Beyond capabilities? Sen’s social choice approach and the generalizability assumption

The main objective of this chapter is to show how informational pluralism can be used within Sen’s social choice framework (SSC). In order to tackle this issue, two steps are necessary. First, it is important to spell out the ‘generalizability’ assumption behind Sen’s principle of working with broad informational spaces. Second, we need to work out a method to make sense of the need to conciliate different informational spaces. By doing so, several features and issues of the capability approach can be seen as part of a systematic story. Thus, this chapter is divided into four parts. The first part explores the generalizability issue behind the capability approach. The second provides a brief characterization of Sen’s social choice approach. The third part demonstrates how it can be used through what can be named ‘generalizability tables’. Finally, the chapter briefly concludes with some suggestions for future work.