Introduction
The study of political parties is a cornerstone of political science. Party politics scholars examine internal organization, adaptation, decline, and renewal (Dalton, Farrell, and McAllister Reference Dalton, Farrell and McAllister2011; Panebianco, Hirschman, and Maier Reference Panebianco, Hirschman, Maier and Silver1988; Sartori Reference Sartori1976); they analyze how parties both precipitate and respond to phenomena, most recently including democratic backsliding, corruption, personalization, and the changing nature and use of technology (Gerbaudo Reference Gerbaudo, Chandler and Fuchs2019; Rahat and Kenig Reference Rahat and Kenig2018; Scarrow Reference Scarrow2014). Party scholars also explore the participation of those from traditionally marginalized groups, a topic that concerns some but not all political parties as they seek to modernize and look more like the electorate. Debates surrounding this issue tend to focus on those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, women, racialized minorities, or young people (Allern and Verge Reference Allern, Verge, Scarrow, Webb and Poguntke2017; Bird Reference Bird2005; Kittilson Reference Kittilson2011; Scarrow, Webb, and Poguntke Reference Scarrow, Webb and Poguntke2017). One group that has received little attention from either party scholars or from political parties are people with disabilities. Making up around one in six of the global population (WHO 2023)—a number set to rise due to aging populations, ongoing military conflict, and the spread of global pandemics—their absence from either the study or business of political parties is a serious omission, one that both political scientists and political actors should work to address.
Article 29 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (United Nations 2006) states that people with disabilities must be guaranteed the right to fully participate in the “activities and administration of political parties,” yet people with disabilities remain among the world’s most politically and economically marginalized social groups (Charlton Reference Charlton1998; Evans and Reher Reference Evans and Reher2024; Schur, Kruse, and Blanck Reference Schur, Kruse and Blanck2013; Shandra Reference Shandra2018). Although a heterogeneous group, people with disabilities are different from most other social groups in that many require adjustments or additional support to be able to participate on an equal basis (Schur, Kruse, and Blanck Reference Schur, Kruse and Blanck2013). And yet, we do not know whether political parties have codified frameworks to support and promote the participation of people with disabilities. For political scientists to properly understand the extent to which parties effectively engage and facilitate the participation of citizens, it is important that they pay attention to questions of accessibility. Including disability in the study of political parties will also better enable scholars to address questions related to representation, organizational strategies, campaigning techniques, and the use of technology. Concomitantly, paying greater attention to the inclusion and participation of people with disabilities has the potential to increase and diversify the membership of political parties, as well as strengthening and legitimizing representative claim making.
Recognizing that disability is marginalized within the study of political science (Heffernan Reference Heffernan2024), this article sets out a new research agenda for the study of disability and political parties. Given our limited knowledge in this area, exploring the formal approaches parties adopt toward people with disabilities is an important first step, and one that has been undertaken by scholars of other marginalized groups. Feminist institutionalists, for example, map and analyze formal party rules as they apply to women (Bjarnegård and Kenny Reference Bjarnegård and Kenny2015; Kosiara-Pedersen, Reference Kosiara-Pedersen, Kenny and Bjarnegårdforthcoming). Accordingly, this article proposes a framework for analyzing the accessibility of political parties, which is then applied to parties across Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Overall, the research finds relatively little evidence that parties have developed formal rules to enable the participation of people with disabilities. Indeed, parties have developed fewer institutionalized mechanisms and processes to promote and encourage the political participation of people with disabilities than they have with respect to other traditionally marginalized groups. Using the results of this initial exploratory study as a springboard, the article moves on to consider a future research agenda for the study of disability and political parties, emphasizing its importance to the study of political science but also its potential impact on the real-world business of political parties. Because of the limited engagement with disability within political science, it is first necessary to provide some initial discussion of disability and to briefly review some of the key findings from the small number of studies that have examined disability and politics (for a lengthier discussion, see Heffernan Reference Heffernan2024).
Disability and Politics
There are multiple definitions of disability (Goodley Reference Goodley2016). This research understands disability to be a social phenomenon—that is, one that is produced by society (Oliver Reference Oliver2013). In other words, disability is a system in which people with impairments (whether physical, mental, cognitive, developmental, or intellectual) experience discrimination and stigma (Oliver Reference Oliver2013). The World Health Organization (2023) estimates that around 16% of the world’s population lives with a disability, although there are considerable variations among the official data published by national governments (Grammenos Reference Grammenos2013, 14). In truth, the disability population is likely to be much higher because of the difficulties associated with collecting accurate data, such as differing state-level definitions (Schur, Kruse, and Blanck Reference Schur, Kruse and Blanck2013). Furthermore, the negative stereotypes associated with disability means that people sometimes try to “normalize” or distance themselves from a disability identity (Anspach Reference Anspach1979). Meanwhile, heterogeneity of impairment type poses a challenge to the idea that people with disabilities constitute a distinct social group; furthermore, even if someone does identify as having a disability they may not identify with the broader group.
