Accessing democracy: disability politics in the United States and Canada
Date
2021
Authors
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Why have legislative guarantees of equality rights been ineffective in addressing key inequalities in substantive political, economic and social citizenship for people with disabilities in the United States, the global innovator in disability rights? Academic and popular accounts alike generally fault various institutional actors located within legislative, judicial, and bureaucratic branches of the federal government for not fulfilling the mandate of the legislative expression of a commitment to protecting disability rights, pointing additionally to continuing pervasive negative attitudes held within civil society in answering why rights-based guarantees have fallen flat of the legislative successes of the social movement activism of the Disability Rights Movement? ☐ This dissertation argues the existing shortcomings of equality rights guarantees are the most recent product of a much more deeply rooted tension between disability and citizenship in the context of the modern liberal democratic state. While the mode through which the modern state has attempted to address this tension over the past 200-plus years has shifted over time the project argues that Disability Politics, like disability itself, is defined from the top down. The purpose of this project is to orient the study of disability within Political Science towards the processes and power relationships which produce disability, disability policy and rights, located within the state in the form of political institutions. ☐ After an introduction to the overall argument of the necessity of studying disability politics from the top-down, the first of three substantive sections of this project names the source of epistemic domination and ontological invalidation which defines disability in the context of the modern liberal democratic state. Building upon existing articulations of the incompatibility of disability and citizenship like “able-nationalism” from literatures in the field of Disability Studies, as well as critiques of liberal and democratic theory’s ideals of the rational, autonomous, and capable citizen, I situate the ideational and historical sources of ableism in liberal democratic polities as markers of an overarching domination contract termed “The Capability Contract.” Two empirical case studies of disability politics from the “top-down,” one focusing on the political development of federal attempts in the United States to create a civil rights bill for people with disabilities, and one on the most similar case of Canada, where a federal accessibility act was adopted in 2019, provide new political analysis of disability politics, from the top down. Drawing upon new interviews conducted with Americans Chai Feldblum, Tom Harkin, Andy Imparato and Bobby Silverstein, as well as Canadians Carla Qualtrough, David Lepofsky, Catherine Frazee, and Jim Derksen, and interpreting the evolution of disability social policy in the United States and Canada through a historical institutionalist lens, I identify causal mechanisms and divergent institutional pathways through which these two states have addressed the incompatibility of disability and liberal democratic citizenship. The final chapter uses evidence from case studies to highlight mechanisms which have been effective in creating disability social policy that affords more equal political, economic, and social citizenship to disabled people, including the formation of coalitions between disability interest groups and movements with other identity-based groups, political entrepreneurs working within as opposed to against policymakers, and the close collaboration which has led to significant change in disability policy in the past. Each chapter ends with a reflection on a residual tension or question that is not fully addressed throughout the chapter. These tensions include my reflections on the ways the personal influences the political and vice-versa as a person who needs the category of disability to access basic political, economic, and social citizenship rights in the liberal democratic context, and related this experience to the broader context of the individual chapters and project.
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Keywords
American Political Development, Canada, Capability Contract, Disability Politics, Disability Rights, Disability Studies