The Shift to the Rights Model of Disability in the EU and Canada

Abstract

Approaches to disability policy have undergone a radical re-orientation across Europe and North America in the last twenty-five years. They have shifted away from a welfare-based model towards a rights model, which emphasizes the equality rights of persons with disabilities. This relatively rapid, cross-national paradigm shift, in the face of institutionalized mechanisms that one would expect to resist radical change, poses a puzzle. We argue, using the cases of Canada and the European Union, that the federal and supranational governments played a key role in encouraging the spread of the rights model of disability in their respective federal political systems and that this is crucial in explaining the timing of the shift. We find that reframing disability issues as a question of rights helped to expand the authority and the legitimacy of centralized governance.