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The New Political Economy of
Disability

This book addresses the ways in which individualised, market-based models of

disability support provision have been mobilised in and across different countries
through cross-national investigation of individualised funding (IF) as an object of
neoliberal policy mobility.
Combining rich theoretical and interdisciplinary perspectives with extensive
empirical research, the book provides a timely examination of the policy processes
and mechanisms driving the spread of IF amongst countries at the forefront
of disability policy reform. It is argued that IF’s mobility is not attributable to
neoliberalism alone but to the complex intersections between neoliberal and
emancipatory agendas and to the transnational networks that have blended the
two agendas in new ways in different institutional contexts. The book shows
how disability rights struggles have synchronised with neoliberal agendas, which
explains IF’s propensity to move and mutate between different jurisdictions.
Featuring first-hand accounts of the activists and advocates engaged in these
struggles, the book illuminates the consequences and risks of the dangerous
liaisons and political trade-offs that seemed necessary to get individualised
funding on the policy agenda for disabled people.
It will be of interest to all scholars and students working in disability studies,
social policy, sociology and political science more generally.

Georgia van Toorn is a political sociologist whose principal interests are in social
policy and welfare research, and the political economy of disability and care
work. Her research programme comprises a series of projects that investigate the
politics of social policy reform, the organisation and delivery of social care, and
care work in publicly funded social services in which market-oriented principles,
processes, vocabularies and mechanisms have been adopted, both in Australia
and internationally. Georgia is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher in
the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney, on a
study of the history and impacts of Australian sociology.
Routledge Advances in Disability Studies

Institutional Violence and Disability

Punishing Conditions
Kate Rossiter and Jen Rinaldi

A Sensory Sociology of Autism

Habitual Favourites
Robert Rourke

Understanding Profound Intellectual and Multiple Disabilities in Adults

Dreenagh Lyle

Students with Disabilities and the Transition to Work

A Capabilities Approach
Oliver Mutanga

Institutional Ethnography and Cognitive and Communicative Disabilities

Kjeld Hogsbro

A Historical Sociology of Disability

Human Validity and Invalidity from Antiquity to Early Modernity
Bill Hughes

Defining the Boundaries of Disability

Critical Perspectives
Edited by Licia Carlson and Matthew C. Murray

The New Political Economy of Disability

Transnational Networks and Individualised Funding in the Age
of Neoliberalism
Georgia van Toorn

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/

Routledge-Advances-in-Disability-Studies/book-series/RADS
The New Political Economy of
Disability
Transnational Networks and Individualised
Funding in the Age of Neoliberalism

Georgia van Toorn

First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Georgia van Toorn
The right of Georgia van Toorn to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Van Toorn, Georgia, author.
Title: The new political economy of disability : transnational networks and
individualised funding in the age of neoliberalism / Georgia van Toorn.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge advances in
disability studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020041547 (print) | LCCN 2020041548 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367483050 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003039198 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: People with disabilities—Services for. | People with
disabilities—Services for—Finance. | People with disabilities—
Government policy.
Classification: LCC HV1568 .V36 2021 (print) | LCC HV1568 (ebook) |
DDC 362.4/048—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041547
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041548

ISBN: 978-0-367-48305-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-03919-8 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For Penny
Contents

Acknowledgements x
List of abbreviations xi

Introduction 1
Policy mobility: a new theoretical framework
for the study of IF 4
The politics of disability rights, recognition and
participation: a new direction for policy
mobilities research 5
Studying policy on the move 6
Outline of the book 8

1 Individualised funding: history, theory, practice 15

Historical and intellectual antecedents of
individualised funding 15
Uneven geographies of consumer-centred care 19
Individualised funding and consumer choice 21
Disability, mainstream and critical perspectives on
individualised funding 23
Disability rights and citizenship 23
Neoliberalism and individualised funding: the new face of
consumerism 25
The policy mobility approach 31
Grassroots agency and global policy mobility 34
Conclusion 37

2 Disability politics and the origins of individualised funding 48

Nancy Fraser’s bivalent theory of justice 51
Act one: early mobilisations 54
viii Contents
Early origins of cash payments: mobilisation and
development of the personal assistant model
in the United States 54
The rise of a disability movement in the
United Kingdom 55
Parallel developments in ‘individualised funding’:
1960s–1970s 57
Diverging perspectives on disability, independence and
political praxis 58
Act two: disability policy under Thatcher 61
Developments in the UK under Thatcher’s rule:
mainstreaming and rationing personalised
services 61
Cost containment: adding the narratives
of key players to debates 63
The independent living movement and the campaign
for direct payments 65
Difference and divergence in the campaign for direct
payments 66
Hegemonic neoliberalism and disability empowerment:
applying Fraser’s insights 68
Conclusion 69

3 From Thatcherism to New Labour: individualised funding

in an age of ‘deep’ neoliberalisation 76
From disarticulated to ‘deep’ neoliberalism:
New Labour and the third way 78
The demise of radical disability politics and the
emergence of In Control 80
Early experiments in individualised funding 84
Modernisation, personalisation and the
introduction of personal budgets 86
Depoliticising disablement 92
Conclusion 97

4 Self-directed support: a new direction for Scottish social care? 104

Self-directed support in Scotland: proponents and
protagonists 105
Self-directed support: a case of Scottish exceptionalism? 106
Personalisation in Glasgow 110
Conclusion 116
 Contents ix
5 Transnational advocacy and neoliberal entanglements:
individualised funding in post-GFC Scotland 120
Information politics 121
Symbolic politics 125
Leverage politics 129
Accountability politics 131
Conclusion 133

6 New policy, same paradigm: Australia’s experiment

in individualised funding 137
The NDIS in brief 138
Policy mobility and transnational advocacy: the intermediary
role of In Control Australia 142
Consumer rights and collective action in Australian disability
politics 149
Conclusion 153

7 Individualised funding and the changing political

economy of Australia’s ‘disability marketplace’ 160
‘Roll-out’ neoliberalisation and the institutional
architecture of the NDIS 161
‘Roll-back’ neoliberalisation and the dismantling
of public services 165
Conclusion 169

8 Neoliberalism, transnational advocacy and the politics

of disability: final thoughts 173
The bifurcation of disability politics, praxis
and scholarship 174
Post-politics revisited: the depolitication and
‘NGOisation’ of disability advocacy 177
Individualised funding in an age of ‘deep’
neoliberalisation 180
Conclusion 182

Index 186
Acknowledgements

I owe a great deal of gratitude to the many people who played a part in the writing
of this book, which originated as a PhD dissertation written at the University of
New South Wales. First and foremost, to my supervisors Dr Natasha Cortis and
Associate Professor Karen Soldatic, who showed nothing but support and dedica-
tion over the course of my candidature. I am grateful for your careful, considered
feedback on my writing, and for having trust and confidence in me and my work.
Thanks also to my co-supervisor, Professor Nicholas Watson, who was a great
support and host during my time at the Strathclyde Centre for Disability Research
in Glasgow. I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to live and study in
Glasgow for 9 months in 2015. Colleagues and friends at the centre enriched my
thinking around disability and made my time at Glasgow hugely memorable and
fun. Special thanks to Nick and Karen for making it happen and to Philly and Alan
for kindly opening your house up to Lloyd and I.
I would also like to thank the interviewees who gave me their time, perspective
and insights for the benefit of the research. I learnt so much from you and needless
to say, this project would not have been possible without your input.
To my circle of friends and family who helped me in ways they may not even
know: Connie Tomagra, Cleo Mees, Helena Rosebery, Cassie Steel, Dillon Mck-
endrick, Jake Farriss, Ren Harris, Nick Apoifis and Alex Moulis. I am grateful
to each of you for your enduring love, support and comradery, and the welcome
respite you provided from the PhD dissertation. To David English, my step-father,
thank you so much for the time and work you put into proofreading and your
support over many years. And to my much-loved mum, Penny van Toorn, who
passed away during the writing of the dissertation and whose life and death gave
me some personal insight into experiences of illness and disability: thank you for
equipping me with the tools I needed to confront the many personal, emotional
and intellectual challenges that accompany a PhD.
Finally, to my husband and best friend, Lloyd Cox, words can’t express my
appreciation for all the love, patience and support you provided along the way.
More than anyone, you have been there through the ups and downs and the many
crisis moments. Our son Jimmy was in utero during the writing of the dissertation,
and now with a sister on the way as I work on this book, I couldn’t have done it
without you.
Abbreviations

