Conclusion

Abstract

In this book I have explored how opportunity sets can be compared in terms of freedom’s agency value. For this purpose I drew on three different areas of the literature: the philosophical literature on (overall) freedom provided the conceptual depth and motivation of the concern with freedom’s agency value. The freedom ranking literature and its axiomatic apparatus was employed to gain a clearer understanding of the conditions under which problems of value-based approaches might occur, and the informational requirements needed to compare states in terms of the agency value of freedom they offer to a person. Last but certainly not least, the capability framework provided the ‘link to the ground’. It enabled me to illustrate how the insights gained in this book can shed light on possible pitfalls related to the evaluation of well-being in a culturally diverse world, and to point to cases of high relevance in the evaluation of a person’s freedom across different societies and cultures which are not captured by existing contributions in the freedom ranking literature.