Pamela Abbott,Claire Wallace and Roger Sapsford,The Decent Society: Planning for Social Quality

Abstract

Keywords

Crossnational developing countries government goals indicators quality of life

There is a large literature on social indicators regularly appearing in journals such as Social Indicator Research and the Journal of Happiness Studies. Some of this literature spills out into sociological and development studies literatures – and psychology – but it is mainly a broad area of applied social sciences with a very considerable government research sector interest (at international, national and regional levels). Indicators are becoming real-world targets for achievement so it is important that they get things right, and the field has yet to consolidate how the social and other aspects need to be conceptualised and measured to offset a prime emphasis on GDP. The Decent Society is a major contributor to this work.

The Decent Society is built around the task of measuring (and providing useful guidance for) various aspects of social development, especially amongst developing countries. It has been crafted by a three-person team at the University of Aberdeen’s Centre for Global Development. For reflections on their book and an indication of future intentions see also Sapsford et al. (2018). Funders have included the European Union and the Senate of the Republic of Rwanda and the project works from a supportive associational platform provided by the International Association on Social Quality.

The conceptualisation is framed by the ‘Social Quality’ approach, which has been a stream of social thought emphasising the collective and also (collective) agency. The study is centred in a ‘Decent Society Model’ (DSM). ‘Decency’ is not conceptualised as an underlying empiricist measure of people’s experiences, but as a summation of the characteristics which a society must have as ‘infrastructure’ to provide the opportunities for decent living of its citizens. It is focused on ‘the extent to which governments provide the resources and institutions within which their residents can live decent and productive lives’ (p. 3). This differentiation is pointed up by contrasting this Quality of Life (QOL) approach – which is concerned with an evaluation of major aspects of a total society, the context in which people live – with the wellbeing frame which is concerned with the actual experience of individuals in that society. They are presented as complementary.

This clear conceptual separation flows from Sen’s well-regarded (but difficult) conceptualisation of ‘capabilities’ which citizens with various types of access can deploy to achieve their wellbeing. Abbott et al. argue that ‘It is the business of the state to provide the means of acquiring developing and displaying capabilities, either directly as in the Scandinavian model of welfare or through some combination of how socioeconomic life is governed and what “safety-net” provision is there for those who do not flourish’ (p. 4). This formulation may be rather too state-centred: encouragement and support from the state may be just as appropriate. This statement clearly anchors their model.

Their conceptualisation is strongly demarcated from the prevalent individualistic approach in so much social research and in Social Indicator analyses – even often that emanating from a Sen viewpoint: this approach tends to ‘blame the victim’ for circumstances mainly beyond their control.

In turn, the decent society must be set within a ‘Decent World’ which has supportive characteristics (pointed to in the UN MDGs framework for example) which are depicted as: ‘Economic security for all and respect for human rights assume that nation states, like citizens and groups within nation states, will share a vision of how to live together peaceably, how to coexist without damaging or threatening each other’s interests or those of each other’s citizens and how to resolve disputes without recourse to armed conflict. In the Decent World, resources which are needed by all would be conserved for all and not appropriated and squandered by those who currently have the economic or political advantage. In the Decent World there would be both equity and a just measure of equality; all would have access to sufficient food, clothing, shelter decent work, healthcare and the opportunity to develop and exercise capabilities’ (p. 5). However, this further level is not a focus of this book.

The DSM suggests there are four ‘quadrants’, which are each interdependently involved in producing a decent society. The four quadrants are:

The Economic Security quadrant is represented by a ‘national economy’ domain which represents the strength of the economy as a whole – its size relative to the size of the population and the cost of living and the extent to which it shows signs of instability, plus food security as the basic level of economic security for individuals, and a ‘social wage’ dimension covering provision for health, education, pensions, unemployment support, etc.

Social Cohesion is represented by domains covering aspects of governance, trust of people in general and of state and commercial institutions, and three ways by which the society could be divided – economic inequality, the effects of an influx of immigrants and the existence of groups which hold grievances against each other.

Social Inclusion has domains which cover human rights (as part of a society’s network of law and policy and as something to be practised or breached), poverty as a source of social exclusion, the tendency for women to be treated as less than full citizens, people’s inclusion in the social world through access to banking and through their experience as workers, their feeling of being safe and comfortable within their community, the extent to which they are included through friendship and can rely on family for help and support, and the extent of their active involvement in the socio-political world.

Empowerment is represented by health and education as the two underpinnings of agency, people’s access to information and communication, the ‘political freedoms’, the extent to which they can employ their capabilities in work or thorough setting up an enterprise and two kinds of psychological readiness to exercise agency

The relative location of these four quadrants is indicated by mapping them into a matrix/diagram (Figure 1) in which economic security and social cohesion are more systemic in the sense of constituting resources for economic security and the mechanisms by which individuals and groups are drawn together to make one society. Social inclusion and empowerment consist in what people and groups do within this resource environment – the discourses which are employed to preserve social stability and the resources for acquiring and using capabilities. Economic security and social inclusion are more global ways of looking at what is going on in the society as a whole, while social cohesion and empowerment may often be characterised as parts of the biography or history of individuals and groups.

Figure 1.

