Politics of Empowerment is an ambitious etiology of US disability policy making that spans eight decades. The book provides a holistic view of the disability law field, focusing not only on civil rights and antidiscrimination mandates but also on legislation related to rehabilitation, social welfare, and special education—arenas that many consider quintessentially disability-related despite decades-long attempts to frame the issue through a civil rights framework. The chronologically organized manuscript first guides its readers through Congress's hallways, introducing us to central figures working on new bills and amendments. Later, as the disability rights movement develops and civil society organizations proliferate, the author ushers the readers onto the streets, where social movement actors use disruptive techniques to promote the policy agenda from the outside. It is this symbiotic linkage between the political process of constructing policy and social movement mobilization that makes the book stand out within the literature on the development of disability law and policy.
Although previous authors have described the evolution of American disability policy as a clear shift from welfare to rights, Pettinicchio offers a nuanced way of looking at this trajectory. From the beginning, the book claims that “disability entrepreneurs of the legislative branch” (an original and timely term likely to be adopted by others in the field) did not push against rehabilitation and social services yet saw this model as incomplete without civil rights (5). It was their understanding that simply preventing the discrimination against disabled individuals and expecting they will be included in mainstream society just would not “cut it.” Altering both environments and structures that were originally designed without regard for nearly a fourth of the American population, all while providing support mechanisms, is the key to making disability policy work—the necessary means to achieve the grand goal of disability inclusion. As the book clearly shows, however, the sociopolitical climate directly influenced legislative development. This is ironic considering the common narrative about disability rights (specifically with regard to the Americans with Disabilities Act [ADA]), which prides itself on espousing bipartisan policies that “everyone agrees with” (163). The book's strength lies in its rich account of the struggles and compromises made along the way of crafting disability law.
The policy-making narrative presented in the book is compelling. Pettinicchio explains how, between the 1940s and the mid-1960s, disability policy was driven by a client–service model, with the goal of rehabilitating individuals with disabilities into independent, productive citizens. Civil society at the time was accordingly centered on providing services to people with disabilities. The late 1960s signaled a transition period, when the costs of implementing disability policies created contention. Nevertheless, these policies still remained a clear bipartisan issue. The Architectural Barriers Act of 1968, for example, was carefully drafted so that budgetary considerations would not impede its implementation while the novel idea of accessibility was framed as an auxiliary to vocational rehabilitation (rather than as a civil right issue, as it is today under the ADA). This utilitarian framing of access would become a prominent feature of political discourse and policy making around disability for years to come.
The first explicit articulation of a “right” for people with disabilities came in 1970, with an amendment to the Urban Mass Transportation Act. The Act stated that “elderly and handicapped persons have the same right as other persons to utilize mass transportation and services” (66). Nevertheless, a year later, an effort to amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include disability among other minority groups was unsuccessful. A similar process of incidentally recognizing rights occurred with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the best-known precursor to the ADA, which miraculously passed a relatively broad antidiscrimination mandate right under the noses of fiscally conservative policy makers. The 1970s and 1980s ushered in the politicization of disability as a minority group, a process well-documented in the literature but nicely articulated by Pettinicchio, who traces the shift of civil society organizations from providing social services to advocacy in the face of retrenchment during the Reagan years. Protests around disability issues, along with the ADA (introduced in 1988), helped raise public awareness. Following the ADA enactment, however, it seemed as though the public understood the disability problem to have been solved, a state of mind leading to a decline in activism and in significant policy making in the first two decades of the new millennium (159). Nonetheless, people with disabilities remain marginalized and largely left out of the labor market and sociopolitical life in a world that is still far from accessible. The 2017 protests against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act are reminiscent of earlier collective actions. Yet, now that disability rights have become more closely connected with health-care reform, it is inextricably associated with one side of the political map (140).
Pettinicchio might not have been the first to show how, to this day, society and decision-makers perceive disability as different from other minority groups. However, his extensive and impressive archival research enables him to go deeper and pose provocative questions: could including disability as a category in the Civil Rights Act, rather than a separate policy scheme, have yielded better outcomes? Did the ADA have an expressive influence on areas of disability policy unrelated to antidiscrimination (such as health care, access to public transit, or special education)? Was the slow process of articulating disability issues as civil rights and abandoning social service provisions and rehabilitation the right one? These questions continue to resonate after readers have finished the book.
A lingering question remains with respect to situating this project within the body of disability scholarship. Although interdisciplinary, the American strand of the relatively new field of disability studies has strong roots in the humanities (Belt & Dorfman, 2019: 146). Nevertheless, a growing body of literature melds social sciences, historical analysis, critical–theoretical accounts of disability, and policy analysis. In 2019, for example, the Law & Society Review published a special issue showcasing empirical sociolegal work that successfully blended disability studies and legal studies to uncover the role law and its institutions play in the construction of disability (Heyer & Mor, 2019: 948). The book could have more fully engaged with theoretical writings on the ways this oft-ignored category plays out in legal history, court decisions, or the law in everyday life. Such interdisciplinary perspectives could have provided solid ground for explaining the political trajectory, further enriched the accounts described in the book, and promoted this novel approach to disability to further circuits within the academy.
Instead, this work may more clearly speak to strands in political science or organizational sociology that examine disability rights as a case study of the politics of rulemaking or social movement theory. Regardless of whether this book fits neatly within the growing field of disability legal studies, there is no doubt that the excellent excavation of the events, people, and interests behind disability law and policy history will enrich discussions and improve scholarly understanding across the board.
