Amartya Sen's entitlement approach: empirical statement or conceptual framework?

Abstract

In this article, the theoretical and methodological status of Amartya Sen's entitlement approach is discussed. The point of departure for the discussion is Caf Dowlah's criticism in this issue of the International Journal of Social Welfare of Sen's analysis of the 1974 famine in Bangladesh. In his article, Dowlah criticises Sen for not giving a full empirical account of the socio-political situation, primarily the widespread corrup-tion in Bangladesh at the time of the famine in question. In my view, even if this criticism is correct, it is not strictly essential to the factual and normative status of Sen's entitlement approach. I argue further that Dowlah's reading of Sen in this context implies an empiricist standpoint that is in general alien to Sen's entitlement approach. I contest the normative claim that by neglecting to give substantial treatment to the wide-spread corruption in Bangladesh Sen had trivialised the con-ditions of the population, and offer an alternative hypothesis; namely, that factual accounts of corruption, however relevant, seldom fulfil the requirements of methodological rigour char-acteristic of the discipline of economics with its deductive models. The article examines the formal, legalistic focus of the entitlement approach and discusses its consequences. The article takes up the problems of validation and falsification in relation to an empiricist interpretation, and a deductive ration-alist interpretation, respectively, of the entitlement approach. The conclusion is that both interpretations have distinct problems. The empiricist interpretation must contend with the problem of what constitutes the empirical basis of inductive generalisa-tion; the deductive interpretation must contend with the problem that the universal applicability of nomenclatures is more defini-tional than explanatory.