Republican Political Theory and Disability Policy

Jurgen De Wispelaere, Trinity College Dublin
David Casassas, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to offer a republican perspective on disability and disability policy. A republican perspective on disability will focus less on the material distribution of goods or resources but instead try to reconstitute the core concern of disability as one of agency, freedom and political participation or citizenship of disabled people in our modern society. This paper offers two main insights. In the first instance, we argue that a republican political theory of disability must offer a clear diagnostic of the many ways in which society fails to respect disabled individuals as agents and citizens, and subsequently prevents them from participating in full, with further detrimental effects on their general well-being and opportunities. More specifically we argue in this paper that a central distinction within republican political theory between dominium and imperium can be used to great effect to conceptualise the many complex ways in which our current social and political arrangements dominate disabled individuals. In addition, republican theory also offers a distinctive perspective on the remedies to counter the various forms of domination present in either dominium or imperium. In particular, a republican perspective on disability proposes disabled citizens ought to have three broad types of political rights - the right to challenge, the right to participate, and the right to contribute – each of which closely tied with republican intuitions on citizenship.