Social Policies of Inclusion and Neoliberalism

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The model presented in Chap. 1, Critique—Praxis—Emancipation, will now be used to explore the dominant philosophical values that stand behind the economic and social paradigms that influence and control the lives of persons living with an intellectual disability in western nations. For our purposes here, praxis will present the features of the dominant economic discourse used to administer, fund and regulate service provision to persons living with an intellectual disability. The social sciences rely and, indeed, use each other’s knowledge to develop theses or to substantiate their own arguments. For instance, the neoliberal theories in economics take learnings from psychology about the motives of human behaviour and then aggregate these motives into a model of how persons will behave in a market economy. There is, then, an incline within the social sciences; they are interconnected through economic and social values. Western nations accept These philosophical assumptions and try to integrate them with social justice initiatives such as the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Therefore, the philosophical values inherent in neoliberalism and the CRPD have currency with those found in western nations. Praxis will also include a discussion on the often-overlooked role the characteristics of an institution play in the personal lives of persons living with an intellectual disability. The Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) will be used as a critique to assess how neoliberalism’s philosophical values serve persons living with an intellectual disability in a western nation state.