People with disabilities constitute an extremely heterogeneous social group, but then all social groups are heterogeneous (I. Young Reference Young1990). Diversity among people with disabilities need not be an obstacle to social group status, even if some members, such as those with more severe, visible, and long-term disabilities, feel more connected to that part of their identity (Thorp Reference Thorp2023). Disability rights campaigners argue that social group status is important to undermine individualized and overly medicalized approaches to disability (Campbell and Oliver Reference Campbell and Oliver2013; Charlton Reference Charlton1998). For political scientists and political parties, viewing people with disabilities as a social group is a necessary first step toward identifying and thinking about their political rights, issues, and interests. We know that people with disabilities, despite their wide range of impairments and conditions, do share a set of political issues and interests relating not just to matters of rights, accessibility, and healthcare, but also to other key policy areas such as education, social security, and transport (Gastil Reference Gastil2000; Prince Reference Prince2009; Schur and Adya Reference Schur and Adya2013). Furthermore, there are as many differences in political preferences between candidates with disabilities and nondisabled candidates as there are between citizens with disabilities and nondisabled citizens, which suggests that increasing the number of politicians with disabilities will have a positive impact on the lives of people with disabilities (Reher Reference Reher2022). Hence the need for political parties to ensure the active participation of people with disabilities.
Comparative research has found that people with disabilities have lower levels of electoral participation and political trust than nondisabled people (Priestley et al. Reference Priestley, Stickings, Loja, Grammenos, Lawson, Waddington and Fridriksdottir2016; Reher Reference Reher2022; Schur, Kruse, and Blanck Reference Schur, Kruse and Blanck2013; Teglbjærg et al. Reference Teglbjærg, Mamali, Chapman and Dammeyer2022). While this can partly be explained by lower levels of education and fewer socioeconomic resources (Schur, Kruse, and Blanck Reference Schur, Kruse and Blanck2013), this is underpinned by institutional barriers to participation as well as pervasive negative stereotypes and stigma associated with disability (Charlton Reference Charlton1998; Prince Reference Prince2009). All these experiences have a negative impact on the political citizenship of people with disabilities (Guldvik, Askheim, and Johansen Reference Guldvik, Askheim and Johansen2013; Ocran Reference Ocran2023); thus, political parties have an important role to play in enabling and promoting the political participation of people with disabilities.
Hitherto, a small number of strategies have been adopted by various countries and political parties to facilitate the participation of people with disabilities in politics. For example, research on European Union member-states has found that fewer people with disabilities deprived of legal capacity were excluded from voting in 2024 when compared with 2014; that Belgium, Finland, and Poland provide or pay for transportation to the polling station to facilitate people with disabilities to vote; and that there has been a very small increase in the number of party manifestos produced in accessible formats (EU Agency for Fundamental Rights 2024). Mexico, Tunisia, Uganda, and Kenya have adopted either temporary or more permanent quotas to guarantee the representation of people with disabilities, while in South Korea parties receive subsidies for nominating candidates with disabilities.
Research on the relationship between political participation and disability has tended to focus on voting (Priestley et al. Reference Priestley, Stickings, Loja, Grammenos, Lawson, Waddington and Fridriksdottir2016; Reher Reference Reher2022; Schur and Kruse Reference Schur and Kruse2021; Scott and Jones Reference Scott and Jones2024), political representation (D’Aubin and Stienstra Reference D’Aubin and Stienstra2004; Evans and Reher Reference Evans and Reher2023; Reference Evans and Reher2024; Guldvik, Askheim, and Johansen Reference Guldvik, Askheim and Johansen2013; Langford and Levesque Reference Langford and Levesque2017; Sackey Reference Sackey2015; Waltz and Schippers Reference Waltz and Schippers2021), or on the policy process (Giordono Reference Giordono2021; Pettinicchio Reference Pettinicchio2019; Prince Reference Prince2009). Where scholars do pay attention to political parties, this tends to be in relation to one of these areas. Meanwhile, studies of party politics have not examined issues of accessibility for people with disabilities. A small number of studies principally related to political representation have indicated that people with disabilities face a range of barriers to engaging with political parties. For example, research from Canada found that political parties do little to either attract or promote the selection of people with disabilities as candidates (Levesque Reference Levesque2016). Sackey’s (Reference Sackey2015) study of Ghana emphasized that people with disabilities face a range of barriers to participation and selection as candidates, despite their growing population. Waltz and Schippers’s (Reference Waltz and Schippers2021) comparative work on Europe found that political parties were doing little to facilitate the participation and representation of people with disabilities. Meanwhile, Guldvik and Lesjø’s (Reference Guldvik and Lesjø2014) research in Norway found that not all party leaders viewed disabled people as constituting a distinct social group in need of representation.
That people with disabilities experience barriers to participation matters, not just as a matter of fairness and equality, but also because it can impact the extent to which their policy preferences are represented and their chances of being elected to serve in local and national legislatures (Evans and Reher Reference Evans and Reher2024). Moreover, we know that people with disabilities themselves want increased numbers of politicians with disabilities (Reher and Evans Reference Reher and Evans2024). Thus, a research agenda for disability and political parties is one that should speak to those interested in the internal dynamics of party organization, campaigning, and political recruitment, as well as to those keen to explore patterns of inequality when it comes to political participation.