ACROD Australian Council for Rehabilitation of the Disabled

ADHC NSW Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care
BCODP British Council of Disabled People
CIL Centre for Independent Living
DPO Disabled People’s Organisation
DSO Disability Support Organisation
DSS Department of Social Services
ECM Extended Case-study Method
GFC Global Financial Crisis
IF Individualised Funding
ILF Independent Living Fund
IMF International Monetary Fund
LGBTQI Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, and
Intersex
NDIA National Disability Insurance Agency
NDIS National Disability Insurance Scheme
NDS National Disability Services
NGO Non-Government Organisation
NHS National Health Service
NPWDACC National People with Disabilities and Carer Council
NSW New South Wales
RAS Resource Allocation System
SDS Self-directed Support
SDSS Self-directed Support Scotland
SNP Scottish National Party
TAN Transnational Advocacy Network
UN United Nations
UNCRPD United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
UPIAS Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation
Introduction

Australia is radically restructuring the way it funds and delivers services for dis-
abled people. In 2013, the Australian Federal Government launched a National
Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), replacing a patchwork of ‘block’ funded
and procured services spread across state, territory and Commonwealth jurisdic-
tions. While it was modelled on overseas examples, the NDIS is a new fund-
ing model for Australia. Under the new model, Australian Government funding
is cashed out in the form of an individualised budget, allowing people to pur-
chase services directly from a quasi-market of disability service providers. As the
first nation-wide experiment in providing individual budgets in lieu of services
provided or funded directly by government, this is a significant reform for the
475,000 disabled Australians (one in 10) who are eligible for support under the NDIS
(Laragy & Fisher 2020). For the first time in the history of the Australian welfare
state, disabled people who meet the NDIS access requirements have an entitle-
ment to support that is self-directed, personalised to their individual needs and
founded on the principle of equal citizenship (Soldatic et al. 2014).
The move to individualised funding (IF) in Australia has been driven by advo-
cates of a greater role for markets in the provision of social services, as well as
significant sections of the disability rights movement itself. Prior to the NDIS,
long waiting lists and high levels of unmet need had become the norm across
much of Australia (Productivity Commission 2011). Those who could access ser-
vices typically had very little say over how, when and by whom support was
provided. Disabled people were said to be living a ‘second-class life’, relying
on services that were inequitable and inadequate for their needs, and thus were
effectively experiencing a curtailed citizenship (Shorten 2011, no pagination).
The NDIS promised to address this by righting the wrongs of the past – to dis-
mantle the ‘very high walls’ separating disabled Australians from the rest of soci-
ety (Shorten 2011, no pagination). Indeed, the scheme was welcomed by many in
the disability community as a desirable shift away from the traditional model of
mass welfare provisioning, towards a rights-based approach, grounded in values
of inclusivity, social participation, self-determination and choice (Thill 2015; Car-
ers Australia 2011). Proponents claimed that the allocation of individual budgets
in lieu of government-funded services would also be a more efficient use of public
2 Introduction
funds (Productivity Commission 2011). It was envisaged that the NDIS would
improve service access and responsiveness by boosting purchasing power and
increasing people’s capacity to act as consumers in a quasi-market of disability
services (National Disability Services 2016). In these ways, the NDIS represents
an important shift in the political economy of disability service provision, with
key design elements affirming and building the role of markets in responding to
social need.
These changes are consistent with trends in the United Kingdom, where England
and Scotland, in particular, have a much longer history of IF and IF advocacy dat-
ing back to the 1990s. During this period, disabled people led campaigns for the
legalisation of direct payments, as they were then called, in place of services com-
missioned or provided directly by local authorities (Riddell et al. 2006). These
campaigns were underpinned by a philosophy of independent living which held
that in order to live equal, independent and dignified lives in the community, dis-
abled people must have choice and control over how their support needs are met
(Morris 2006).
Partly in response to the demands of the Disabled People’s Movement and
partly for reasons of economic efficiency, direct payments were passed into law in
England in 1996 under John Major’s Conservative government (Cunningham &
Cunningham 2012). The changes gave individuals the means to employ personal
assistants to provide the personal care and support required for daily living. In
addition to ‘empowering’ service users as active consumers and ‘co-producers’
of care, direct payments were also underpinned by a neoliberal, marketising
impulse, where the intention was to reduce the cost of social care by exposing
the sector to forces of competition (Gadsby et al. 2013; Spandler 2004). The two
agendas – the drive to marketise social care and the desire to give service users
greater say and control over their support – came together again in the mid-2000s
under New Labour’s ‘personalisation’ programme. Personalisation aimed at a
‘complete transformation of adult social care’, in part through the introduction
of personal budgets (SLK Training and Consultancy, quoted in Beresford 2014:
5). Personal budgets, by which eligible recipients of state-funded social care are
awarded an up-front cash sum, allow recipients to purchase individually tailored
packages of support from service providers and/or personal assistants. Under the
Care Act 2014, personal budgets were made mandatory in local authorities across
England, replacing the previous opt-in system of direct payments (Slasberg &
Beresford 2016).
The Scottish National Party has recently enacted a similar scheme in Scotland.
Self-Directed Support (SDS), as it is known in Scotland, establishes a legal frame-
work for a nation-wide system of IF. This is not an entirely new funding model for
Scotland, either. Prior to the introduction of SDS in 2014, Scottish law allowed
those who were eligible for publicly funded social care to cash out their funds
in the form of a direct payment (Riddell et al. 2006). As in England, direct pay-
ments were optional, and take-up rates were disproportionately higher amongst
educated, middle-class people and families who were better equipped to navigate
 Introduction 3
the often-complex administrative requirements of welfare bureaucracies (Davey
et al. 2007; Fotaki et al. 2005; Clark et al. 2004). Take-up rates were lower in
Scotland compared to the rest of the UK (Ridley et al. 2011; Riddell et al. 2006)
such that the bulk of social care funding remained locked into the purchasing and
provision of services by local authorities.
SDS sought to change this by devolving funds to individuals, who could man-
age their budget themselves or have the local authority manage it on their behalf
(Scottish Government 2014). The Scottish Government invested £70 million in
this new approach, following a two-year trial in which three local authorities – the
City of Glasgow, Dumfries and Galloway and Highland – were funded to test the
model and find ways to increase the uptake of SDS (Scottish Government 2018;
Ridley et al. 2011). With the introduction of the Social Care (Self-Directed Sup-
port) (Scotland) Act 2013, a duty was imposed on local authorities to give indi-
viduals a choice as to how they received their support. SDS has therefore been
viewed as a democratising move and a victory for the disability movement, which
had long campaigned for devolved powers of decision-making (Pearson et al.
2014). Since the roll-out of SDS began in 2014, however, responses on the ground
have been mixed. Some have questioned the advances SDS has made on the pre-
vious system of direct payments, while others remain critical of the top-down way
it has been implemented during a period of heightened fiscal austerity in the UK
(Elder-Woodward et al. 2015; Pearson et al. 2018; Pearson & Ridley 2017).
The common thread connecting the reform of disability support in Australia,
England and Scotland is the concept of individualised funding (IF). By this, I
mean funding that is allocated to individuals or families to enable them to pur-
chase, manage and/or choose the services they use from a mixed ‘market’ of
disability service providers. The precise form IF has taken in each of these coun-
tries is naturally somewhat unique, idiosyncratic and path-dependent. The various
schemes have evolved in ways that reflect the institutional and political contexts
in which they formed, and the historical legacies of disability policy regimes past
and present. Yet it appears that a more general, transnational trend is emerg-
ing in the way that disability, and its relationship to state and market, is envis-
aged and addressed. Specifically, there is a movement away from traditional,
state-centred and service-centred modes of disability provisioning, towards more
personalised supports delivered via the market. IF has become something of a
generalised model or template for such reforms. Over the past two decades, the IF
model has moved and mutated across vast distances, sweeping up countries with
diverse historical backgrounds and political-institutional forms. It has provided
legislators in these countries with a policy roadmap, a political discourse and a set
of administrative technologies for implementing the desired market reforms. In
the process, it has gained international recognition and status as a ‘best practice’
amongst states eager to demonstrate their commitment to disability rights. There
are also some significant political–economic factors that have contributed to IF’s
propensity to move and mutate between jurisdictions. The model has been pro-
pelled by a recent wave of neoliberal reforms aimed at transforming the welfare
4 Introduction
state through the creation of markets for social services. Thus, IF is inextricably
linked with the neoliberalisation of the state and the spread of neoliberal social
policy (Ferguson 2012; Lymbery 2012).

