Rationales for a new SHD perspective at the local level

In order to facilitate the integration of the local development perspective and the HD paradigm, it is essential to disentangle their main theoretical and empirical linkages. The starting point of our discussion is that (1) individuals are social entities and local interactions feed and shape the evolutionary dynamics of development systems; and (2) the combination of resources, institutions and capacities create the enabling factors that are essential for community well-being and for the capability expansion of individuals.

ARGUMENT A: Human development is implicitly a place-based process The first argument has origins in Sen's (1999) view of development as a process of expanding both the primary end of enriching human life (sub­stantive freedoms) and the principal means composed by interrelated compo­nents, such as economic facilities, political freedoms, social opportunities, transparency guarantees and protective security (the five “instrumental free­doms”). In both cases, the influence of the territorial context - conceived not solely as a mere administrative or economic space, but as an economic, social, political, ecological and cultural construct that evolves over time (Cooke and Morgan, 1998; Taylor and Flint, 2000)¹³ - seems undeniable. On the one hand, the capabilities agents have reason to value are place­dependent, being inexorably influenced by local traditions, social norms and cultural traits (among other things), which are often substantially different across territories, even within the same national setting. Deneulin (2008, p. 106) shows that ‘individual value judgements critically depend on a collective framework that gives rise to them and sustains them, assess­ing development in terms of the capabilities that individuals have reason to choose and value requires setting the subject of development beyond individual subjects.'

Moreover, Canzanelli's (2001, p.

ARGUMENT B: Participation and agency freedom is mostly locally experienced

The second rationale builds on the emphasis placed on the intrinsic (for quality of life) and the instrumental (for promoting other opportunities) value of participation, public scrutiny/deliberation¹⁵ and collective action (Crocker, 2007). This emphasis is based on the premise that individuals ‘cannot fully flourish without participating in political and social affairs, and without being effectively involved in joint decision-making' (Sen, 2002, p. 79). Sen (1999) strongly insists also on the role of public discussion and critical scrutiny in shaping preferences, assigning weights to different com­ponents of well-being and understanding economic needs. Evans (2002) and Stewart (2005) discuss the potential of collective action and organized collec­tivities (e.g. groups, unions, councils) in attaining development as freedom.

Similarly, within the local development literature, Barca et al. (2012) stress the importance of participation and deliberative processes for generating the necessary knowledge to design tailored policies.

In drawing these arguments together, it comes as no surprise that the arena for action and influence where public discussion and critical scrutiny take place and collectivities primarily operate is the territorial society. Notwithstanding the increasing relevance of the trans-territorial and transnational advocacy groups (Via Campesina, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Oxfam, ActionAid, among others), individual participation and multiple-groups membership¹⁶ are most immediately experienced within their local communities, with stronger commitment and opportunity to influence policy decision. Indeed, according to Mehrotra (2008, p. 390),

the complex functioning of participation that the approach postulates needs to be contextualised not at an individual level but at that of the community - collective voice and collective action - to have operational use. Unless thus extended, none of the simple functionings (e.g. the ability to read and write) is likely to be realised, even in democratic states.

To advance the emphasis on the interactive and collective character¹⁷ of the processes behind the expansion of human capabilities (Deneulin, 2008), it is possible to find significant linkages with the local development litera­ture around the ideas of "relational assets” or "untraded interdependencies” (Storper, 1997).

ARGUMENT C: The expansion of human capabilities is inexorably linked to local governance mechanisms within a multilevel perspective

The third argument relates to the fundamental issue of governance and pub­lic action, which has been discussed by Dreze and Sen (1989 and 2002) and goes beyond the domain of the nation-state. Nowadays, the importance of sub-national and multilevel articulation of government is clear (Barca et al., 2012). It includes vertical articulation (along national and global lines) and horizontal articulation (with reference to entrepreneurs, associations and NGOs, etc.) with respect to the aim of fostering sustainable development and social empowerment. The commitment and ownership of local govern­ments and other territorial actors in both the private sector and civil society can help in two ways. Firstly, it can reconcile bottom-up and top-down policy approaches (Crescenzi and Rodriguez-Pose, 2011) and contextual­ize national plans and sectoral priorities within local systems. Secondly, it can help establish a development planning process that reflects effec­tive territorial potentialities and needs, in order to improve public services and reduce socio-economic differences. In this respect, the participation of local civil society in decision-making processes relating to objectives, strate­gies, resources and efforts for territorial development is essential (Ghai, 1990); in fact, it has even been perceived as the common element of the most influential definitions of "local development” by Sforzi (2005).

Finally, the decentralization of governance is a key strategy in the agenda of most countries in the North and in the South (Mehrotra, 2015, forth­coming). Specifically, the decentralization of service delivery is considered to be a critical prerequisite for human capability enhancement through a participatory process (Osmani, 2001), especially if decentralization is accompanied by bottom-up processes and empowerment.

ARGUMENT D: Individuals and their capabilities and agency expansion processes are territorially embedded

The fourth and final rationale derives from the recognition that human development - in psychological terms - ‘involves the scientific study of the progressive, mutual accommodation between an active, growing human being and the changing properties of the immediate settings in which the developing person lives' (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 21). Indeed, as argued by the IFDA (1980, p. 11), ‘It is in the village, the neighbourhood, the town, the factory, the office, the school, the union's local, the party's branch, the parish, the sports club, the association - whatever its purpose - that personal and societal development first and best interact.'

Social structures and institutions are included in the conceptual frame­work of the CA, conceived as social determinants of people's capability sets that can be affected by policy or social change (Robeyns, 2005).

There seems to be striking complementarities and unexplored synergies with the place-based approach to development strategies (Bolton, 1992; Barca, 2009; OECD, 2009a and 2009b; CAF, 2010), as opposed to spa­tially blind approaches (World Bank, 2009). The place-based argument gives emphasis to the geographical context (in social, cultural and institu­tional terms) and to multi-stakeholder and the interactive construction of knowledge in order to reinforce community capabilities and promote inno­vative ideas for the design of public policies and the tailored provision of public goods.

Whether or not the place-based argument is the best approach to deliver an improvement in people's lives and to guarantee equal access to opportu­nities, its integration with the CA leads us to conceptualize "development at the territorial level” as a process of enabling the local system to function in order to facilitate the expansion of the real freedoms that people enjoy in an integrated and sustainable manner.

From a local perspective, the CA points out that the "working” per­formances expressed by a territorial system (i.e. the characteristics and functionings) where individuals live and interact are key resources and con­version factors that give economic agents the opportunity to achieve their objectives and individuals the capability to flourish. Therefore, it steers HD thinking towards the notion of "Sustainable Human Development at the local level”, and simultaneously offers a different perspective for local devel­opment scholars which is based on the evolutionary expansion of equity, sustainability, participation and productivity within territorial societies.

The notion of sustainability is crucial in stressing the importance of long­term thinking not just in environmental terms but also in economic and social equity terms, taking into account how a progressive view of develop­ment and politics should challenge social injustice, disparities and instability (Anand and Sen, 2000; Harvey, 2000; Pike et al., 2007; Voget-Kleschin, 2013). Sustainable development processes are thus underpinned by pub­lic scrutiny and deliberation, where open discussion, debate, criticism and dissent - that is, participation and active involvement - are the fundamental political and civil rights that sustain informed choices (Sen, 1999), leading the developmental trajectories of communities and territories.

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