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Empowerment: The Core of Social

Quality

Peter Herrmann1

Introduction

Fundamentally, the Social Quality Approach (SQA) takes up a topic that

runs like a thread through philosophy and social science, namely the ten-
sions between two fields. The one field stretches between individual and
society, the other stretches between institutions and communities. Still,
there is a fundamental difference between this approach and its ancestors.
Previous approaches had been caught in on of the following traps.
Either they overemphasised the one of the tensions, loosing the impor-
tance of the other side out of sight. For instance, structuralism can be
seen as one important strand in this regard. Here we find the one axis
of individual and society dealt with, whereas the axis of institutions
and communities is left aside;
or they acknowledge the importance of the perspective of social and
societal action, however then they draw attention solely to the histori-
cal perspective. Notwithstanding the importance of a historical per-
spective, such approaches for example connected with names as A.S.
Maine and F. Toennies lack to address the challenge of actual action
by people in a social context.
What the present approach distinguishes from these two is that it seri-
ously goes beyond delivering a new interpretation of the world, aiming
instead on delivering a theoretically founded instrument for political
action. However, political action here aims on dealing with the fundamen-
tal challenge of a society as an integrated system, being based on the objec-
tive and subjective dimensions of socially acting individuals. To speak of
socially acting individuals means to acknowledge the interdependency of
acting individuals, their independence and at the same time the dependence
of the individuals from a society which they shape through their own
action.2 The contributions in this volume extensively deal with discussing
these dimensions in their various perspectives.
As much as the complexity of conditional and constitutional factors

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Empowerment: The Core of Social Quality

plays a role in this respect, and as questionable it is to draw a strict hierar-

chy of the various factors,3 the entire experience from the Foundations
work provides good reasons to endow empowerment with a special mean-
ing. In the perspective of the SQA, empowerment is understood as the
extent to which the personal capabilities of individual people and their
ability to act are enhanced by social relations.4
On the one hand, empowerment is very much one of the objective fac-
tors, dealing with the conditions of individual acts and actions. As with all
the other factors, the conditional dimension is complemented by a consti-
tutional factor, namely the responsiveness as a matter of mutuality of an
interactive setting.5
On the other hand, however, empowerment has the most pronounced
function as far as it centres on action by individuals, at the same time clear-
ly relating the individuals action to others. Empowerment, in this sense, is
only relevant as relational action, negotiating the situation of the individ-
ual in the tensional fields as they are determined by the two axes.

The Political Challenge

The work of the Network showed a fundamental theoretical challenge get-

ting clear from the investigation of major policy issues, namely policies in
both the sector of public health. What was getting clear was a fundamental
and still widening gap between actual policies and the claims behind them.
To grasp this briefly we can have a look at the employment sector.

Making Work Powerful

Earlier policies in France introduced the RMI, the revenu minimum din-
sertion.6 This early RMI had been linked to three pillars, namely:
the social insurance system (rgime gnral and rgime spciaux),
the social help/social support (aide sociale),
the system of various social services (services sociaux).
Despite the critique rightly directed towards this system, when it had
been introduced in 1989 we still have to acknowledge that this strategy was
somewhat holistic and integrated in its approach. As much as employment
had been the focus of the policies, two important features have to be men-
tioned. First, with the orientation on the three pillars, different dimensions
of social and societal policies came together. Taking the SQA as reference,
we can say that the two ends of the horizontal axis, namely institutions and
communities had been addressed. Equally and with this secondly the

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Peter Herrmann

ends of the vertical axis, namely individual and society had been
addressed. It has to be highlighted that the then French Minister for
Employment and Solidarity, Martine Aubry stated in the debate on these
policies that the priority of public policies should be aimed at empower-
ing our citizens so that they are not dependent on the state and have access
to fundamental rights.7
In other words, assessing such policies with the criteria set from the
SQA we see the central position of empowerment. Though being one con-
ditional factor amongst others it is at the same time true that empowerment
has a pronounced position as it is a kind of final aim. In this light, empow-
erment provides the bridge between the conditional factors and their con-
stitution through the activity of individuals. It is here where the entirety of
social relations finds its basis. As is well known, the classical power struc-
ture is defined as the chance of a man or a number of men to realize their
own will in a social action even against the resistance of others who are
participating in the action.8
However, in our context here, especially by referring to access of fun-
damental rights, as Aurby did, we find a shift. Power cannot continue to be
a matter in the Weberian sense. Instead, power is not a matter of imposing
ones will over somebody else. Power is a matter of responsiveness in
interactive settings, being based on mutuality. As such it is complemented
by social cohesion. In other words, power is not a zero-sum relation.9