Policy mobility: a new theoretical framework for the study of IF

How and why has IF taken hold in the disability sector in recent years? This is the
central question to which this book provides an answer. Prima facie, neoliberal-
ism and the restructuring of the welfare state constitute at least part of the answer.
Yet invoking neoliberalism as our point of departure prompts further questions
that demand empirically grounded answers. What, for example, is the relation-
ship between neoliberalism and the neoliberal restructuring of the welfare state
on the one hand, and the processes and mechanisms driving the spread of IF on
the other? Where and how did IF models originate, and how and why were they
adopted in the disability sector? Who were the social and political agents lifting
IF models out of their original contexts and disseminating them internationally?
How and why was IF repackaged and made mobile, mutable and applicable in
other jurisdictions? Through what channels has IF moved and what norms, ide-
ologies and structural constraints have conditioned this movement?
In answering these questions, I draw heavily on the theoretical work of Jamie
Peck, Nik Theodore and Neil Brenner, amongst others, for whom policy mobil-
ity is an important facet of neoliberalisation. They argue that in recent decades,
‘neoliberalization processes have established ever more deeply interconnected,
mutually recursive policy relays’, which operate ‘within an increasingly trans-
national field of market-oriented regulatory transfer’ (Brenner et al. 2010: 185).
Put simply, transnational policy movements have intensified and ‘thickened’
as neoliberalism has entrenched itself throughout the advanced capitalist world
(Brenner et al. 2010: 185). Neoliberalisation, in this view, refers not so much to a
particular cluster of policies as to ‘a mode of “market oriented regulatory restruc-
turing” . . . in which experimentation and the rapid transfer of policy across space
is the norm’ (Prince 2016: 401). This movement of policy is assisted by a range
of government and non-government actors, including advocates, activists, consul-
tants and expert communities whose influence is transnational in scope and who
are themselves highly mobile. Policy mobility is conditioned and often assisted by
the shared ideological framework within which these actors operate. This is why
‘policy decisions made in one jurisdiction increasingly echo and influence those
made elsewhere; and global policy “models” are exerting normative power over
significant distances’ (Peck 2011: 773). This does not necessarily imply policy
convergence between liberal, market-oriented welfare states. But it is a starting
point for explaining the various patterns, tendencies and family resemblances that
are shared between countries, such as those exhibited in the trend towards IF.
For Peck, ‘the methodological challenge here is to develop adequate conceptu-
alizations and robust empirical assessments of policies “in motion”’ (2003: 229),
as ‘policies in motion’ give neoliberalism a transnational reach and normative
coherence. This study is, in part, an answer to Peck’s challenge. But it applies his
 Introduction 5
approach in an area that he and other scholars of policy mobility have previously
neglected.
Policy mobility is the subject of a newly emerging field of research spanning
the disciplines of human geography, political economy and critical policy stud-
ies. Generally speaking, scholars in this field are principally concerned with what
Nancy Fraser famously termed ‘the politics of redistribution’ (1997: 5). Questions
of social justice are typically framed in distributive terms, as it is labour and the
poor who are considered most affected by ‘injustices of maldistribution’ linked to
capitalism and mobile policies of welfare state retrenchment (Fraser 2013: 204).
Many accounts start from the assumption that ‘neoliberal practices . . . are aggres-
sively promoted by powerful, if not hegemonic, actors and institutions’ (Brenner
et al. 2010: 203). From the outset, their focus is narrowed to ‘travelling neoliber-
als, neoliberal ideas, and neoliberal programmes’, which undermine the social
protections put in place to address poverty and inequality (Clarke 2012: 29). The
major works to come out of this field include Peck’s book Workfare States (2001),
the subject of which is welfare-to-work initiatives, and Peck and Theodore’s book
Fast Policy (2015), which examines the transnational diffusion of conditional
cash transfers to the poor and participatory budgeting programmes. A common
thread throughout these works is the idea that policy mobility is mediated by poli-
tics, specifically, the politics of redistribution. Yet there is a whole other domain
of political struggle and injustice that is absent from this literature, that is, the
politics of recognition and participation (Fraser 2013).

The politics of disability rights, recognition and participation:

a new direction for policy mobilities research
The policy initiative at the centre of this study did not begin life as a neoliberal
experiment. Rather, IF stemmed from struggles for the recognition, participation
and inclusion of disabled people as equal citizens and experts in their own lives and
the management of their support needs. The main protagonists in the story of IF’s
diffusion are not only, or even principally, neoliberal actors or institutions, but also
social movements and transnational advocacy networks (TANs) of the so-called
New Left.1 This study therefore takes as a starting point the idea that policy mobil-
ity is not just the preserve of the political Right. As I argue in the following chapter,
the nascent policy mobilities approach has added empirical depth and theoretical
nuance to the literature on neoliberalism. However, within this approach, the role
that social movements and TANs play in shaping and at times facilitating neo-
liberal policy diffusion has been under-examined from a critical standpoint. That
is not to say that progressive social movements and policy networks have been
overlooked as mechanisms of diffusion, broadly defined. Indeed, non-government
organisations (NGOs), social movements and human rights advocates have fea-
tured in sociological analyses of diffusion since the 1970s (Dobbin et al. 2007). Yet
the critical literature on policy diffusion has hitherto overlooked such actors, thus
missing the point that neoliberal policy mobility is also mediated by what Fraser
(2003, 2013) terms the politics of recognition and participation.
6 Introduction
There are, I argue, a number of reasons for this lacuna, which I explore fur-
ther in Chapter 1. Perhaps the main one to note here is the tendency within the
policy mobilities approach to look nostalgically upon the Keynesian period of
policymaking, in contrast to the current phase of neoliberalism, and to overlook
the more contradictory and oppressive aspects of post-war welfare provision-
ing for certain categories of people. When these tensions are placed at the centre
of analysis, as I have done in this study, new questions arise about the range
of actors involved in the global diffusion of market-oriented policy models and
the relationship between these actors. The often-ambiguous connection between
neoliberalism and social movements of the New Left is one such relationship.
By exploring this relationship, new and interesting avenues of inquiry open up
around the role played by transnational civil society and social justice advocates
in aiding and resisting the neoliberalisation of welfare.

