Biases, Barriers, and the Disability Representation Gap

Abstract

Disabled people are under-represented in elected office around the globe. While attention to this issue has increased in recent years, we still lack a deeper understanding of what causes this under-representation and, crucially, how it varies across countries. The papers in this panel study different cases and different stages of the political recruitment process to advance our understanding of the barriers and opportunities of disabled people to access elected office and effectively fulfil their roles as political representatives. The first two papers focus on the election stage: Fabry and Castanho Silva analyse how voters perceive disabled candidates through survey experiments in four European countries, while Kennedy-Diver studies voter perceptions of disabled candidates in the UK, focusing on symbolic representation. Kolpinskaya and Winter focus on disabled representatives in office, demonstrating how institutional factors determine their inclusion in parliament by comparing the UK’s House of Commons and House of Lords. Finally, Mattila and Reher seek to identify why disabled candidates have lower chances to get elected in Finland, using candidate survey data. The panel brings together an international group of authors at different career stages who reflect on the same question from different perspectives: what are the barriers to getting elected and fulfilling their representative roles that disabled people face?

Title	Details
Exploring the Impact of Disability on Political Candidate Perception	View Paper Details
Is Any of It Really Relevant? Disability, Demographics and Political Representation: Evidence from a UK Survey Experiment	View Paper Details
Same Building, Different Houses: How Environment, Practices and Expectations Shape Disability Inclusion of MPs and Peers	View Paper Details
Explaining the Disability Vote Penalty in Finland: Resources, Returns or Prejudices?	View Paper Details