependent. However, he does adequately address the fact that protective security is often focused on as the instrumental freedom of the highest order in a way that may interfere with the other freedoms and the feasibility of support-led growth in developing countries. 


To demonstrate my point, I will use the example of conditional cash transfers in developing countries with low education levels. As a form of "social opportunity," governments often offer cash transfer programs for those below the poverty line. Taking a more paternalistic approach that seeks to consider other instrumental freedoms, however, many governments may make these cash transfers conditional. Many of these conditions are education-based. For example, the government may offer monthly cash transfers to a mother on the condition that she enrolls her children in school and they maintain an 80% attendance rate. These programs can be successful for a time. But once the mother finds that her family is still going hungry, they may pull out of the program. In developing countries, the funds a government has to work with are obviously limited, so they can only offer so much in cash transfers. Once the mother realizes that the conditional cash transfers may not be enough to fulfill their protective securities, the opportunity cost of sending her child to school is too high. She would then respond in that situation by taking her children out of school to send them to work in the fields or at a factory, hopefully bringing in enough income to fulfill the family's protective security. Until protective security is fully ensured, the goal of fulfilling the instrumental freedom of "social opportunity" continues to be defeated. My overall point is that instrumental freedoms are not just interdependent but, in dire situations, must be comprehensively lexically ordered. An ordering is not provided by Sen, at least in chapter 2. 

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