Studying policy on the move

This project involved following one particular model of IF from one of its main
points of origin in England, ‘downstream’ to two other sites of emulation and
experimentation, Scotland and Australia. Of course, the field of IF-type policies
extends well beyond these sites, and these are not the only pathways along which
the idea and its advocates have travelled in the last decade or so. The extended
field of consumer-oriented reform programmes now encompasses large swathes
of Western Europe, North America and, increasingly, parts of Asia and Eastern
Europe (Kodner 2003; Ungerson 2003; Fisher et al. 2010; Meagher & Szebehely
2013). Time, resource and other methodological constraints, particularly the need
to limit the scope of my research, meant that much of this extended field could
not practicably be included in the analysis. England, Scotland and Australia were
chosen for analysis for two principal reasons. On the one hand, these countries are
significant in a temporal sense, in that they have all recently introduced nation-
wide policies that mandate the introduction of IF in the field of disability.2 Varia-
tions of IF have been operating for decades in the UK, though they have only
been mainstreamed and legislated by central government since the mid-2000s.
In the case of Australia, IF is a relatively new model of funding that has never
before seen a nation-wide trial, although many smaller, state-based programmes
have been operating since the mid-2000s (Fisher et al. 2010; Fisher & Campbell-
McLean 2008).
On the other hand, these sites are also spatially significant, in that they have all
played host to some of the early pioneers of ‘personal budgets’ in England – now
the favoured form of IF in many parts of the Anglosphere (Gadsby et al. 2013).
One of my key findings, and indeed one feature that makes this field of policy
unique, is that IF has been mobilised not by the Right-of-centre cosmopolitan
elites usually credited with the spread of neoliberalism, but by progressive social
movements and civil society advocates, some of whose ideas and political pre-
scriptions share an elective affinity with certain neoliberal ideals and policies. A
key network featured in the book is In Control, whose members include some of
 Introduction 7
the major figures who advocated for IF in the UK, such as In Control’s founder
Simon Duffy. While I did not travel with these individuals in a physical sense, I did
trace their movements and the transfer of their ideas ex post facto, both literally
and figuratively, across borders and between sites of local significance. Glasgow
was one such important site of experimentation and emulation; it was the first
local authority in Scotland to implement IF under the banner of ‘personalisation’ –
a policy pioneered in England by In Control. Glasgow has remained at the fore-
front of social care reform in Scotland, and for this reason is not representative of
the country as a whole. Similarly, the city of Newcastle was one of the first sites
in Australia to trial IF. There, too, local (in this case, the NSW State) government
has pursued a particularly radical pro-market reform path, which has made NSW
somewhat of an outlier amongst Australian states (see Gibbs (2013), Kirkwood
(2017) and Morton (2016)).
These sites eventually became global ‘hotspots’ of IF in its neoliberalised
form. Previously, IF was, and in many ways still is, an international project of the
centre-Left. Indeed, the success of the progressive IF movement was owed partly
to In Control and its international network of IF advocates, which now spans a
total of nine countries (In Control 2016a). My aim in tracing this network was to
develop an understanding of its internal dynamics and political strategies, in order
to understand how these might have affected the form that IF ultimately took in
these various sites.
I did not, therefore, simply ‘follow the policy’. Retrospectively through inter-
views, I also traced the movements of people – along with ‘their ideas, plans,
and arguments’ – as they travelled throughout the UK and beyond, promoting
IF to governments and other interested organisations (McCann & Ward 2012:
46). These interviews provided insiders’ accounts of the political work involved
in adapting, mediating and translating policy ideas from one – often national –
context to another. They also revealed the ways in which network actors them-
selves are embedded within and conditioned by, global and national webs of
norms, ideologies and structural constraints. Through analysis of these interviews
and other primary materials, especially policy documents, the book develops a
rich, empirical analysis of the channels through which IF has spread, and the con-
ditions that have enabled its movement.
For myself as the researcher, then, it was not so much a choice of sites but a
commitment to exploring and tracking the political terrain carved out by IF and
one of its key global advocacy networks. This particular network, In Control,
was relatively small, loose and progressive in comparison to the elite networks
formed by hegemonic institutions like the World Bank, the IMF, the World Trade
Organization, and even the UN. Making them the focus of my fieldwork allowed
me entry into an area of civil society often overlooked in existing accounts of
neoliberal policy mobility. In essence, this is the seemingly benign world of
NGOs, policy entrepreneurs, consultants and, as one of my interviewees put it,
‘community development folk’ (Jane, IF advocate #4) as well as actors – such as
local and state government bureaucrats – involved in the day-to-day implementa-
tion of policy.
8 Introduction
Many of these original advocacy networks have somewhat dissipated, follow-
ing IF’s adoption as government policy in countries such as England, Scotland
and Australia. Subsequently, more formal inter-governmental channels have
opened up, thanks to a regular cross-flow of ideas, research reports, consultants,
government delegates, practice manuals and ‘lessons from abroad’ concerning the
design and efficacy of IF in other jurisdictions. These different media are all, in a
sense, objects of policy mobility, or what McCann and Ward (2012) refer to as a
travelling policy ‘assemblage’ (McFarlane 2011). For that reason, they too were
included in the analysis as valuable secondary sources of information.
Over time, IF has changed in ways that reflect the various contexts in which
it has taken root and been remobilised. Often, this has been done in quite an
unplanned, opportunistic yet selective fashion by a range of interested parties,
many of whom have conflicting ideas of what IF is or should be in an ideal world.
As I show in Chapters 2 to 7, the terrain over which IF has travelled is highly
contested and politically charged. Governments have been somewhat selective in
how they portray the policy to domestic and international audiences.3 Meanwhile,
trade unions and sections of the disability movement claim that the reality of IF
does not live up to what was ‘sold’ to them by government – that is, the promise of
more ‘choice and control’ (Morris 2011; Elder-Woodward et al. 2015; UNISON
2011; Public Service Association 2014). I encountered these politics in every site
I visited. Though in each place, they unfolded in unpredictable and site-specific
ways. This meant that the policy model I was analysing was subtly but constantly
changing as it moved from place to place, with new technologies trialled and
tested as a result of local struggles and institutional mutations. By adopting a
relatively open and flexible approach to site selection, I was able to track this
movement and along the way identify several key moments of contestation and
change, convergence and divergence. My fieldwork in each site was guided by
the question: ‘how, why, and with what consequences’ has IF been mobilised
(McCann & Ward 2012: 49), and what does this tell us about the overall character
and trajectory of IF as an object of neoliberalisation, as it continues to proliferate
throughout the Anglosphere?