Versus Making Work Pay

If we look at more recent trends and here we have to take more recent
shifts in France into account and of course the developments in the UK,
Germany and not least on the EU level we find an entirely different ori-
entation. As is known, the EU slogan not least highlighted by the Irish
Presidency in 2004 reads Making Work Pay. In Germany and France we
here of Promoting and Challenging. Of course this makes, at a first glance,
much sense. However, the catch follows on the turn. Though claiming that
such an policy aims as well at reducing individuals dependency on the
state, such an approach is not aiming on empowerment as matter of mutu-
al recognition. Integration into the labour market is the only reference; as
far as a wider approach is issued, it follows a similar fallacy as its eco-
nomic nephew: Whereas economic liberalism claims that the tide lifts all
boats, social liberalism of the presented kind suggests that employment
provides all with the ability of setting the sails. And as in economic theory
of liberalism, we find a paradox as well here in social liberalism. With
regard to economic liberalism the paradox is that the liberal claim trans-
lates in practice into an increasing closure of the market due to the accu-

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Empowerment: The Core of Social Quality

mulation of capital. With regard to social liberalism we find that promot-

ing individuals translates into prioritising challenging them. At the end,
there is the danger to pervert challenging and translate it into forced
labour just another form of blaming the victims.
Actually, such forced labour possibly contributes well to improving
quality of life.10 With the (enforced) integration into the labour market
the situation with respect to some of the conditional factors is improved.
However, we can point on two important limitations.
The one is the lack of interconnectedness. This is true with respect to
the conditional factors and furthermore with respect to the meaning of
the constitutional factors.
The second is concerned with the lack of orientation on empowerment.
As consequence of the first shortcoming, such policies based on ori-
enting on quality of life lack fundamentally a perspective on human
action. Action, as far as considered at all, is limited to developing a
labour market perspective. Abilities rather than capabilities are centre-
staged.
So it is not only the fact that quality of life approaches work on the basis
of not sufficiently meaningful indicators. Moreover, there is the shortcom-
ing of not drawing sufficiently attention to the links between the different
factors and dimensions.

Empowerment as matter of European policies

It is not by chance that European mainstream policies do not pay major
attention to empowerment as a key factor for an integrated policy
approach. The starting point of such policies is economic growth (inter-
preted as economic integrity) rather than individual and social life as
value. Consequently, we do not find any mention of it in European policies.
Looking at the European agenda in general and the Lisbon strategy more
in particular, they follow the triangular approach which pronouncedly fig-
ured in the Social Policy Agenda from 2000,11 which had been released as
the complement of the Lisbon strategy.12 The following graph13 had been
used in the first mentioned document to visualise this.
Actually, this official approach locates empowerment in the following
contradicting way. On the one hand, empowerment has an instrumental
character, being linked to employment policies which themselves are an
annex to economic policies. On the other hand, empowerment has an
independent, non-instrumental character. As such, it is part of social poli-
cy as a somewhat distinct area. Empowerment is not seen as conditional
factor. Instead, we find a social-pedagogisation. Thus, we find in many

