Pushing Barriers: The Place of Disability in Politics and Political Science Mini-Conference: Disabled Political Candidates: Navigating Identity, Messaging & Voter Response

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Part of Mini-Conference

• Pushing Barriers: The Place of Disability in Politics and Political Science

Session Description

Disabled people comprise around 20% of the global population, yet they are not adequately represented in governing bodies across the world. The five papers in this panel aim to understand why and to explore the normative implications of the lack of representation of people with disabilities. In particular, the papers in this panel explore how voters evaluate disability when choosing a political representative; how the public responds to the frames and messages that disabled candidates use to help the public understand their disability; how disabled politicians navigate their intersectional identities to present themselves to the public; how the media frames disabled politicians; and how the institutions themselves create a culture that both welcomes and denies disabled politicians. These papers employ innovative experimental designs – conjoint and survey experiments, analysis of speeches, interviews, and social media, and an in-depth exploration of institutional culture of the UK Parliament.

The first three papers – Reher & Lemesheva, Ne’eman & Callaghan, and Smith – all address voters’ reactions to disabled candidates. Using experimental design, the authors examine how the public perceives different types of disabilities and if these reactions are conditioned by the candidate’s ideology and other identity characteristics, such as race, gender, and ethnicity. Moreover, the authors address how voters in the UK and the US perceive the ways that disabled politicians frame their disability by normalizing it or using it as inspiration. In a related paper, Evans uses Black feminist theory and intersectionality to understand in depth how disabled politicians in the UK navigate their intersectional identities through analysis of multiple modalities of politician self-presentation and how the media responds. Finally, Kolpinskaya asks about the institutional culture of the UK Parliament and treats it as a site of contestation, where hierarchy and existing norms shape how politicians experience the job of being a politician.

The set of papers offer a diverse set of approaches to a unified research objective within the panel, while also diversifying and widening the substantive breadth of the Conference and the discipline more generally by examining both new and widely studied issues in political science in the context of a large, yet still often ignored social group – disabled people. The authors, panel chair and discussants constitute an international and diverse group of scholars in terms of academic seniority, disabled identity and role in the disability community, and gender.

This panel is part of a Mini-conference on Disability and Politics, which links research on disability in a variety of subfields, such as American politics/political behavior, comparative politics, and political theory, using a broad range of methods, including survey data analysis, experiments, and focus groups.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Cosponsors

• Division 2: Foundations of Political Theory

• Division 36: Elections and Voting Behavior

• Division 37: Public Opinion

Individual Presentations

• Disability, Race, and Gender in Congressional Elections - Jacob Forrest Harrison Smith, Fordham University

• Voter Evaluations of Disabled Candidates’ Self-Presentation Strategies - Stefanie Reher, University of Strathclyde; Yulia Lemesheva, University of Strathclyde

• Candidate Disability and Electoral Messaging - Ari Neeman, Harvard University; Timothy Herbert Callaghan, Boston University

• Intersectionality, Symbolic Representation and Disabled Politicians - Elizabeth J. Evans, Goldsmiths, University of London

• Exploring Work Environment and Experiences of Disabled MPs in the UK Parliament - Ekaterina Kolpinskaya, University of Exeter

Chair

• Monica C. Schneider Miami University

Discussants

• Joshua Rutherford Thorp University of Michigan

• Ana Bracic Michigan State University