Exclusion is at the source of the growing sense of disengagement and dissatisfaction that affects the population of countries in the region and creates a fertile ground for populist experiments that erode the economic, social, and political institutions of democracy. This disengagement has grown in spite of reasonable progress over the medium term on life expectancy, health, literacy, and other indicators of well-being, as shown by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in its recent (2007) report on social cohesion. Politicians all along the political spectrum now mention the fight against social exclusion as the main task of development and substantive democratization. As Goodin (1996: 343) points out, “‘Social exclusion’ is a catchy phrase, and it catches much of what is substantively of concern to us. Indeed, the great value of the concept lies in its promise to link together so many of our other social concerns, tracing them to common (or anyway cognate) causes and prescribing identical (or anyway integrated) cures.” For all the political nuances and overtones with which the term has been used, the notion of social exclusion provides a powerful political rallying cry for anybody who worries about the plight of the worst off in society. However, as normally happens with effective mobilizing notions that need to mean different things to different groups, there is no clarity regarding what is meant by social exclusion. Even if the ambiguity of the concept of social exclusion is useful as a mobilizing tool, the design and adoption of inclusive policies is hindered by the lack of conceptual clarity about the nature of exclusion and the forces that produce and reproduce it.
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL EXCLUSION Social exclusion is an inefficient and dysfunctional dynamic social, political, and economic process whereby individuals and groups are denied access to opportunities and quality services to live productive lives outside poverty. Following Sen (1999), this report argues that those social, political, and economic processes of societies limit the functionings of certain individuals or groups, resulting in their diminished well-being.1 Those processes might affect the behavior, command of resources, or access to institutions of the excluded individuals or groups in ways that limit their ability to function and, therefore, to acquire or use capabilities that are valuable in a market economy. Functionings take place in a social space in which individuals and groups engage in “transactions” through behaviors that express their choices based on their command of resources under the set of formal and informal rules that regulate those transactions. Social capital, norms, and collective action deserve special mention within this set of formal and informal rules. They improve collective welfare, especially in circumstances in which the state is weak and cannot respond appropriately to people’s needs. Exclusion, in contrast, erodes trust and hinders collective action. When trust among economic
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The notion of “functionings” comes from Sen’s Development as Freedom (1999). It is different from the concept of opportunities, in that functionings refer to the social interactions and exchanges in which individuals or groups engage in order to achieve a certain outcome, rather than to the ability (exercised or not) to engage in those interactions; it is different from the concept of capabilities in that functionings refer to a particular realization of the (unobservable) set of capabilities.
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