Framework for Analyzing the Accessibility of Political Parties
Political scientists have studied the relationship between parties and women, ethnic minorities, and young people (Bennie and Russell Reference Bennie and Russell2012; Hooghe, Stolle, and Stouthuysen Reference Hooghe, Stolle and Stouthuysen2004; Kittilson Reference Kittilson2011; Norris and Lovenduski Reference Norris and Lovenduski1995; Rainsford Reference Rainsford2018; L. Young Reference Young2000). However, we cannot assume that the theories, frameworks, and methods used in those studies can be applied to people with disabilities. Not least because people with disabilities often require specific adjustments to facilitate accessibility—the extent to which environments (both built and online), processes, and policies are such that people with disabilities can fully participate on an equal basis with nondisabled people. People with disabilities differ from other underrepresented groups in that they can require additional levels of support to facilitate their participation. Previous work has highlighted how disabled candidates in the UK often must rely on informal support networks for driving, transcribing, assisting with campaigning, and other activities, as this support is not often provided by parties (Evans and Reher Reference Evans and Reher2024).
Instituting rules regarding accessibility recognizes that people with disabilities constitute a group with specific requirements; moreover, developing meaningful approaches to accessibility requires parties to engage with people with disabilities because accessibility is not simply about wheelchair access (although this is essential). Thus, framework indicators include both the codification of specific rules and the recognition of people with disabilities as a distinct social group.
Table 1 sets out a framework for analyzing the accessibility of formal rules and processes, drawing on three key areas of party institutionalization that are particularly important for encouraging participation from traditionally underrepresented groups, as well as potentially making those from marginalized groups feel better engaged with democratic processes (Mansbridge Reference Mansbridge1999).
Framework for Analyzing the Accessibility of Political Parties
Codification of Participation
Constitutions are important documents for understanding the procedural and structural dimensions of party organization; moreover, they also reveal something about the “character” of a party and its approach to intraparty democracy (Katz and Mair Reference Katz, Mair, Katz and Mair1992). While some are skeptical about the relationship between what is contained in the constitution and the day-to-day running of the party (Panebianco, Hirschman, and Maier Reference Panebianco, Hirschman, Maier and Silver1988), constitutional rules can and do shape how, when, and in what ways members can be involved in the party. Of course, constitutions may not be the only documents in which rules surrounding accessibility or inclusion are set out: for example, major policy documents or bylaws might be adopted, and analysis of these documents is important for revealing how parties organize (Kernell Reference Kernell2025). However, party constitutions are routinely updated and often constitute the “final word” in party procedure, thus presenting us with a good sense of the party’s priorities and how they respond to demands from members or to exogenous factors such as candidate selection laws (Scarrow and Gezgor Reference Scarrow and Gezgor2010). For the purposes of this research, constitutions are especially important documents because even if many members do not read them, they can be used to codify, institutionalize, or recognize social groups, specifying the roles that they may play in the party. Of course, mentioning a particular social group in a constitution is not sufficient to facilitate their participation: for example, Olaiya’s (Reference Olaiya2014) research from Nigeria found that although many parties have the role of “youth leader” institutionalized within their constitution, many of the occupiers of this role are in fact over the age of 50. Thus, any analysis of whether and how constitutions codify the role of people with disabilities within their parties can only tell us part of the story when it comes to facilitating their participation.
Recognition of Shared Interests and Issues
The institutional organization of social groups tends to be most evident in the presence of intraparty groups or caucuses, autonomous organizing being a critical component of social group activism (I. Young Reference Young1990). Feminist political scientists, for instance, have found that the formal recognition of women’s groups within political parties can provide a useful means by which to make gendered demands—for example, in relation to policy or candidate selection processes (see Cross and Young [Reference Cross and Young2004] on Canada and Childs and Webb [Reference Childs and Webb2011] on the UK). Conversely, comparative research has found that they also run the risk of ghettoizing women and women’s policy concerns (Kittilson Reference Kittilson2011). Mapping the presence and analyzing the activity of internal disability groups is therefore a key part of understanding the internal lives of political parties and the extent to which people with disabilities are recognized as a distinct group with a shared set of interests.
Political Recruitment Strategies
Political parties can demonstrate their commitment to increasing the participation of traditionally marginalized groups by adapting their candidate selection mechanisms to diversify the candidates that they field at elections (Norris and Lovenduski Reference Norris and Lovenduski1995). The most obvious strategy in this respect is the use of quotas to guarantee the selection or election of candidates from underrepresented groups. There are of course a diverse range of quota types: in some countries quotas are determined at the national level, which means parties are required to field a certain percentage of women or ethnic minority candidates, whereas other countries have voluntary quotas, meaning it is up to individual parties whether they adopt quotas. This obviously leads to a great deal of disparity within countries and across parties (Verge and Espírito-Santo Reference Verge and Espírito-Santo2016). Hitherto, parties have used quotas to guarantee the election of women (Franceschet, Krook, and Piscopo Reference Franceschet, Krook and Piscopo2012), ethnic minorities (Bird Reference Bird2014; Tan and Preece Reference Tan and Preece2022), and, increasingly, young people (Belschner Reference Belschner2024). Due to changes in population, there are also several postconflict countries that have adopted reserved seats for people with disabilities, such as Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya. Again, this research agenda can help to build upon our existing knowledge of quotas, and in particular upon thinking about whether disability quotas are used in democracies with no recent history of armed conflict or whether this is a strategy that people with disabilities themselves would like to see adopted.
