Of ends and means: development policy assessment with human development and multiple causality

Abstract

Policy assessment often involves the study of outcomes and their causes. Deve­lopment policy analyses have conventionally used an economistic perspective with a focus mainly on pecuniary indicators and the search for the one model of best fit. However, i) if development policy outcomes are ultimately to be assessed in terms of people’s quality of life; and, ii) if policies establish simi­lar outcomes for different people in different contexts, alternative approaches seem required to study a policy’s ends and means. As such, this article advan­ces the combined use of the Human Development and Capability Approach with fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis as a promising option. While the former, being a people-centred framework, can contribute to assess policy ends, the latter, enabling the study of multiple conjunctural causation, can shed light on the diverse means leading to them.