Outline of the book

The book is divided into an introduction and eight chapters. Chapter 1 aims to
orient readers to key debates in the field of IF by tracing the intellectual origins of
the concept and examining the form and scope of existing IF regimes around the
world. I begin by providing an introduction and historical background to the con-
cept of consumer choice. I then map the spread of consumer-oriented social care
policies across the UK, continental Europe and North America, from the 1990s
to the present day. I then focus on IF more specifically, drawing out two distinct
lines of enquiry into its origins and its propensity for cross-country movement
and mutation. Here I point to the paucity of critical research into IF’s global and
networked dimensions. Alternative theories of global policy diffusion are evalu-
ated in terms of how well they account for diffusion in a climate of neoliberalism,
 Introduction 9
on the one hand, and their attentiveness to the specific, embodied and localised
forms that neoliberalism takes, on the other. Finally, in this chapter, I provide a
theoretical frame for the book, drawing on the burgeoning ‘policy mobilities’ lit-
erature in the fields of human geography and critical policy studies. (Peck 2011;
Peck & Theodore 2010, 2015; Ball 2012). Here I show how the policy mobilities
approach attempts to navigate some middle way between structuralist and agent-
centric approaches, foreshadowing the approach I develop and apply in this book.
I illuminate the specific gap or weakness in the policy mobility theoretic, which
this book more broadly addresses.
Chapter 2 is the first of two chapters with a focus on England, which was an
early adopter of IF policies. It explores the origins of IF in that national context,
including the political struggles that led to the introduction of a form of IF called
‘direct payments’ under John Major’s Conservative government in the 1990s. Fea-
turing first-hand accounts of disability activists engaged in these struggles, this
chapter reflects on the early ideological cleavages that were emerging in the Dis-
abled People’s Movement at this time, and the tensions that arose around issues
of neoliberal co-option. It shows how co-option and resignification occurred in
the case of direct payments, drawing on first-hand accounts of those who fought
for them. Nancy Fraser’s writing on the politics of recognition and participation
is used to illuminate what neoliberalism shares with certain strands of disability
activism and advocacy.
Chapter 3 develops these themes further. I argue that during New Labour’s
term in government (1997–2010), disability politics underwent a shift to the right,
as NGOs and TANs assumed a dominant role in advocating for the rights and
entitlements of disabled people. It was during this period that In Control emerged
as a key political player. Its model of IF was adopted under New Labour’s plans
to promote ‘choice’ in the consumption of social services. This, I argue, marked
the beginning of a new phase of IF advocacy, learning and emulation at a trans-
national level.
Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7 explore more recent, transnational mobilisations and
adaptations of IF, using examples from Scotland and Australia. Chapters 4 and 5
centre on the Scottish system of IF, called ‘self-directed support’ (SDS), while
Chapters 6 and 7 explore the Australian model, as represented in Australia’s
National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Chapters 5 and 6 trace the chan-
nels through which IF advocates have impacted the development of policy in
these jurisdictions. The In Control network is found to have played a role in both
cases.
In Chapter 4, I examine the Scottish model of IF, called SDS, through the lens
of Scottish exceptionalism. SDS supposedly signified a set of ‘distinctive policy
goals’ which set Scotland apart from other countries, notably England, where IF
had become embroiled in efforts to marketise social care (Pearson et al. 2014: 7).
Scotland’s approach emphasised human rights and social participation, in con-
trast to the New Labour ideals of individual entrepreneurship and ‘choice’ (Fraser
2003). Yet these social and political aspirations did not materialise in a signifi-
cantly more progressive or empowering model of IF, as was hoped. I argue that IF
10 Introduction
advocacy and policymaking in Scotland were compromised by the onset of aus-
terity. The political appeal of the In Control model, in particular, owes much to the
economic climate in which it was developed and sold to local councils. Chapter 4
focuses specifically on the introduction of IF in the city of Glasgow, providing
a more granular understanding of how IF was implicated in the retrenchment of
social care services at the local government level.
In Chapter 5, I examine how advocates of IF in Scotland were implicated in
these broader processes of neoliberal state restructuring. The Scottish arm of
In Control, as I show, was particularly effective in its advocacy of IF at both
national and local government levels. Different advocacy strategies were used to
get IF on the policy agenda nationally and to convince local authorities to adopt
In Control’s own model of resource allocation. What emerged was a two-pronged
advocacy strategy that, at the national level, framed IF as a principled solution
to the problem of disabled people’s disenfranchisement while, at the local level,
promoted In Control’s Resource Allocation System (RAS) as a means of rationing
services fairly and transparently. This latter advocacy strategy, I argue, had the
unintended effect of legitimising and assisting local authorities in their efforts to
curb social care spending through cuts to individual budgets. Thus, particularly in
Glasgow, In Control came to be associated with the regressive effects of RAS and
with a political agenda that was plainly at odds with its own (Greig 2019).
Chapter 6 explores the transnational linkages and pathways through which IF
and discourses of IF advocacy migrated from abroad and became embedded in
the Australian policy landscape. In Control features in this chapter, not as the
most visible or influential policy actor but as one of a number of important inter-
mediaries who facilitated informal processes of policy learning and emulation. I
show that in the Australian context, IF resonated with the prevailing trend towards
greater marketisation of disability support services and that advocates used this
as an opportunity to foster broad political support for the proposed IF scheme. In
Control Australia, for example, mobilised similar advocacy tactics and discourses
as their UK counterparts, couching their advocacy in language consistent with the
neoliberal emphasis on consumer ‘choice’. This proved a highly successful strat-
egy and certainly helped convince pro-market conservatives of the merits of IF as
a key design feature of the proposed scheme. Yet there were also risks and costs
attached to this approach. An unintended outcome was that notions of choice,
autonomy and social inclusion became inextricably linked to the neoliberal model
of marketised social provisioning. With the NDIS now fully rolled-out nationally,
we are now beginning to see how marketisation may be undermining the very ide-
als and outcomes that IF advocates envisaged when they set out to revolutionise
disability support provision in Australia.
In Chapter 7, the focus shifts to the broader processes of neoliberal state restruc-
turing that had a conditioning effect on advocacy for the NDIS. It explores the
changing political economy of Australia’s disability ‘marketplace’ and, in par-
ticular, the privatisation of state owned and operated disability services. I argue
that while the NDIS has involved a significant roll-back or retrenchment of public
service provision, it also entails the roll-out of a new centralised bureaucracy and
 Introduction 11
a set of regulatory mechanisms, the primary function of which is to support and
expand the market for disability services. This exemplifies both the destructive and
creative tendencies of neoliberal state restructuring. It is also a useful framework
for understanding the unprecedented levels of funding that successive Australian
governments have committed to the disability service system, in a bid to stimulate
the market and attract new commercial players into the space. IF, I argue, is part of
the ensemble of policies and regulatory mechanisms integral to this task.
The final chapter draws together the main threads running throughout the book.
I conclude that IF’s mobility is not attributable to neoliberalism alone but to the
complex intersections between neoliberal and emancipatory agendas and to the
transnational networks that have blended the two agendas in new ways in dif-
ferent institutional contexts. Careful study of these intersections reveals how
disability rights struggles have synchronised with a rising neoliberalism, which
explains IF’s propensity to move and mutate between different jurisdictions.
Taken together, these various strands interweave to provide a unique approach to
understanding the international spread of IF regimes in welfare generally and dis-
ability in particular. To the extent that such an approach helps provide convincing
answers to the questions posed in the introduction, the book develops analytical
and methodological tools that are applicable to other social policy areas where IF
exists, is planned or could be implemented (for example, health, education, child
and aged care).

Notes
1 Here, the New Left is provisionally defined as comprising individuals, groups, networks
and social movements of a leftist political persuasion that reject ‘orthodox’ Marxism in
favour of alternative frameworks that emphasise cultural, social-psychological and bio-
physical forms of oppression not reducible to class (Flacks 2007). A fuller discussion of
this terminology and its usage throughout the book is provided in the following chapter.
2 Here I am referring to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 (Cth) and the
Social Care (Self-directed Support) (Scotland) Act 2013, more about which later.
3 See Slasberg et al. (2013) for a discussion of issues and problems ignored by the UK
government, including the creation of a ‘very large and costly [IF] bureaucracy’ (2013:
92) and Branley (2017) regarding the selective way in which ‘choice’ is afforded to
NDIS participants in Australia.

