Why States Expand PCI Suffrage: UNCRPD Committee Experiences

Suffrage restrictions for people with cognitive impairments (PCI) are still commonplace. Article 29 of the UNCRPD seeks to alleviate these restrictions. But why state parties reform their PCI suffrage restrictions cannot be explained with traditional institutionalist theories. Constitutional legacy, governing parties’ leaning, and the type of electoral system fail to predict suffrage reform occurrence and timing. To develop new theories and hypotheses for why states expand PCI suffrage this paper presents two studies in a nested analysis mixed methods setting. First, in a small N analysis I interview UNCRPD committee members. The UNCRPD committee consists of disability rights experts, who support states in the UNCRPD implementation. Drawing on the committee members’ collective experiences I develop new theories of suffrage reform based on invivo codes and explanatory frames provided in the interviews. Second, in a large N analysis I test the recovered theories and their hypotheses on a novel data set of PCI suffrage reforms using event history analysis. The data set is constructed from state party implementation reports allowing for the first accurate and reliable longitudinal measurement of PCI suffrage reforms. This study aims to progress the recent scholarship on PCI suffrage restrictions in comparative politics.