The new political economy of disability: transnational networks and individualised funding in the age of neoliberalism

Disability support systems have undergone significant changes in contexts of rapid neoliberalisation. Services that were once provided or commissioned by the state are now increasingly delivered on an individual basis, through cash budgets and other forms of ‘individualised funding’ (IF). These changes have been driven by both state and non-state advocates of a greater role for markets in the provisioning of welfare, as well as significant sections of the disability rights movement. While these are widely recognised as part of a global process of market-oriented state restructuring, a lacuna exists in the critical literature in regard to the international diffusion of IF models. This study addresses this gap though a cross-national investigation of IF as an object of neoliberal policy mobility. The study traces the movement and mutation of IF in and between England, Scotland and Australia, and explains how and why it has proliferated in the ways that it has. I highlight IF’s inherent spatial, relational and political character, and the ways it has moved and mutated between countries, deploying a policy mobilities approach as a theoretical point of departure. These themes are explored empirically through a methodology of following the policy through global networks and identifying the key players involved in its dissemination. To follow the policy, I developed a multi-site extended case study design, comprising three key sites of policy adaptation: England, Scotland and Australia. Through analysis of documentary materials and 30 semi-structured interviews with civil society actors, disability movement actors and policy makers, the thesis maps the spread of IF models through transnational networks. It highlights the ways in which networks actors themselves are embedded within, and conditioned by, global and national webs of norms, ideologies and structural constraints.The thesis finds that the variety of actors involved in the transnational diffusion of market-based m