Between a Shrinking and a Shifting Space: the Symbolic Inclusion of the Disability Movement in Policy-Making in Romania
Between a Shrinking and a Shifting Space: the Symbolic Inclusion of the Disability Movement in Policy-Making in Romania

Summary/Abstract: In this paper, we explore how political opportunity structures for the inclusion of the disability movement in Romania are shaped from the perspective of self-advocacy and service provider NGOs active in the field of disability. Building on in-depth semi-structured interviews with nine representatives of self-advocacy and service provider organizations, we explore how they understood the processes by which they participated in policy formulation processes. Our results show that both service provider and self-advocacy organizations feel that their inclusion in the policymaking process is mostly symbolic and tokenistic, but that this can and did change in the last years. However, despite a general concern for a shrinking space for civil society organizations influence on policymaking in Central and East European countries, disability organizations in Romania describe the political opportunity landscape as a fluctuating one, rather than one that is evolving in one direction. Moreover, whereas service provider organizations seem to perceive higher levels of inclusion on the national level, whereas self-advocacy NGOs seem to perceive themselves as being better included and more influential on local levels. This also reflects the presence of bottom-up federative efforts of service provider organizations as opposed to the lack of successful bottom-up federative efforts in the field of disability based self-advocacy organizations. Finally, our paper problematizes inclusion in policy-making as an unequivocally positive process, showing how disability organizations sometimes choose not to participate in order not to legitimize problematic decisions through their symbolic presence in the negotiation process.

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