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Peter Herrmann

Figure 1 Commissions Proposed Positive and Dynamic Interaction of Economic,

Employment and Social Policy

projects and programmes mention of empowerment as matter of empow-

ering individuals without actually aiming on a change of the social context.
However, if we look for instance at the Laeken indicators14 as they are used
for policies in the area of combating social exclusion, we see that empow-
erment is not really considered. In the list of currently twenty-one indica-
tors agreed upon by the European Commissions Social Protection
Committee we find some indicators which look at the status of education
and training which is highly relevant in the context of empowerment for
instance, the searched figures are:
8a. Population living in jobless households: children
8b. Population living in jobless households: prime-age adults
Early school leavers not in education or training
Low reading literacy performance of pupils
Persons with low educational attainment
However, there is no consideration of factors that are genuinely concerned
with the social position of the individual. The same showed true while
looking at the national statistics and data available.
In this context it is interesting that we find in the EU-debate actually a
kind of confrontation between social security and empowerment. Though
it is thought of establishing a needed right balance, the underlying tone is
the notion of a subjectivation of empowerment. Rather than understand-
ing empowerment as a matter of coordinating structures and action, it is
interpreted as a matter of self-esteem and abilities. In other words, empow-
erment is individualised; neither societal structures nor even the power of
the individual with regard to the own social situation are seen as matter of
interest.

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Empowerment: The Core of Social Quality

Indicators of Empowerment
The definition which had been developed as part of the work of the
Foundation on Social Quality reads that social empowerment is the extent
to which the personal capabilities of individual people and their ability to
act are enhanced by social relations.15
Looking for indicators, the work of the Foundations Indicator project
showed that these are never simple figures that directly measure any one
of the factors or even domains as they had been presented in the article by
Laurent van der Maesen and Alan Walker in this volume. As indicators
they point on factors, on social situations behind what is actually grasped
by the domains and sub-domains. In this sense it is important to understand
indicators as indirect measurement. In order to find indicators for
empowerment going beyond the subjective power of the individual in
terms of self-esteem, the SQA requires to think of power and empower-
ment as establishing and designing a relationship between people.
Furthermore, it has to be considered that the actual aim of any empower-
ment is access and participation in the sense of changing the social and
societal environment. In other words, the output is personal power in its
combination to social power. In practice, this has two dimensions:
the one being competition, i.e., the redistribution of power16
the other being self-realisation of the individual/group, utilising the
social for own purposes and enriching the social by reaching a high-
er degree of sociability.
Here, self-realisation is suggested to be an original question of empower-
ment. Then, what the individual gains, actually equals what is gained on
the soci(et)al level. In other words, we are concerned with a process of
individualisation and socialisation as mutual enhancement.
To develop indicators for such a perspective, it was necessary to devel-
op a list of indicators along the lines of the following five questions:

1) What kind of knowledge do people have and how do they obtain it?
2) To which extent are people in control of their position on the labour
market?
3) What is the relation between relevant institutions and individuals like?
4) How is the relevant public space structured?
5) Do supportive personal networks exist?

These are the areas which are proposed by the SQA as domains. It is
important to mention that all these domains and the same can be said for
the sub-domains and even the indicators are not simply aiming on meas-
uring a status (or process). A fundamental characteristic when choosing

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Peter Herrmann

these domains had been their relational character. Individuals empower-

ment and thus abilities to act depends very much on the structures
which are in place. And the structures their openness and accessibility,
the support they provide and the meaning they have for the individual are
not simply technical matters. As elements, they are elementary parts on
which the relation depends. Their meaning is dialectically determined by
the capability to be part of an interactive setting, recognising the mutuali-
ty of the relationship (linking it to the constitutional factor of responsive-
ness) and respecting the importance of empowerment for coherence.

Social quality approach: Overcoming the gap between

structuralism and action theory

Of course, power of the individual in terms of abilities and control of the

own, personal living conditions is an important factor. However, the SQA
recognises that these own living conditions are by no means individual.
They are genuinely part of a social setting. In theoretical terms this is con-
cerned with structures and action as well. However, to grasp this, it is nec-
essary it was necessary to look for indicators which are relevant for people
who are acting in a social setting. This includes different dimensions as:
interaction as action of individuals, respecting mutuality and respon-
siveness (community dimensions);
influencing institutions and the societal system by individual and col-
lective action (institutional and societal dimension);
influencing individual action by setting determinants and coordinates
for individual and collective action;
developing individuality as matter of personalities that are acting
socially consciousness and responsible.
The actual challenge, then, is to see empowerment as a core dimension
of the entire SQA as it is the elementary form of social being requiring
open social and societal structures, but as well contributing to enhanced
sociality. Consequently, social quality and its measurement has to take
this factor as point of departure as it is the interface
of the conditional factors and as well
of the conditional and the constitutional factors.
By serving this purpose, it proofed as well as most important means of
dealing with the tensional fields which are marked by the two axes as they
are sketched earlier in this volume.17

