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Choice by service users has been promoted in social policy across many developed welfare states, often on the grounds that it will incentivize providers to enhance quality and efficiency. But this instrumental motivation for the promotion of choice overlooks the possibility that choice, understood in the deeper sense of autonomy, has intrinsic value, as suggested by egalitarian and capability-based theories of social justice. This article argues that the narrow motivation of choice policies leads to a focus on services rather than outcomes for individuals and fails to address deep-seated inequalities in the opportunities people have for real autonomy. We test this concept using newly collected data for the UK. Our empirical findings indicate that disabled people are more likely to experience constrained autonomy in all respects, while being from a low socio-economic group and/or lacking educational qualifications is a risk factor across several components. We conclude that improving the 'choice' agenda for policy requires: (1) adopting a more sophisticated concept of 'choice' such as the conceptualization of 'choice as autonomy' outlined here; (2) developing a better understanding of existing inequalities in autonomy, such as we begin to explore in our empirical results; and (3) tackling these inequalities through, for example, the removal of obstacles to active decision-making by providing effective support and advocacy, especially for disabled people, and addressing the major structural barriers - poverty, ill health and geographical inequality - which place significant restrictions on the autonomy of those who are already disadvantaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines a new capability-based measurement framework that has been developed as a basis for equality and human rights monitoring in twenty-first-century Britain. We explore the conceptual foundations of the framework and demonstrate its practical application for the purposes of monitoring equality (in terms of the distribution of substantive freedoms and opportunities among individuals and groups) and human rights (in terms of the achievement of substantive freedoms and opportunities below a minimum threshold) in England, Scotland and Wales. The article challenges the sceptical position by suggesting that 'operationalizing' the capability approach is both 'feasible' and 'workable'. A new two-stage procedure for deriving a capability list is proposed. This combines human rights and deliberative consultation and strikes a balance, we contend, between internationally recognized human rights standards and principles on the one hand, and direct deliberation/participation on the other, in the development and agreement of capability lists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Agency goals' play an important role in Sen's capability approach. They are an acknowledgement that individuals aspire to achieve objectives other than their own immediate well-being. This article argues that using agency goal achievement as a basis for evaluating inequality or disadvantage is problematic. In particular, one of the principal charges against utilitarianism made by capability theorists - that based on adaptation or conditioned expectations - can be made with equal force and validity against a metric based on agency goals. The argument is illustrated using survey data on the educational and occupational aspirations of a cohort of young people in Britain. The article concludes that the conventional cross-sectional, objective, definition of a capability set needs to be broadened. Only if the capability set from which agency goals are formed and the capability set within which they are pursued are evaluated can we begin to properly assess substantive freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]