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Informed, involved, or empowered? Three ideal types of autism policy design in Western Europe
Author(s) -
Precious Kate
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
european policy analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.558
H-Index - 12
ISSN - 2380-6567
DOI - 10.1002/epa2.1092
Subject(s) - empowerment , ideal (ethics) , democracy , politics , government (linguistics) , resource (disambiguation) , public policy , public administration , set (abstract data type) , political science , public economics , public relations , economic growth , economics , law , computer science , computer network , linguistics , philosophy , programming language
Governments which design policies to empower marginalized groups contribute to reducing the democratic deficit in public policy and improve their efficacy, efficiency, and democratic credentials. This article uses fuzzy set ideal type analysis to propose three ideal types of policy design for political empowerment, according to whether the government views the target group as capable only of being Informed by experts, or of being Involved in policy, or even Empowered to co‐govern. An analysis of Western European autism policy illustrates and confirms the usefulness of the ideal types. England, Wales, and Denmark emerge as countries where governments have the highest expectations for political empowerment. Surprisingly, traditional disability policy groupings seem not to apply, with the UK split across Empowered and Involved, while Spain leaves its Informed Southern European counterparts to join the Involved cohort. This paper is a timely reminder of the importance of lived experience as a policy resource lived experience as a policy resource.