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Conclusion

The SQA wants to face the political challenge of providing an integrated

approach that goes beyond formally linking different policy areas or
mainstreaming social policy or specific topics as poverty, disability or
gender. Such approaches are typical for mainstream policies by the
European Union. Theoretically and if one can speak of it at all method-
ologically, the shortcoming which is behind such limited policy approach-
es can be seen in the following two points:
The one is the limitation on life situations rather than the holistic char-
acter of social settings in which social individuals act. If political
strategies are developed with the notion of the social this is limited
on an ex post construct or
on a voluntarist view on the social as pure interaction of princi-
pally isolated individuals.18
The other is the limitation in terms of applied political sociology.
Policies are developed without explicitly considering policy goals.
Political goals, as far as they are mentioned, are understood in func-
tionalist terms. Correctly, the economic basis is considered as central,
setting the material framework for the development of society.
However, the economic basis is seen as something that is outside of
social relations. Paradoxically, in the perspective of market-radical lib-
eralism does not deal with the social character of economic relations.
Such an approach claims to actually aim on the empowerment of indi-
viduals, acknowledging the value of the individual as true actor on the
market, by and large rejecting any regulation and limitation of individ-
ual action. However, the underlying understanding of the individual is
that of an independent, autarkical actor. As is well known, Adam Smith
considered the social dimension of economic processes as led by an
invisible hand. Friedrich Hayek goes even further and states that the
adjective social is without any meaning.19 And not least the Iron Lady,
Margaret Thatcher, claimed in 1987 that there is no such thing as soci-
ety.20 With this, economic processes are seen as entirely individual acts
everybody is pursuing his/her own goals. Empowerment, then,
remains a means of competition, a matter of a zero-sum setting in
which society has no place Darwinist policies of ousting and sup-
pression are the consequence.
For a more systematic analysis of empowerment in the perspective of
the SQA it is necessary (a) to clearly define over what power is actually
exercised and (b) to make out on which level it is actually exercised this
latter point may be concerned with the reference to the same aggregate

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level and as well with the power which reaches across the different levels.
In particular we have to distinguish between
personal change, i.e., the possibility to rely on self-esteem and knowl-
edge of the own personal capabilities and how to use them (personal
power),
sub-systemic exchange, i.e., the execution of power on the same aggre-
gate level (individual power),
systemic exchange, i.e., the execution of power in the immediate envi-
ronment (social power), and
exchange with the environment, i.e., the execution of power in the
wider environment (societal power).
The emphasis of the economic dimension is not at all a problem as such
taken in the correct understanding, it would well comply with the neces-
sary emphasis of the material conditions which have to be fulfilled before
any other perspectives can be developed. What is problematic with main-
stream policies in the EU, however, is the limitation (a) on employment,
supposedly providing as such the necessary material conditions or even
more: being already material empoweredness, (b) the suggestion that
there is an automatic connection between a liberalised market and the cre-
ation of a space for free decisions of the enlightened individual citizen
and (c) the simultaneous attribution of the responsibility to the individual
by reducing processes of empowerment on enhancing his/her capacities
rather than linking this on structural causes of disempowerment and
enhancing structures in their accessibility. The first is concerned with the
question why individuals fail, whereas the second has to be distinguished
as it is concerned with the accessibility for those who are well capable to
execute power, who, however, do not have access to spaces where to exe-
cute such power. (d) This perspective takes finally not into account that it
is to some extent necessary to (re-)distribute power. For this, we have to
acknowledge the fact that there are two dimensions to (em)power(ment).
First, power, and thus empowerment has a dimension that is neutral in
regard of distributive aspects. We can speak of (em)power(ment) as matter,
not being based on a zero-sum constellation, instead being concerned with
the mutual enrichment and enhancement of life chances. Second, however,
we have to distinguish a dimension of (em)power(ment) that is concerned
with an unequal balance, i.e., the distribution of power (in particular in
political and social processes) where the power executed by one is limiting
the power of somebody else (be it related to individuals or groups). The lat-
ter is barely a matter considered as matter of fact in official political views.
Orienting on social quality can link to old European traditions as they
had been laid with the revolutionary processes throughout the eighteenth

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Empowerment: The Core of Social Quality

and nineteenth centuries and formed the core of the enlightenment period.
However, at the same time it has to turn these processes from the head onto
the feet. As Karl Marx did it with his work by highlighting the importance
of the economic processes as social processes, it is necessary to continue
such work by pointing on the socialising character of true individualisation
and vice versa. In this sense, social quality means to empower people and
at the same time it requires empowered people to set social quality on the
political agenda.

