Measuring specific freedom

Abstract

This paper is about the measurement of specific freedoms – the freedom of an agent to undertake some particular action. In a recent paper, Dowding and van Hees discuss the need for, and general form of, a “freedom function” that assigns a value between 0 and 1 to a freedom or right and that describes the expectation that a person may have about being in a position to exercise (“being free to perform”) that freedom or right. An examination of the literature shows that there is as yet no agreed framework for defining such a function. Based on the framework of a game form, I develop a very simple and natural measure of specific freedom as the “conditional probability of success.” It is also shown that in an important way “negative freedom is membership of powerful coalitions.”