Having set out a framework for analyzing the accessibility of political parties, the article now presents an exploratory application of the framework to eight parties across four countries. The analysis highlights the paucity of attention paid to disability by political parties, which in turn underscores the urgency with which party scholars and political parties should address the topic.
Methods
The framework developed in the previous section sets out three indicators for analyzing the accessibility of political parties; taken together, this framework will help to address the question of whether political parties have codified frameworks to support and promote the participation of people with disabilities. To examine how the framework operates in practice, it is applied to two major political parties in four representative democracies: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK.
These four countries were selected as a useful set of test cases for several reasons. All are based on some variation of the Westminster system. There are well-organized and established political parties and party systems in operation across all four cases, each with a principal large center-left and center-right party in operation, allowing greater opportunity for comparison across and within cases. English is commonly used across all cases, allowing for more meaningful comparison in terms of the specific ways in which people with disabilities are represented. The use of a common language is important because of the key role it plays in the politics of disability—for example, in the extent to which people with disability are presented as objects of pity (Goodley Reference Goodley2016). All four countries have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, thereby, at least on paper, committing to uphold, promote, and protect the rights of all persons with disabilities—including ensuring their political participation. And finally, as noted above, despite the difficulties of securing reliable data (Schur, Kruse, and Blanck Reference Schur, Kruse and Blanck2013), all cases have populations with a roughly similar share of people with a disability (see table 2).
Although some of these countries have multiple party systems in operation, more typically at the federal or devolved level, the parties with the highest vote share as well as the highest share of seats in their national parliament also tend to be the oldest and most established parties. These are listed in table 3.
Countries and Party Selection
The first stage of the research involved collecting and analyzing party constitutions. These were available via the parties’ websites.Footnote 1 Each constitution was read before a search was conducted using the following keywords: disability, disabilities, disabled, illness, impairment, accessible, accessibility, sick, and handicap (although the latter is an outdated phrase, it was included in the initial search). All references to any of these keywords were recorded to quantify and qualify the details and context within which they were used. To compare the approaches to people with disability with the treatment of other traditionally marginalized groups, the following keywords were searched: women, gender, sex; race, ethnicity, Indigenous, First Nation, Māori; youth, young people.
To map the existence of interparty groups or caucuses for people with disabilities, the party’s official website was searched. If there was no mention of a specific group, then an email was sent to the contact address listed on the website. A wider internet search was also conducted to find any such groups or caucuses that may have existed previously or be operating purely online and/or in a less formal capacity. Where a group existed, documents on their website were read and a brief review of any social media activity was undertaken to get a sense of the types of activity and organizing they were engaged in. Finally, a review was undertaken of the number of self-declared politicians with disabilities elected at the national level. This involved contacting the parliament in each of the countries as well as the largest disability organizations in each country to confirm whether they were aware of any politicians with disabilities who had been missed in the initial mapping exercise. At the party level, individual constitutions and the most recent election manifesto revealed whether there were any specific commitments or strategies in place to promote the political recruitment of people with disabilities.
One of the limitations of this study, and indeed one of the key challenges facing those seeking to work on issues relating to disability and politics, is the fact that parties do not collect and publish data on the number of members with disabilities—an issue to which we will return in the final section of this article. We know that people with disabilities face a range of barriers to political participation (Priestley et al. Reference Priestley, Stickings, Loja, Grammenos, Lawson, Waddington and Fridriksdottir2016; Waltz and Schippers Reference Waltz and Schippers2021), and we also know that people with invisible impairments might not self-declare as having a disability, making the study of their involvement and engagement with political parties a difficult process. This study therefore focuses on what the parties are doing to facilitate access to participation, but recognizes that this is only the first step in a research agenda that explores how disabled people experience political parties.
Codification of Participation
As the data in table 4 illustrate, the codification of youth wings or the role of young people was institutionalized in all constitutions. Meanwhile, references to the role of women and/or the use of gender quotas were also present in most of the constitutions. Conversely, five parties codified the role of ethnic minorities and/or Indigenous communities in their constitutions, while four referred to people with disabilities. Those party constitutions that did not refer to people with disability did codify the role of other social groups (although the Conservatives in Canada only referred to young people). This is an important point because the absence of people with disability cannot be explained by a wider decision not to address the inclusion of social groups. The widespread codification of the role played by young party members and women does perhaps reflect pragmatic concerns as well as wider political realities. On a purely pragmatic level, it is vital for a party’s survival that they recruit and mobilize younger activists. On a more political level, debates about women’s political participation and representation are simply more advanced than those that concern other social groups, reflecting the fact that women make up half of the population rather than constituting a “minority” social group per se.