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1 Individualised funding
History, theory, practice

IF, with its origins in both the Chicago school of economics and the emancipa-
tory paradigm of the Disabled People’s Movement, has proliferated with unprec-
edented ease and speed in recent years. Its rapid spread has seen the policy move,
in various forms and configurations, across numerous countries spanning three
continents – North America, Europe and Australia – propelled by a new ‘wave of
neoliberalisation’ that purports to reorient state welfare programmes to the twin
aims of social justice and efficient markets (Sidaway & Hendrikse 2016: 575;
Gadsby 2013). As this chapter reveals, what started out as a fringe idea champi-
oned by a small clique of American free-market economists writing on education
policy in the 1960s (Friedman 2002 [1962]) has since spread across the world in
various guises and been adapted to a wide range of political–geographical set-
tings. This includes, as later chapters reveal, world centres of power and policy
innovation, such as England, and more ‘downstream’ sites of adaptation and emu-
lation, such as Scotland and Australia.

Historical and intellectual antecedents of individualised funding

While IF is a relatively new phenomenon, the notion of consumer choice on
which it rests can be traced back to some major thinkers in 20th-century neoclas-
sical economics. Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (2007 [1949]), building
on the work of William Hutt (1990 [1936]), expounded a view of consumers as
the central drivers of economic production (Smart 2010). In his view, consumers
possess a form of power or sovereignty analogous to that of ‘political agents in
the polity’, by virtue of their prime position within the totality of market relations
(Smart 2010: 32). For von Mises, the primacy of the consumer, and the capac-
ity to enact one’s preferences through market exchange, was one of capitalism’s
great virtues, for it supposedly enabled freedoms that would otherwise be denied
to individuals in a planned economy dominated by state-owned enterprise. These
ideas were echoed by Friedrich Hayek and others within the Mont Pèlerin Society,
which formed in 1947 to bring European and American free marketeers together
to discuss and revitalise (neo)liberal economics (Mirowski & Plehwe 2009). This
was an important venue for the advancement of ideas of consumer choice and
individual freedom, albeit rather narrowly and negatively conceived as freedom
16 Individualised funding: history, theory, practice
from state coercion. While contributions to the Mont Pèlerin Society ran counter
to the economic orthodoxies of the time, they have rightly been considered impor-
tant to the resurgence of free-market economic thought and neoliberal approaches
to public policymaking (Mirowski & Plehwe 2009; Harvey 2005).
It was Milton Friedman, however, who would take these neoclassical concep-
tions of consumer choice and apply them to the domain of public policy, thereby
helping to popularise them and lend them some institutional and political purchase
that they previously lacked. A leader of the famed Chicago school of economics,
and an advisor, no less, to President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Marga-
ret Thatcher, Friedman was amongst the first group of intellectuals to elaborate
and promote free-market economic theory as a framework for public policymak-
ing (Mirowski & Plehwe 2009). Modern notions of consumer choice in social
services, for example, are partly indebted to Friedman’s work on vouchers as a
mechanism for funding public education (Friedman 2002 [1962]; Friedman &
Friedman 1980).
One of Friedman’s most acclaimed books, Capitalism and Freedom (2002
[1962]), more broadly explored the prospects for social service provision through
vouchers. Capitalism and Freedom addressed one of the central questions of
political philosophy: What are the necessary conditions for freedom and human
flourishing? Friedman’s answer was indicative of what freedom has come to
mean now, to modern-day advocates of consumer choice. Following von Mises,
he equated freedom in the sphere of economic exchange with what he called ‘total
freedom’, meaning, the freedom to enact one’s own will and live autonomously,
free from political forms of coercion (Friedman 2002: 9). This negative concep-
tion of liberty – that is, freedom from external constraints on one’s autonomy –
begat a strong scepticism towards the state and the very idea of a collective will.
On the other hand, Friedman posed the market as a liberating institution, with the
capacity to free individuals from state coercion. According to Friedman:

[b]y removing the organisation of economic activity from the control of polit-
ical authority, the market eliminates this source of coercive power. . . . The
wider the range of activities covered by the market, the fewer are the issues
on which explicitly political decisions are required and hence on which it is
necessary to achieve agreement.
(Friedman 2002: 15, 24)

From here, Friedman goes on to explore the kinds of activities that would be
better placed within the sphere of market relations, so as to give individuals the
freedom to choose what public services they consume. While Friedman did not
engage in an in-depth discussion of disability service provision, his ideas about
school choice influenced thinking on the use of vouchers in many related social
policy fields (Exley 2014; Mintrom 2000). In regard to education, Friedman con-
ceded that there was a role for government in subsidising schools because, in his
view, schooling has positive externalities or ‘neighbourhood effects’, namely the
reproduction of a well-educated, socialised and stable society (Friedman 2002:
 Individualised funding: history, theory, practice 17
89). However, he also believed that the role of financing education and the role
of delivering education are not necessarily one and the same. In fact, he claimed
the two roles ought to be separated, to prevent the government from delivering
what the market could supply more efficiently and without political interference.
Friedman proposed vouchers as a way to facilitate this functional separation of the
finance and delivery of education:

[g]overnments could . . . [finance] a minimum level of schooling . . . by giv-

ing parents vouchers redeemable for a specified maximum sum per child
per year if spent on “approved” educational services. Parents would then be
free to spend this sum and any additional sum they themselves provided on
purchasing educational services from an “approved” institution of their own
choice. . . . competitive enterprise is likely to be far more efficient in meeting
consumer demand than either nationalized enterprises or enterprises run to
serve other purposes.
(Friedman 2002: 89, 91)