References

Aubry, M. 1998 Discourse Vote final du projet de loi La prvention et la lutte con-
tre les exclusions Assemble Nationale July, 9th 1998: 2 (http://
www.social.gouv.fr/htm/dossiers/index.htm).
Beck, W. et al. (forthcoming). The Theoretical Principles of Social Quality Theory
and its Indicators (working title), in preparation.
Commission of the European Communities: Communication from the Commission
to the Council, the European Parliament, the Economic and Social Committee
and the Committee of the Regions. 2000. Social Policy Agenda (28/6/2000).
Brussels (COM[2000]379 fin.).
Herrmann, P. and F. Zielinski, Frances. 2003. The Systems of Guaranteeing
Sufficient Resources in the Republic of France and the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in P. Herrmann (ed.), Between Politics and
Sociology: Mapping Applied Social Studies. New York: Nova Science.
Lisbon European Council. 2000. Presidency Conclusions. Lisbon (234/3/2000).
Rd, W. 1986. Dialektische Philosophie der Neuzeit. Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck.
Thatcher, M. 1987. Interview in Womens Own magazine (3/1-/87), quoted from
http://briandeer.com/social/thatcher-society.htm.
Maesen, L.J.G. van der and A.C. Walker. 2006. Indicators of Social Quality:
Outcomes of the European Scientific Network, in this issue.
Weber, M. 1921/1968, Economy and Society: an outline of interpretive sociology,
Berkeley: University of California Press [REFERENCE TO BE COMPLET-
ED]

Notes

1. Director of the Independent Re-search Institute European Social,

Organisational and Science Consultancy (ESOSC), Aghabullogue, Ireland and
Senior Research Fellow at University College Cork, Department of Applied
Social Studies, Cork, Ireland; Member of the Board of the European Social
Action Network (ESAN), Brussels, Belgium, and Lille, France. Contact: [her-
rmann@esosc.org].

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Peter Herrmann

2. An intensive discussion of the methodology, not least the difference to for

instance the theory of structuration by Anthony Giddens is currently prepared
for the Foundations third book.
3. See, for example, the discussion of dialectics in the introduction of Rd 1986.
4. Maesen and Walker in this issue: 5.
5. This statement will be further reflected in the future development of theory of
social quality; see Beck et al. (forthcoming).
6. See Herrmann and Zielinski 2003.
7. Aubry 1998.
8. Weber 1921/1968: 926.
9. Though there is some parallel to Michael Foucaults view on the productive
dimension of power care has to be taken of his neglect of the objective and
structural dimension of power settings.
10. It has to be emphasised that this is a possible, but by far not a necessary result.
The reality of an increasing number of working poor throughout the EU is an
indicator for the fact that even individual income and security depends on
much more than simply having a job.
11. Commission of the European Communities 2000.
12. Lisbon European Council 2000.
13. Commission of the European Communities 2000: 6
14. These were endorsed by the December 2001 Laeken European Council. The
list consisted of eighteen common indicators, providing the basis for elaborat-
ing the National Action Plans and their evaluation.
15. Maesen and Walker in this issue: 5
16. This factor needs closer discussion within the context of dealing with socio-
economic security and cohesion. In other words, it is here that actually the
complementarities between empowerment on the one hand and in particular
socio-economic security and social cohesion on the other hand have to be dis-
cussed. Setting a wider social policy framework for this will be left to another
occasion.
17. Maesen and Walker in this issue.
18. Such a notion follows in methodological terms the approach of methodologi-
cal individualism.
19. This will be elaborated in the contribution by Beck et al. in the third volume on
the Social Quality Approach.
20. Thatcher 1987.

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