Party Constitutions and the Codification of Social Groups
All the parties whose constitutions refer to people with disabilities are the major center-left parties from each country. While we might expect the length of a party constitution to shape whether they mention disability—the shortest at 17 pages was Canada’s Liberal Party and the longest at 154 pages was the UK’s Labour Party, with the average at 73.4 pages—both the shortest and the longest constitutions included some mention of disability.
Simply mentioning people with disabilities in a party constitution does not of course give us an indication of the strength of support provided to facilitate their participation. Accordingly, the constitutions were coded either as absent, or in terms of the strength of support: weak (where disability is mentioned in passing, typically as part of a list of identity characteristics); medium (where the constitution provides more than just a passing reference to disability but is not especially detailed); and strong (in which specific commitments and expectations are set out, making it clear to members with disabilities what they can expect as well as detailing how the party should conduct itself). The outcome of the coding process is displayed in table 5.
Party Constitutions and the Strength of Support for People with Disabilities
Reading the constitutions in detail revealed that only one of the parties could be classified as having a strong commitment to facilitating the participation of people with disabilities: the UK Labour Party. Labour’s constitution contained specific commitments to increasing the participation of people with disabilities, going beyond setting up groups or named officers by also mandating that all events should be accessible. Recognizing that negative stereotyping and stigma is often associated with disability, Labour mandates that those involved with candidate selection processes undertake disability awareness training, and has specific rules guaranteeing the representation of people with disabilities through internal party quotas. Conversely, Australian Labor and the Canadian Liberals include disability solely as part of a broader list-based approach to the elimination of discrimination “on the basis of” a range of characteristics. New Zealand’s Labour Party has a medium commitment to increasing the participation of people with disabilities, specifically because of its commitment to ensuring there is representation for people with disabilities on policy and moderating councils.
That UK Labour should be the only party with a strong commitment to codifying the participation of people with disabilities is perhaps unsurprising given that debates concerning disability and representation are relatively well advanced in the UK (Evans and Reher Reference Evans and Reher2024). Similar commitments are not embedded in other ideologically aligned center-left parties beyond the UK. This absence is problematic because formal codified rules can be referred to by members with disabilities when requesting that local parties improve their accessibility. Moreover, constitutions provide guidance and establish expectations for how the party should conduct itself. People with disabilities face a range of barriers when participating in politics, and much of this is related to inaccessible venues and inaccessible material (Evans and Reher Reference Evans and Reher2024). That half of the parties in this study made no mention of disability in their constitution is troubling, especially when combined with those that only make a cursory reference to people with disabilities. Mandating that all meetings and events are held in accessible venues is an important rule that would certainly help to facilitate the participation of people with disabilities in the activities of political parties.
Recognition of Shared Interests and Issues
To understand the extent to which people with disabilities mobilize and organize within the party as a distinct social group with a shared set of interests and issues, it is instructive to map the presence and analyze the activities of internal party disability groups. As the data in table 6 illustrate, all but one of the parties have a youth wing,Footnote 2 and all but one have a women’s group or association. Five of the eight parties have some form of group or association specifically set up for Indigenous communities or racialized minorities, while only three have a disability group. Unlike the codification of people with disabilities in party constitutions, national differences are more significant than party differences, with both UK parties having a nationwide disability group.
Internal Party Groups
Notes: This includes related keywords including: sex, women, race, Indigenous, Māori, young. * The Conservative Muslim Forum tracks the number of Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) MPs, and so while being a religious-affiliated group it also takes a role in promoting the ethnic diversity of the party.
Australian Labor does not appear to have a nationwide group; instead it operates at the state level under the name “Labor Enabled.” There are eight state and territory branches within the party, and of these, five have a Labour Enabled group or network: New South Wales (NSW), Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania, and Australian Capital Territory (ACT). Hence, there is asymmetry across the party with regard to the organization and mobilization of members with disabilities. In other words, where you live shapes the extent to which you may be able to participate in an internal party disability group. To complicate matters further, two of the state parties have a disability group on paper but about which no further information could be found, either via the state party website or on social media. For example, Tasmanian Labor describes Labor Enabled in its branch rules as constituting a political action caucus, but no further information or contact details were available. Similarly, for ACT Labor the only trace of the group’s existence was a link to a conference resolution passed to establish Labor Enabled as “an informal, disabilities led body of ACT Labor” (ACT Labor 2023, 148). That there is little to no information available online or on social media with regard to these groups suggests that there is extremely limited activity, if any, occurring in at least two of these state-level branches.
For those three branches of Australian Labor that do have active disability networks, it was clear that some were more institutionalized and better resourced that others. For example, NSW Labor Enabled has its own website that lists its campaigns, contains details of a full executive committee, and states its commitment to the social model of disability; it also includes links to its active Facebook organizing page.Footnote 3 Meanwhile, Queensland Labor Enabled maintains an active but closed members-only Facebook group for its members and meets monthly according to the details listed on the branch’s website,Footnote 4 while the Victorian branch of Labor Enabled has an active Facebook page.