The implication of all this is a prescription for a diminution of the role of the state
and government.
What, then, is the government’s role in Friedman’s ‘night watchman’ state?
Evidently, he was not here suggesting that government withdraws entirely from
the economic sphere but, rather, that it uses what legitimate power it has to
enforce contracts and support capitalist enterprise. Vouchers, he suggested, are the
ideal mechanism for promoting competitive markets in education. As Friedman
implied, they work by decoupling the state’s service delivery role from its role as
a funder, so that previously de-commodified education systems may be subjected
to competition. Consumers, he argued, are the ultimate beneficiaries of a com-
modified system of services, as they are able to choose services appropriate to
their individual needs and preferences, with less bureaucratic oversight. It is only
within the commodified sphere of exchange that ‘exchange is truly voluntary’,
claimed Friedman, and that the ‘impersonal market . . . protects men [sic]’ from
political forms of coercion (2002: 31).
More than 50 years on, IF schemes have reanimated neoclassical notions of
consumer choice and limited government. While policy makers have largely
avoided the term ‘voucher’, the logic and rhetoric of voucher-based provision-
ing have been refashioned by contemporary neoliberals and put into effect across
Europe, North America and Australia through IF schemes for disabled people
(Ferguson 2007, 2012; Beresford 2014; Hutchinson et al. 2006). This logic stipu-
lates that cash transfers, in the form of individualised budgets, enhance both the
choice and quality of support by helping to establish ‘quasi-markets’ of disabil-
ity services (Muir & Salignac 2017). Quasi-markets are markets created by gov-
ernments through the use of contracts and/or individualised budgets (Le Grand
1991). Typically, the government withdraws from service provision but retains a
role in administering individual budgets and overseeing the market (Gash et al.
2013; Carey et al. 2018).
18 Individualised funding: history, theory, practice
Until relatively recently, contracts have been the preferred mechanism for cre-
ating quasi-markets in public services (O’Flynn 2007; Pollitt & Bouchaert 2017).
The widespread use of contracts characterised an initial phase of marketisation
in which government relinquished its responsibilities in direct service provision
and ceded these to a range of networks comprised of non-profit and commer-
cial providers (Milward & Provan 2000). ‘Networked governance’ was the broad
label given to this new, market-oriented approach to public sector management,
in which the supposed benefits of choice and competition were sought through
contractual arrangements with third-party providers (Stoker 2006). The model
was designed with efficiency in mind. Yet over time, it attracted criticism for
being funder- and provider-centric, plagued by bureaucracy and unresponsive to
the consumer demands it was supposedly designed to satisfy (Le Grand 2007).
IF ostensibly overcomes these issues by funding end-users directly, while still
keeping to the ethos and market-orientation of networked governance. The argu-
ment is that where citizens have choice as to who they purchase from, providers
are compelled by the imperatives of competition, economic rationality, profit max-
imisation and constant growth to meet consumers’ needs efficiently, at a reduced
cost to the public purse, and with minimal government intervention (Le Grand
2007). Consumers secure the benefit of choosing from a range of public, private
and not-for-profit providers according to their personal needs and preferences: ‘it
is assumed that the threat of their “exit” is sufficient to keep their current provider
“on their toes”’ (Dan & Andrews 2016: 303). In theory, this arrangement results
in ‘better services at cheaper prices, in place of traditional welfare-state service-
provision models that are considered to be inflexible and inefficient’ (Macdonald
2017: 22). Yet evidence about the benefits of choice is thin and inconclusive, with
various studies highlighting problems of iniquitous access to services, poor ser-
vice quality and declining job quality for disability service workers (Exley 2014;
Dan & Andrews 2016; Glendinning et al. 2008; Carey et al. 2018; Cunningham
2016; Macdonald & Charlesworth 2016; Cortis et al. 2013; Cortis et al. 2017).
It would be misleading to suggest that the recent resurgence of policies promot-
ing choice in the consumption of social services is attributable to neoliberalism
alone. Another important driver has come from the New Left and attendant social
movement, welfare user and NGO-led mobilisations seeking a more just distri-
bution of power and public resources (Fraser 2003, 2013; Spandler 2004). Their
promotion of consumer choice in the consumption of social services derives from
their theoretical critiques of the post-war welfare state (Williams 1989; Fraser
2003, 2013). New Left critiques of state welfare emerged in the 1960s and 1970s
alongside the major civil rights struggles of the time. At the centre of these cri-
tiques was a concern for the rights and dignity of subordinate groups in receipt
of welfare, including women, people from culturally and linguistically diverse
backgrounds and disabled people (Williams 1989; Oliver 1990). For these groups,
the bureaucratism and paternalism of state welfare were felt to have a dehumanis-
ing effect, inhibiting individual agency, curtailing citizenship and trapping peo-
ple in a state of enforced dependence (Rose 1996; Misra & Akins 1998; Sapiro
1990). Struggles for choice were thus fought on the grounds of equity and social
 Individualised funding: history, theory, practice 19
justice. User movements seeking to empower individuals and democratise the
welfare state supported measures to devolve administrative and financial control
to recipients of benefits and services (Croft & Beresford 1989). This was seen as
a means of not only promoting greater autonomy at an individual level but also
enhancing democratic participation in the governance of welfare (Fraser 2003).
The extent to which such approaches could in fact enhance individual autonomy
and democratic participation is debatable. But what is clear is that they repre-
sented at least a partial convergence with those advocates of consumer choice
whose policy prescriptions derived from an emerging neoliberal challenge to the
Keynesian welfare state and who occupied a position at the opposite end of the
political spectrum.

Uneven geographies of consumer-centred care

The convergence of neoliberal and emancipatory arguments in favour of choice-
based models precipitated a wave of social policy reforms throughout Europe
and North America, accelerating from the early 1980s, although there had been
intimations of these changes in previous years (Askheim et al. 2014; Greve 2010;
Blomqvist 2004; Laragy 2002; Hutchinson et al. 2006). While these reforms have
progressed unevenly over time and across different political jurisdictions, the
overarching trend is towards a more marketised social service landscape in each
of these regions (Brennan et al. 2012; Meagher & Szebehely 2013; Meagher &
Goodwin 2015).
Britain is often considered being at the forefront of marketising reforms. Yet
to varying degrees similar processes have occurred across European corporatist
and social democratic states (Meagher & Szebehely 2013). For instance, Askheim
et al. argue that in Scandinavia, theories of New Public Management have been
‘the ideological basis for a “modernization” of public services’ involving the
increased use of market mechanisms and a greater role for private and volun-
tary providers (2014: 4). Indeed, individualised personal assistance schemes now
operate across the Scandinavian countries (Christensen et al. 2014). In Sweden,
legislation affording personal assistance to those in receipt of disability support
services (LSS 1992/3) was introduced against the political backdrop of a ‘free-
dom of choice revolution’ declared in 1991 by the newly elected Conservative
government (Christensen et al. 2014; Erlandsson et al. 2013: 23). New laws sanc-
tioning the outsourcing of social services to for-profit companies and non-profit
organisations built on measures implemented by previous Social Democratic
governments (Erlandsson et al. 2013). In 2009, the Swedish centre-right wing
government went further in passing a law under which a system of competitive
tendering was replaced by consumer choice models of health and social care pro-
vision at the municipal level (see the Act on System of Choice in the Public Sec-
tor (LOV) Erlandsson et al. 2013). Cash payments are now available to eligible
recipients, enabling them to choose amongst approved providers or to employ
personal assistants directly (Christensen et al. 2014; da Roit & Le Bihan 2010).
Finland formalised its voucher system in 2009 and by 2012, half of the Finnish
20 Individualised funding: history, theory, practice
municipalities reported using vouchers, with the highest usage in eldercare (Kar-
sio & Anttonen 2013). There, vouchers were seen as ‘an alternative to publicly
provided services and can only be used to choose and use privately provided
services’ (Karsio & Anttonen 2013: 100). Having initially persisted with collec-
tivised homecare and only a ‘diluted’ version of choice, Denmark now requires
local authorities to allow free choice and to support private for-profit provision,
while the extent of choice and competition in Norway is more limited (Vabø et al.
2013; Bertelsen & Rostgaard 2013).
In Central Europe, IF schemes are widespread and varied in their institutional
design. At one extreme, so-called cash-for-care schemes afford people cash trans-
fers often with minimal conditions, allowing them to employ personal support
workers and/or private services to provide assistance in the home (Theobald 2015).
Austria, for example, introduced a care allowance in 1993 to allow this form of
direct employment (Kreimer 2006). While the allowance was strongly supported
by Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs)1 and other advocates of choice, Aus-
tria’s cash transfer model has precipitated the growth of a highly ‘feminised and
foreignised’ workforce comprised of self-employed care workers lacking in basic
protections and minimum wage guarantees, and there is debate about whether
such models reinforce the devaluation of informal care work disproportionately
performed by migrant women (León 2010: 412, quoted in Österle & Bauer 2016:
193). Similar debates have arisen in Italy, which also operates a relatively deregu-
lated cash-for-care scheme heavily dependent on low-wage, feminised, migrant
labour (Da Roit & Moreno-Fuentes 2019).
At the other extreme, services in-kind have been the ‘backbone’ of the Dutch
long-term care system despite ‘personal budgets’ (Persoonsgebonden Budget,
PGB) being available to a minority of people who wish to employ in-home sup-
port workers directly or purchase services privately (Da Roit & Moreno-Fuentes
2019). Since the 1990s, a series of reforms have been introduced with the aim of
containing public expenditure through tighter eligibility criteria and by empha-
sising the caring role and responsibilities of families and informal networks (Da
Roit & Moreno-Fuentes 2019). As spending on in-kind services has diminished,
funding for PGBs has also been restricted to those with highly flexible care needs
and those who require continuity of care from specific caregivers (Da Roit & Le
Bihan 2019). In Germany, cash-for-care was initially introduced to relieve cost
pressures on municipal services, but more recently, the aim has been to improve
service quality by increasing competition amongst providers (Da Roit & Le Bihan
2019). As Ungerson notes, what was common amongst these schemes and essen-
tial for their development was, following Friedman’s formulation, the separation
of finance and provider roles, since ‘once the quasi market systems were in place,
it was only a matter of time before the logic of market ideologies drove towards
the direct purchase of services by their users’ (2003: 379).
The United Kingdom is not alone amongst liberal welfare states in the way it has
restructured its social services through the use of monetised, voucher-like instru-
ments. The United States, for example, has adopted a range of such instruments –
including food stamps, housing vouchers and vouchers for vocational training – to
 Individualised funding: history, theory, practice 21
target public assistance to low-income groups and to limit the role of govern-
ment in service provisioning (G E Peterson 2000; P E Peterson 2003; Daniels &
Trebilcock 2005). School vouchers have been a major point of contention in the
United States since Friedman’s time, with both the Reagan and Bush adminis-
trations, and more recently, the Trump administration, advocating vouchers as
a means for the federal government to ‘get out of the business of education’ and
devolve control to the states and the private sector (Levy 1996: 129; Quinn &
Cheuk 2018). Despite resistance from teachers’ unions and Democrats, as of
2019, there were 29 school voucher programmes operating in 15 states across the
United States (EdChoice 2019). The United States also has a long history of grass-
roots activism and Left-wing support for payments in lieu of services for disabled
people (Hutchinson et al. 2006). This has resulted in a patchwork of state-based
and federally funded ‘consumer directed’ support programmes, which tend to be
limited to low-income groups (Fisher et al. 2010: 101). Having examined the
range of IF schemes operating across Europe and North America, this chapter
now moves on to unpack its relationship to consumer choice.

