The common wisdom in some sectors of human endeavor is that the world is flat, that the economic, environmental, governmental, and human-rights policies of one nation or collection of nations profoundly affect policies of other nations. The ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), in 2006, carries that wisdom into the sector having to do with the presence and effect of disability on national policies; because of the UNCRPD, cross-national policies now should be compared. That is the mission that Ari Rimmerman has undertaken, defensibly limiting the scope of his analyses to comparisons of policies in the United States of America, Great Britain, France, and Sweden to each other and then to the UNCRPD.
Zimmerman succeeds marvellously. Lucid, heavily and properly referenced, and current, Family Policy and Disability goes into depth and provides a breadth that few, if any, articles in policy journals offer. Of particular value to scholars and policy leaders are chapters 2 (conceptual bases of family policy), 4 (models of how to conceptualize disability and distinctions in types of policies), 7 (comparisons of US and the other three countries’ policies), 8 (evaluation of those countries’ policies on the basis of the UNCRPD), and 9 (closing remarks).
That is not to say other chapters are not useful; they are. Chapter 1 declares that conceptualizations of disability are the foundations for other chapters. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 are the comparative assessments of policies, but, in discussing policy in the US, Zimmerman helpfully makes a distinction between positive rights (right-based claim to services), negative rights (right against disability-based discrimination), and entitlements (not rights).
Chapter 2 identifies and discusses two models for conceptualizing disability policy. One is the human development model (including medical, psychological, and educational sub-models); the other is the public studies model (including the legal, economic, and demographic sub-models). These models provide a large framework for policy analysis.
Chapter 3 draws a fine distinction between generic/universalistic and special/exceptionalistic policies, and between positive rights, negative rights, and entitlements. The distinction provides yet another framework for policy analysis.
Chapter 7 compares and contrasts the policies of the four countries and thus offers a purely “western/developed country” perspective. Within that perspective, Zimmerman usefully describes three models of policy. Once again, Zimmerman prescribes yet another basis for cross-national policy analysis.
Chapter 8 relates the UNCRPD to family policy. Zimmerman describes the tension, represented by the approaches of various countries, between the purely individual-focused approach to rights and the more broadly family-focused approach to rights. His description of that tension does much to make clear that there are varying and sometimes competing cultural models of disability and of family-related policy.
Chapter 9 contains Zimmerman's view from above, his concluding remarks. They are not brief, but they are valuable. He notes the lack of consensus among scholars regarding the definition, nature, and scope of family policy; here, he speaks directly to the research community and exhorts it to address the variety of definitions, nature, and scope, arguing that, without consensus, cross-national analyses will be difficult and not necessarily as broadly useful as they might be. He also argues that the two basic approaches to defining a family inhibit universalistic policy, such as the UNCRPD ambitiously seeks.
These are the model of individualism (focus on the person with disability) and the model of communitarianism (familism); they too inhibit universalistic policy such as, again, the UNCRPD seeks. This chapter next speaks to the nature of research about families and disability policy; it notes that the UK's combined liberal and conservative approaches, France's conservative corporatist approach, Sweden's mixed socialistic democratic approach, and the USA's liberal and individualistic approaches reflect not just governmental policy but more fundamentally cultural variations within the west. Although Zimmerman does not explicitly say so, he intimates that the cultural model of disability policy explains the UNCRPD's emphasis on the individual and its resulting lower appreciation of the role of the family with respect to a person with a disability.
Zimmerman's book is especially valuable to those who seek a typology of models for policy analysis. Its focus on four different countries, each representing a different model, and on the UNCRPD, whose legislative history reflects a tension about the focus of policy, is welcome. So too is his recognition that economics – not just of a particular country but of regions of the world and of the world economy in the aggregate – plays a foundational role in policy-making.
Those who seek typologies will find Zimmerman's book to be invaluable. Those who are brave enough to do cross-national research will find it to be sobering. Those who are concerned about the issue of primary and secondary beneficiaries will have a clarifying time in reading this book. And those who regard themselves to be value-free scientists will be dismayed to learn that the science of policy analysis is value-laden, for it rests on models/typologies that influence even the questions scientists investigate, as well as the data they create or evaluate.
