humanneedsandsocialrights.docVIP

HUMAN NEEDS AND SOCIAL RIGHTS Michael Adler University of Edinburgh( INTRODUCTION This lecture is divided into three parts. After a very brief attempt to assert the centrality of human needs for social policy, Part I deals with the concept of citizenship, which is defined in terms of the rights and duties accorded to those who are full members of a political community, and argues that, as far as citizenship rights are concerned, there is considerable variation in the extent of civil. political and social rights in different countries; Part 2 deals with the relationship between human needs and social rights and, in particular, with the capability approach to minimum standards which has been extremely influential in recent years, and argues that, as far as human rights are concerned, the same set of capabilities applies everywhere; while Part 3 deals with the difficult problem of how best to ensure that minimum standards are achieved. Because the subject matter of my lecture will not be familiar to most of you, because many of the arguments are quite complex, and because I do not speak Chinese, I will try to speak slowly and clearly. Dr. Zhang has put the full text of my lecture on the School of Law’s website and some of you may wish to read it afterwards. It is often asserted that a fundamental principle of social policy is that resources, whether in the field of social security, health care, education, housing or social care, should be distributed on the basis of human needs. On this view, the satisfaction of human needs, rather than any other principle of allocation, such as contribution or choice or the ability to pay, is the criterion that should be used to judge the extent to which social policies are successful and the extent to which a state deserves to be called a welfare state. 1. THE CONCEPT OF CITIZENSHIP At this point, I need to make it clear what I mean by a welfare state. One particularly helpful approach is that developed by the eminent p