Looking beyond the specifics of the Australian case, the aims, objectives, and activities of all the disability groups across the four countries are similar. Broadly, their work can be grouped into three areas: providing a platform or voice for people with disabilities, increasing the participation of people with disabilities by making the party more accessible, and influencing party policy specifically in relation to disability. Providing a voice for people with disabilities was a common stated aim of the disability groups and suggests that unless people with disabilities raise issues and interests that are of concern to them, then they will likely be overlooked or ignored. The UK Conservative Disability Group holds events and meetings at the party’s annual conference as well as working with prominent parliamentarians to promote awareness of disability across the party.
The disability groups also campaign to make their party accessible for members with disabilities, often lobbying or seeking to change the rules of the state or national party to remove barriers to participation. For example, the NSW branch of Labor Enabled lists a set of motions on its website that local branches can table to improve the accessibility of organizing.Footnote 5 Disability Labour has in the past made some inroads in improving the accessibility of the UK Labour Party’s annual conference: for example, in 2018 the party had a space at conference for people experiencing sensory overload. However, according to Disability Labour, since 2021 the party has gone backward with regard to accessibility at conferences.Footnote 6 The disability groups also try to help shape party policy not just in relation to disability but also in relation to the wider policy agenda. For example, Queensland Labor Enabled hosts a monthly meeting for members “focused on the lived experience of our members and how those experiences can inform policy change in health, housing, transport, employment and many other areas.”Footnote 7
The absence of disability groups or caucuses within most of the parties studied is problematic for the recruitment, mobilization, and organization of (potential) members with disabilities. In their analysis of Canadian politics, D’Aubin and Stienstra (Reference D’Aubin and Stienstra2004) argued that having internal disability groups is important to “help to raise the profile of disability issues and possibly encourage candidates,” yet the two largest parties in Canada still have no disability caucus two decades later. Neither do the major parties in New Zealand. Given the importance of self-organization for disabled people—encapsulated by the slogan of the disability rights movement, “Nothing about us without us” (Charlton Reference Charlton1998)—the absence of disability groups is especially worrying as it limits the ability of members with disabilities to organize in semiautonomous spaces to influence the wider party and to advocate for more accessible and inclusive structures and policy.
Political Recruitment Strategies
Turning to political recruitment, people with disabilities can sometimes require additional support to put themselves forward as candidates. For example, they may require transportation, a personal assistant, transcription, or signing. None of the parties included in this study had formalized or codified plans to provide this kind of support to candidates with disabilities. Of course, the absence of an explicit and written commitment or strategy to provide additional support for disabled candidates does not necessarily mean that once a candidate is selected (especially if for a winnable seat) that support might not be made available; it might just be done on an ad hoc or informal basis. This informality would, however, likely be a barrier for people with disabilities because a potential candidate would not know in advance if they would get the support they required. Nor were there any plans to propose or promote innovative approaches to political representation that might facilitate the political recruitment of candidates with disabilities, such as job sharing or hybrid working.
The most obvious mechanism to increase the political representation of underrepresented groups is a quota. All four countries have some version of a gender quota law. In all these countries it is up to the parties whether they choose to use a gender quota: three out of the eight parties use, or have in the past used, a form of voluntary gender quota.Footnote 8 The term “ethnic quota” refers to the presence of any legal rules that permit the use of specific strategies or which set out guarantees regarding the minimum number (or percentage) of representatives or candidates from a specific ethnic group, where “ethnic group” is understood as a group within a larger society with a common history and/or cultural traits such as language, kinship, or religion (Tan and Preece Reference Tan and Preece2022). When it comes to ethnic quotas, only New Zealand has institutionalized minimum representational requirements, using reserved seats for the indigenous Māori (Bird Reference Bird2014). Meanwhile, Australian Labor is debating whether to introduce multicultural quotas for the selection of its candidates. Although ethnic quotas are not currently designated as legal under UK law, UK Labour has adopted measures to increase the number of ethnic minority candidates.
No parties use a disability quota. There was only evidence of the two UK political parties adopting any sort of strategy to increase the number of candidates with disabilities; these strategies were focused less on the point of selection and more on providing individual-level support and mentoring. For example, the UK Conservative Party’s Disability Group has developed a “disability toolkit” to provide tailored support to potential candidates who are considering putting themselves forward for elected office, while Disability Labour provides a training guide for people with disabilities who are considering putting themselves forward to be a locally elected politician.
