CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Gazso Candlish, Ruth |
|---|---|
| Title | Comparative analysis of the Aotearoa New Zealand, Scotland, and UK parliaments 2010 - 2020 |
| Summary | Disabled people continue to be systematically underrepresented and misrepresented across all parliaments. The parliamentary exclusion of disabled people was exacerbated throughout the 2010s by global political shifts towards neoliberalism, the disability rights regimes, and devolution. This period saw increased parliamentary engagement, major legislative reforms, and emerging political narratives amidst the continued exclusion, marginalisation, and, in some cases, growing oppression of disabled people. In this thesis, I explore several interlinked questions related to what, who, where and when were disabled people (mis)represented in parliament during the 2010s. I compare the political representation of disabled people across three parliaments, Aotearoa New Zealand, Scotland, and the UK, within the Westminster system between 2010 – 2020. My thesis takes a ‘whole systems’ approach to studying the political (mis)representation of disabled people. I examine how disabled people are (mis)represented, how different actors engage in the parliamentary politics of disability, and how institutional settings shape the political (mis)representation of disabled people. I draw on the constructivist and institutionalist turns in group representation studies to examine the complex processes, structures and dynamics embedded in parliamentary representation. Reviewing group representation literature through a critical disability lens, I develop a three-pronged approach to studying the political (mis)representation of disabled people that explores how representative processes related to the politics of ideas, the politics of actors, and the politics of institutions shape the parliamentary politics of disability. My thesis is structured into three empirical chapters. My empirical findings show that the politics of disability shifts over time and across contexts, shaped by different political ideas, parliamentary actors, and institutional factors. My research establishes a comparative agenda for studying the political (mis)representation of disability across contexts. Each empirical study within my thesis explores a distinct facet of parliamentary politics. The first empirical chapter examines how politicians frame disability inequality by comparing oral parliamentary questions across the three parliaments. It finds that the constitutive and substantive representation of disabled people varies significantly across cases, reflecting distinct national and ideational trajectories framing the politics of disability. Increasingly suppressive forms of disability representation linked to the neoliberal political agenda have been countered by participatory, democratic narratives in the UK parliament. Meanwhile the Scotland has moved toward broader engagement in supportive representation, largely because of the emergence of civic and inclusionary narratives of nationalism. Problematic framings of disability remain prevalent in ANZ. Second, I explore the question of who (mis)represents disabled people in parliament and in what ways. This study shows clear evidence supporting the link between the descriptive and substantive representation of disabled people. It also finds that intersections and linkages between the political representation of gender and, in the ANZ case, minority, alongside ideology, help explain how different parliamentary actors are engaged in the parliamentary politics of disability. The third empirical chapter examines how different parliamentary institutions contribute and shape the political (mis)representation of disabled people. It tracks institutional dis/ablism across the three parliaments, noting that the maintenance of disablist continues to feature in the organisation and architecture of parliaments. It finds that electoral systems offer different opportunities for engaging in the parliamentary politics of disability, but the disability policy regime emerges as the most significant factor shaping, instigating, and redirecting the political (mis)representation of disabled people. This multi-dimensional approach has allowed me to identify important linkages between constitutive, substantive, descriptive, and institutional forms of representation. Improved descriptive representation has a significant impact on the quality and direction of parliamentary representation, and this has enduring impacts for parliaments as representative bodies and policymakers. Institutional legacies, inertia, and inaction continue to organise disabled people out of parliament, and this needs to be addressed at a systematic level if we want to see the descriptive underrepresentation and constitutive misrepresentation to be addressed, and see the improved substantive representation of disabled people |
| Supervisor | Krizsan, Andrea |
| Department | Political Science PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/gazso-candlish_ruth.pdf |
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