Active labor market policies are characterized by a process of selection and construction of the informational basis that is considered relevant for grounding the appropriateness of choices on people’s entitlement, on their employment path and on the job position. In particular, disabled people’s employment paths are based on technical instruments of evaluation of the degree and the kind of disability; these define the recipients’ working identities and «inform» the employment programs by building up the conditions that promote capabilities. Thus, in this article we present a comparison between two governing instruments for disabled people’s employment in Italy. We compare a groundbreaking measure («Care budget») with standard devices. Our aim was to investigate how the different informational bases embedded in these instruments build up different paths toward employment and in which way they affect the disabled people’s participation and the promotion of their capabilities. only subscribers can see the full article

For more than a decade now, so-called «evidence-based policies» (Ebp) have become a leading trend in public action. Drawing on three complex epistemological notions developed by Amartya Sen (i.e. «informational basis of judgment in justice», «description as choice», and «positional objectivity »), the paper argues that Ebp are based on specific and questionable cognitive and normative bases that to a large extent shape what is afterwards labeled as «evidence». Instead of taking for granted their claim to objectivity and efficiency, Ebp ought to be submitted to three sets of questions, namely: what kind of information is labeled as evidence? who makes decisions about this? what information is discarded or left aside in the process of defining evidence? The conclusion insists on the political implications of the reflection developed in the paper, esp. the necessity to move from Ebp to more genuinely democratic policy-making. only subscribers can see the full article