Previous research exploring the barriers to elected office have consistently reported problems that people with disabilities face in terms of accessibility as well as discriminatory attitudes (Evans and Reher Reference Evans and Reher2022; Priestley et al. Reference Priestley, Stickings, Loja, Grammenos, Lawson, Waddington and Fridriksdottir2016; Waltz and Schippers Reference Waltz and Schippers2021). People with disabilities typically have fewer financial resources and often have additional costs (e.g., personal assistance, taxis, or specialist software) associated with putting themselves forward for elected office. One way in which the financial element can be tackled is through the provision of governmental funding schemes, to which people with disabilities can apply to help them meet the costs of running for office. For example, in the UK there have been various iterations of an “access to elected office” fund, not currently in operation for Westminster elections in England but in operation across Scotland and Wales for elections to local councils and the Scottish and Welsh parliaments. While it is hard to prove a causal link between extra pots of funding and an individual being elected, evaluations of the fund in the UK have demonstrated that the recipients of the funding believed them to have been necessary to enable them to put themselves forward. To date, only one other country under study in this research has also introduced a similar scheme: New Zealand has set up the Election Access Fund, with a limit of NZ$50,000 total funding for a person per election or by-election.Footnote 9
That no party has adopted any measures (beyond targeted training) to increase the number of candidates with disabilities is troubling when we consider how few self-declared politicians with disabilities there are in each of the four countries, as the data in table 7 reveals. No country has yet passed legislation in favor of all-disability shortlists, nor is there any evidence that this is something the political parties are pushing for. While civil society movements—as opposed to political parties—can play an important role in mobilizing support for increasing the number of politicians from underrepresented groups, this is a question that directly affects parties. It is important that parties pay greater attention to how to increase and improve the numbers of politicians with disabilities, not least in those countries where there are currently no self-declared politicians with disabilities.
Number of Currently Elected Politicians with Disabilities (November 2024)
Note: This only includes representatives in the national parliament rather than parliaments devolved of federal government.
Disability and Political Parties: Future Research Agenda
People with disabilities and questions of accessibility are not prioritized by political parties, and this is a pattern we can also identify within political science and the study of political parties. Using the findings from the initial mapping exercise as a springboard, this final section of the paper sets out the case for a research agenda, highlighting some pressing research puzzles and questions as well as considering some of the empirical and methodological challenges of undertaking research in this area.
The comparative analysis presented above reveals a picture of political parties that are doing little to facilitate the political participation of people with disabilities. The lack of attention paid to accessibility, especially when compared to efforts made to mobilize and recruit members from other traditionally marginalized groups, is perhaps indicative of a lack of knowledge of, interest in, and commitment to disability, and/or a lack of commitment to making their organizations accessible. A more generous explanation might also be found in the lack of party resources to adequately address concerns about accessibility. However, as the size of the disability population grows, it is important that parties think carefully about how to organize accessibly.
Although the mobilization of women, racialized minorities, and young people has increasingly attracted attention from political parties and scholars, the same cannot be said for people with disabilities. But why does this matter? It matters because political parties are key institutions within representative democracies and are the major route into electoral politics in many countries. If people with disabilities are not enabled to join and become active within political parties, then they are less likely to have their voices heard, be selected as candidates, or serve as elected representatives. The absence of people with disabilities therefore has the potential to negatively affect the extent to which disability-related policy is discussed or pursued in the interests of people with disabilities. Political parties are central actors in the mobilization of citizens; this role takes on additional importance when we consider the potential to enhance and improve the engagement of those from traditionally marginalized groups.
Given the centrality of political parties to the study of political science, it is vital that scholars pay attention to questions of accessibility and to the role of people with disabilities within those institutions. To help shape such a research agenda, several questions and puzzles are outlined in table 8. Following the framework outlined earlier in the article, these initial but by no means exhaustive sets of questions relate to the three indicators for accessibility.
Future Research Questions
Answering these questions will require a mix of both quantitative and qualitative methods: surveys and experiments can help to capture how, when, where, and why parties engage with disability and how people with disabilities perceive parties, while interviews, ethnographies, process tracing, and text analysis can provide a more detailed understanding of party approaches to accessibility and disability, as well as of how people with disabilities experience political parties. Hitherto, research on disability and politics has tended to adopt a single case-study approach (see Guldvik, Askheim, and Johansen [Reference Guldvik, Askheim and Johansen2013] on Norway, Sackey [Reference Sackey2015] on Ghana, Langford and Levesque [Reference Langford and Levesque2017] on Canada, and Evans and Reher [Reference Evans and Reher2022] on the UK), hence more comparative research is needed to map differences across countries, regions, and political systems. Additionally, systematic frameworks are required to help capture and explain cross-national and within-case variation when it comes to the relationship between disability and parties.
The list of questions set out in table 8 illustrate how little we know about the relationship between disability and political parties. To complicate matters further, it is also important to acknowledge some of the methodological difficulties in undertaking this type of research. Chief among these is the difficulty of collecting accurate data on the numbers of people with disability (Schur, Kruse, and Blanck Reference Schur, Kruse and Blanck2013): in addition to the stigma that surrounds identifying as having a disability, it is also worth noting that disability can be a fluid category that people move in and out of over their lifetime (Thorp Reference Thorp2023). Researchers must take difficult decisions about who to include within their studies: does having cancer, for instance, count as having a disability? Under some national laws the answer would undoubtedly be “yes,” but it is not clear that people with cancer view themselves as having a disability (Magasi et al. Reference Magasi, Marshall, Winters and Victorson2022). Similarly, there are those within the deaf community who do not consider themselves to have a disability, but rather believe they share a common culture and language (see Pray and Jordan Reference Pray and Jordan2010). These are difficult decisions that scholars researching in this area must navigate. Being clear about who is included is therefore essential.
