The Decent Society: Planning for Social Quality

189 Pages·2016·2.48 MB·English

by  Pamela Abbott

The Decent Society
The search for ‘the Decent Society’ – a fit place in which to live – has informed
policy at both governmental and international level. This book analyses its nature
and devises a consistent way of measuring the concept worldwide on the basis
of a coherent theory of agency within social structure. Influenced by classical
sociology and by the economist Amartya Sen, the book posits that societies need
to create (a) economic security, (b) social cohesion, (c) social inclusion, and
(d) the conditions for empowerment. The model is interactive and recursive; each
component provides the requirements for each of the others.
This book outlines the sociopolitical framework underlying ‘the Decent Soci-
ety’ and summarises a decade of research, some of which has had a formative
impact on governments’ policies. The first half contains studies of social quality
based on surveys in the former Soviet Union and sub-Saharan Africa, while the
second half describes the construction of a Decent Society Index for comparing
very different countries across the world.
This book and the index it develops will be of interest both to academics and
researchers in sociology, politics, economics, psychology, social policy and devel-
opment studies and to policy-makers in government, local government and the
NGOs.
Pamela Abbott is an honorary professor in the School of Social Sciences and
an associate of the Centre for International Sustainable Development at the Uni-
versity of Aberdeen, UK.
Claire Wallace is a professor of sociology at the University of Aberdeen, UK.
Roger Sapsford has recently retired from the post of Professor of Social Psy-
chology and Research Methods at the National University of Rwanda and is an
Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen.
Routledge Advances in Sociology
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com
170 Understanding Southern Social Movements
Edited by Simin Fadaee
171 Sharing Lives Adult Children and Parents
Marc Szydlik
172 The Reflexive Initiative On the Grounds and
Prospects of Analytic Theorizing
Edited by Stanley Raffel and Barry Sandywell
173 Social Movements in Violently Divided Societies
Constructing Conflict and Peacebuilding
John Nagle
174 Challenging Identities
European horizons
Edited by Peter Madsen
175 Cool Nations
Media and the social imaginary of the branded country
Katja Valaskivi
176 Thanatourism and Cinematic Representations
of Risk
Screening the end of tourism
Rodanthi Tzanelli
177 The Decent Society
Planning for social quality
Pamela Abbott, Claire Wallace and Roger Sapsford
The Decent Society
Planning for social quality
Pamela Abbott, Claire Wallace
and Roger Sapsford
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Pamela Abbott, Claire Wallace and Roger Sapsford
The right of Pamela Abbott, Claire Wallace and Roger Sapsford to be
identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Abbott, Pamela, author. | Wallace, Claire, 1956– author. |
Sapsford, Roger, editor.
Title: The decent society : planning for social quality / Pamela Abbott,
Claire Wallace and Roger Sapsford.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2016. | Series: Routledge advances
in sociology
Identifiers: LCCN 2015045913 | ISBN 9781138909335 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781315694023 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Social policy. | Social integration. | Social change. |
Power (Social sciences)
Classification: LCC HN18.3 .A23 2016 | DDC 303.3—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015045913
ISBN: 978-1-138-90933-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-69402-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of figures viii
List of tables ix
Preface x
Acknowledgements xii
List of abbreviations and acronyms xiii
1 The decent society 1
What we expect from government 1
Understanding decent lives 5
Measuring decent lives 8
Social quality and the decent society 13
Conditions for the decent society 18
2 Economic security 21
Resources for survival 21
The wealth of nations 22
The social wage 23
The functions of economic security 29
The sustainability of economic security 32
Measuring economic security 34
3 Social cohesion 37
The cohesive society 37
Domains and functions of social cohesion 40
Governance 45
The scope and sustainability of social cohesion 47
Measuring social cohesion 50
vi Contents
4 Social inclusion 53
What social inclusion means 53
Processes of social inclusion 55
Family, community and inclusion 58
The functions and elements of social inclusion 64
Measuring social inclusion 70
5 Social empowerment 72
Agency and its context 72
Empowerment and capability 76
The elements of empowerment 78
Measuring empowerment 80
6 Social quality in transitional societies: A summary of research 83
Developing research: towards social quality 83
The former Soviet Union: countries in transition 85
Rwanda: a state that recreated itself 92
From satisfaction to the decent society 101
7 Constructing a Decent Society Index 105
The need for a different index 105
Constituting the Decent Society Index 107
8 Using the Decent Society Index 119
Headline results 119
The top sixteen countries 121
Planned social development: the case of Rwanda 125
The world’s poorest countries 131
Using the Decent Society Index 133
9 Conclusions and future directions 134
The Decent Society Model 134
Assessing the Model 136
Capability, functioning and the provision
of prerequisite conditions 140
Contents vii
The uses of the Index 142
Next steps in using the Model and the Index 145
References 147
Appendix 162
Index 173
Figures
1.1 The Social Quality Model 15
2.1 World map: Index of Economic Security 31
3.1 World map of Trust 43
7.1 The computation of primary indicator, domain and quadrant
scores 110
8.1 World map: Decent Society scores 120
8.2 Deviation of quadrants from world mean values – the top
sixteen countries 122
8.3 Domains within Economic Security for the top sixteen
countries (excluding food security) 123
8.4 Scores for the index: Rwanda, the EAC, the DRC and
Sub-Saharan Africa 126
8.5 Scores for quadrants: Rwanda, the EAC, the DRC and
Sub-Saharan Africa 127
8.6 Domain scores within Economic Security for EAC countries
and the DRC 128
8.7 Domain scores within Social Cohesion for EAC countries
and the DRC 128
8.8 Selected indicator scores within Trust in People and
Institutions for EAC countries and the DRC 129
8.9 Domain scores within Social Inclusion for EAC countries
and the DRC 130
8.10 Domain scores within Empowerment for EAC countries
and the DRC 131
Tables
7.1 Correlation among the four quadrants 111
7.2 Correlation of domains with quadrant scores 112
7.3 Component structure of domains 115
8.1 Data for the sixteen poorest countries 132
9.1 Correlation of the Decent Society Index with other key variables 139
A.1 Decent Society Index and quadrant ranks, in alphabetical order 162
A.2 Decent Society Index and quadrant ranks, in order of overall rank 165
A.3 Indicators used in the Index 168