4.2.4.3   Socio-Economic Rights and the Opportunity to Flourish 

(This is an archived page, from the Patterns of Power Edition 3 book.  Current versions are at book contents).

The scope of socio-economic rights is suggested in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Appendix 1): they can include unemployment benefits, welfare, sick pay, pensions, working conditions, health and education – as itemised in Articles 22-26. 

This issue is partly economic, as described earlier (3.5.2), but it is treated here as making the moral case for people's needs. 

• Pope Francis, for example, in his ‘Apostolic Exhortation’ Evangelii Gaudium, highlighted the damaging social impact of economic exclusion.

• Amartya Sen, in The Idea of Justice, argued that a society could not be considered just unless everybody has what he called “capability”, describing it as "the opportunity to fulfil ends and the substantive freedom to achieve those reasoned ends" – where the term "ends" means whatever is important to the person concerned.[1]

There is more agreement about what people need than about how those needs should be met.  Individualists and collectivists have sharply contrasting perspectives on what, if any, socio-economic rights should be guaranteed by a government – as described in separate sub-sections below:

• Socio-economic rights can be established as entitlements guaranteed by the State (4.2.4.5);

• or they might be met by families, friends and a network of private charities (4.2.4.6). 

Most countries deliver socio-economic rights in both these ways, but the public-private split varies widely – and has to be resolved by political negotiation, as discussed later (6.7.1).

© PatternsofPower.org, 2014