Putting aspirations and capability to aspire at the core of social services and institutions

The Involve project claims that aspirational social services and institutions are crucial in relation to combating citizens’ decreasing trust and lack of participation. The gap between what institutions actually have on offer and citizens’ aspirations is certainly a factor of distrust. Transforming and redesigning institutions along the aim of promoting all citizens’ capability to aspire, to voice their aspirations and to realize them, is therefore the key to restoring citizen trust and commitment to the polity and society at large. However, it raises numerous challenges that can be fully grasped only with a proper understanding of what “capability to aspire” means and what its implications are for the design and operation of social institutions and services. In this policy brief, we first explain the main theoretical foundations of this notion, before drawing conclusions for its practical implementation