In truth, there is a serious problem of knowability when it comes to the participation of people with disabilities. Parties themselves do not tend to collect or publish data relating to the percentage of their membership with a disability (Evans and Reher Reference Evans and Reher2024). However, these difficulties make it all the more important for political scientists and party actors to engage in this research agenda. One way forward would be for political scientists to develop meaningful and thoughtful ways in which to capture disability indicators; the World Health Organization (2017) model survey on disability is a good place to start. Another is to survey and interview people with disabilities who have been, are currently, or might be future members of political parties to find out about their experiences, perspectives, and accessibility needs.
Finally, coproducing, or at least codesigning, research projects that focus on disability with people with disabilities is important, reflecting the call of the disability rights movement, “Nothing about us without us” (Charlton Reference Charlton1998). Ensuring that the views, perspectives, and experiences of people with disabilities are heard—and they are not written about merely as “subjects of interest”—will help to avoid the reproduction of ableist and paternalistic approaches toward people with disabilities. Coproducing research on disability with people with disability can also help to produce more impactful research that has the potential to shape how parties themselves might transform to become more accessible. Making parties accessible in a meaningful way requires the participation and engagement of people with disabilities themselves, many of whom have over the years developed and tested approaches to accessibility.
The disability population is growing, and it is important for political parties that wish to engage with and represent the whole community to understand how best to engage and facilitate the participation of this marginalized group. More broadly, political parties that are fully accessible benefit everyone. For example, changes to the length or timing of meetings, whether they are organized online or conducted face to face, and the opportunity for job-sharing benefit people with disabilities as well as those with caring responsibilities. Political scientists and party scholars have an opportunity to map, examine, and analyze the relationship between disability and political parties and to help transform politics to become more accessible for all.
Conclusion
While a small but growing number of political scientists are seeking to examine the links between disability and politics, there remains much to do in terms of theorizing and analyzing how people with disabilities perceive, experience, and are treated by political parties. Why people with disabilities and issues of accessibility fly under the radar when it comes to political analysis and the practice of politics might perhaps best be explained by a combination of ambivalence, a lack of knowledge, and the continued marginalization and stigmatization that surrounds disability. Such stigma means that many people simply feel uncomfortable discussing disability (Simplican Reference Simplican2015), thereby reinforcing ableist cultures in which people with disabilities are viewed negatively (Campbell Reference Campbell2009).
This article has called for a new research agenda focused on the relationship between disability and political parties. The potential role parties can play in facilitating people with disabilities to participate in politics is significant: it is vital that we understand the extent to which people with disabilities feel encouraged and enabled to join and become active members, and that we think through how parties can be transformed to become more inclusive for all. Recognizing the dearth of research in this area, and following the strategy of other scholars who have examined the experiences of other marginalized groups (cf. feminist institutionalists), this article has developed a framework for analyzing the formal approaches to accessibility by identifying three key indicators: codification of participation, recognition of shared interests and issues, and political recruitment strategies.
Applying this framework to eight parties across four countries revealed that very little attention has been paid to disability or accessibility in terms of formal rules and processes. Although there are several party and electoral systems in operation across our four country case studies, it is striking how few examples there are of political parties institutionalizing or codifying the rules to ensure and improve the political participation of people with disabilities. The UK appears, at least from this initial exploratory study, to be relatively well advanced on this issue—something that perhaps could partly be explained by the long-standing and well-organized disability rights movement in the UK (Campbell and Oliver Reference Campbell and Oliver2013)—but is certainly a fruitful area for future research. Parties have an important role to play in enabling people with disabilities to participate: mandating accessibility and codifying the rules surrounding engagement in party constitutions is one step, another would be to set up and help to resource disability groups and caucuses. Given that people with disabilities constitute a sizable (and growing) proportion of the population, and that they are often economically and politically marginalized, it is essential that political parties pay attention to facilitating and enabling their greater participation.
This article has highlighted a range of research questions and puzzles that it would be fruitful to examine, emphasizing the range of methods required as well as the importance of coproduction. People with disabilities constitute a distinct social group, but the heterogeneity of the group should not overlooked, not only in terms of differences in impairment type that may result in different experiences and accessibility requirements, but also in terms of gender, race, class, religion, and so on. Analyzing how parties formally approach people with disabilities and matters of accessibility is of course only the first step in fully understanding the relationship between disability and political parties. Future research also needs to take account of informal norms and cultures that shape the everyday experiences and interactions people with disabilities have with political parties. Given we know that people with disabilities are among the world’s most politically, economically, and socially marginalized groups, it is necessary for both scholars and practitioners alike to pay greater attention to how party politics can become more accessible for all.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and editors of the journal, as well as participants at the panels on disability at the 2024 American Political Science Association virtual conference for their thoughtful, helpful, and encouraging feedback on earlier versions of this paper.
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