The four-quadrant approach has echoes of similar intra-societal typologies such as Talcott Parsons’ famous AGIL. Indeed more abstract versions of the Economy, Polity (Social Cohesion), Community can be readily glimpsed while the Empowerment quadrant is a shadow version of Religion/Cultural but as embodied as individual and group capacities. It is particularly here at its core – and in the empirical measurement – that the book makes a contribution to theories in comparative sociology about how societies ‘fit together’. In providing a more abstract model the book likely better captures the social forms of non-western societies. However, perhaps they are more ‘holding frames’ conceptualising various sets of ‘delivery mechanisms’ rather than actually coherent social arrangements which the book too often reifies. Much thought and debate around the DSM is warranted.

To measure the extent to which countries provide ‘decency’, an extensive measurement system is developed for 121 counties. The ‘usual suspects’ of small, very poor and ideologically antagonistic missing cases account for the remaining countries which were not able to be covered. The methodology has a sophisticated grasp of issues of validity and reliability, and draws on information from a variety of sources, including other social indicator reports. Although survey data from a variety of sources (WVS, GWP, etc.) are used, emphasis is more on measuring infrastructure, and future editions of the index intend to move further away from survey sources with their emphasis on individual experience. There are some 20 ‘domains’ which are measured (usually with several indicators each) and which fold into one or other of the four quadrants. Care is taken in constructing summative indices at both these levels, and finer drilling down into individual indicators is possible. The book does not include extensive analysis of these data but two important analyses are featured: a correlation between domain scores and whichever of the four quadrants they are assigned to, and the more inductive approach of conducting a factor analysis to examine the extent to which the indicators cluster within the four quadrants. They broadly do, but an alternative framework could be based on the five factors which emerged.

The results show that are many different ways for a country to achieve it DSI score. The main use of the index is the ability it gives to drill down in a structured way to quadrant scores, domain scores within them and even individual indicators within domains if that is what is needed, to see where a society achieves its high or low score and what might need to be done to improve conditions for its citizens.

Four levels of country scores emerge:

The richer OECD countries.

Poorer OECD counties together with some Central and South American and African counties, China and some other Far Eastern countries.

The Russian Federation and some other CIS states, some Near East counties, South Africa, the East African Community, several countries in West Africa and most of the rest of South America.

The bottom category of the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and some Southern American countries.

The book also includes some observations (based in the authors’ various experiences but also ‘local’ survey data) of the DSI level available to residents of several countries amongst the top OECD countries, Eastern Europe, in Rwanda and, then, in very poor countries more generally. These analyses suggest that deficiencies in provision can be isolated by comparing the levels of achievement across the four quadrants (or indeed at the indicator level). Their commentaries emphasise the interrelationship between material and other aspects of development. This partly fieldwork-based aspect of their study is particularly valuable (and is a great personal tribute to the authors: not many studies are partly underlain by a two-year stint in Rwanda), although it is brief and often removed from the policy action in such countries. This is an important addition on the topic of evaluation of the use of indicators, including, if possible, fieldwork of how they are used on the ground.

The social indicators field faces several challenges which are actively being worked on:

Adequacy of theory/conceptualisations;

Identification and relative importance of explanatory variables;

Tracing of change over time;

Adequacy of methodology (especially quality of measurements and the size and range of sample, but also data analysis such as index construction;

Institutionalisation of indicators; and

Applied usefulness.

This well-written and considered book provides useful advances to each of these. It is well conceptualised with the DSI model providing much food for thought. It has a good array of measures and summative indices fairly closely linked to this conceptualisation and a sample size of some 120 countries which is a good bite at the c. 200 which form the ‘population’, and a much better scope than the c. 30 countries of data-rich Europe (and other OECD countries) which are focused on by many SI studies. Applications are more directly discussed than most and although institutionalisation of the programme and building up of trend analysis are still ‘works in progress’ it is valuable that this book is the foundation for a programme and not its one-off conclusion (see Sapsford et al., 2018). A second edition of the DSI is in preparation which will incorporate improvements in terms of conceptualising but also measurement. In sum, more attention to the ‘Decent Society’ programme would fructify the international social indicators movements. I hope sufficient funds will continue to support their work.

As with almost all studies this book has some difficulties which are highly difficult to overcome. These include an adequate account of intergenerational welfare and the differential experiences of different social groupings. Other long-term issues are to incorporate environmental issues and to build in the analysis of the contextual effects of the DW on the DS.

Footnotes

Author biography

Charles Crothers is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. He completed his PhD at Victoria University of Wellington and has worked at VUW, the University of Auckland, and the University of Natal in Durban. Charles’ current areas of research include social theory, methods of applied social research and policy processes, the history and current situation of sociology, and settler societies (especially New Zealand and South Africa) with a particular interest in settlements. He is Editor of the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Kotuitui and Senior Research Associate, University of Johannesburg. Address: Auckland University of Technology, Pvt Bag 92006, Auckland 1142, New Zealand. Email: charles.crothers@aut.ac.nz

References

Sapsford

Abbott

Wallace

(2018) The Decent Society Index Mark 2: (1) Constructing the Index. SSRN Electronic Journal. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3123260 (Working Paper, 4, Centre for Global Development, University of Aberdeen).