Individualised funding and consumer choice

IF builds on and extends the logic of consumer choice in the sphere of disability
and social care policy. It has the same basic features as the programmes discussed
earlier, in that the production of services is determined by consumer demand,
rather than a government edict. Similar schemes have operated across Europe and
North America for decades, which raises questions about what distinguishes IF
from these earlier models of individualised disability support. Two features stand
out in the cases of England, Scotland and Australia. The first relates to the com-
pulsory nature of individualised budgeting. Before IF was introduced, individual-
ised payment programmes operated in each of these countries, but they were often
small, experimental or under-utilised due to lack of awareness and professional
support, and people had to ‘opt-in’ to receive personalised support arrangements
(Ellis 2007; Riddell et al. 2005; Witcher et al. 2000; Productivity Commission
2011). In England, Scotland and Australia, the use of individual budgets is now
mandatory, though people can choose to administer their own budget or have
government or a third party do so on their behalf (Care Act 2014; Scottish Execu-
tive 2014; National Disability Insurance Agency no date [hereafter n.d.]). Hence,
it is not just the speed of reform that is new, it is also the scale, since individual
budgets have been universalised to all recipients of disability support.
Second, unlike the previous programmes, which were designed and champi-
oned by disabled people themselves, in the UK, the IF model was developed by
social care professionals and implemented by New Labour in a relatively top-
down fashion (Pearson et al. 2014). Thus, the model represents a break from
earlier approaches that prioritised collective, user-led or disability controlled
services over for-profit and charitable ones. Whereas direct payments facilitated
what Bockman refers to as ‘new commons [and] innovative forms of owner-
ship . . . that [can] work together with pre-existing forms of public property and
22 Individualised funding: history, theory, practice
state regulation’ (2012: 312), individual budgets are intended for use within a
mixed market dominated by non-government services. Hence, they are not merely
co-present with market relations and private forms of ownership and production,
they actively extend and are buttressed by those relations and property forms.
Notwithstanding these marketising dimensions, IF is broadly consistent with
the person-centred and rights-based approaches espoused by disabled people’s
movements worldwide (Glasby & Littlechild 2016; Needham 2011). As Power
et al. (2013) note, the model reflects a philosophical shift in the way disability and
disability rights have come to be understood in relation to citizenship. Whereas
previously, under the post-war welfare state model, disability rights principally
revolved around access to services, more recent thinking emphases the impor-
tance of support that is tailored to personal needs and controlled by the individual
(Power et al. 2013). Principles of participation and inclusion are considered cen-
tral to this modernising and democratising project (Kayess & French 2008; Beres-
ford 2001; Frawley & Bigby 2011). Important in their own right, these principles
also help realise disabled people’s right to live independently in the community
and participate socially and politically on a par with others (Lord & Hutchinson
2003; Kayess & French 2008). IF is thus located in the paradigm of ‘active citi-
zenship’, which is ‘centred on promoting a life in the community and challenging
the socially constructed barriers, behaviours and attitudes which continue to deny
full citizenship, and providing the supports needed to enable people to realise
their citizenship’ (Power et al. 2013: 8).
In terms of its ideological content, then, IF is a hybrid model that combines
neoliberal and emancipatory philosophies (Ferguson 2008, 2012; Askheim et al.
2014). The neoliberal element is reflected in a consumer ethos underpinned by a
negative conception of liberty (Berlin 1969), where liberty implies the absence of
state intervention in social welfare and an expanded role for the market. The eman-
cipatory element is reflected in a radical democratic impulse underpinned by a
positive conception of liberty, where liberty is understood to involve, even require,
affirmative state action to support the realisation of citizenship rights, especially
amongst minority and oppressed groups (Nussbaum 2006; Rummery 2002). As
others have pointed out, the two philosophies have an ambiguous relationship;
at face value, they appear plainly at odds, yet they are in some respects mutu-
ally enforcing (Fraser 2013; Mladenov 2015; McRuer 2012). This mutual rein-
forcement stems from one crucial commonality: a shared concern for individual
autonomy, as against the power of the state, which, in both accounts, has a ten-
dency to congeal in the institutions of welfare and in the paternalist predispositions
of welfare professionals. Policies of IF embody this particular affinity between
neoliberals and human rights advocates committed to liberal values of choice and
independence (Mladenov et al. 2015; Askheim et al. 2014; Needham 2011).
With advocates on the Right and Left of politics, the IF model has gained
increased international attention and enjoyed a certain ease of movement between
jurisdictions. One of the central arguments developed throughout the book is
that this heightened mobility is not attributable to neoliberalism alone but to the
complex intersections between neoliberal and emancipatory agendas and to the
 Individualised funding: history, theory, practice 23
transnational networks that have blended the two agendas in new and creative
ways in different institutional contexts. These intersections and blendings in turn
raise a number of questions about how policies diffuse and the role networks
play in this process. Yet before turning to the literature on diffusion, it is neces-
sary to first take stock of the existing literature on IF and look at how – or indeed
whether – authors have approached the question of mobility.

Disability, mainstream and critical perspectives on

individualised funding
The literature on IF is extensive and varied. Most scholars writing on the topic
locate their work in the field of disability studies (Albrecht et al. 2001), an inter-
disciplinary field encompassing multiple approaches to the study of disability and
disablement as a social and cultural phenomenon (Power et al. 2013; Roulstone &
Morgan 2009; Pearson et al. 2017). Unsurprisingly, there is some overlap here
with public administration, social policy and social work scholars, whose work is
more concerned with the details of policy development, and its practical imple-
mentation and impacts upon service users (see, for example, Glasby & Littlechild
2016; Glendinning et al. 2008; Netten et al. 2012; Manthorpe et al. 2009; Carey
et al. 2017). There are others in this field for whom personalisation is a policy
narrative best studied through the lens of social constructivism (see, for example,
Needham 2011). Finally, there is a small but important body of research in the
tradition of radical social work/social policy. This considers IF, and ‘personalisa-
tion’ more generally, within the broader context of shifts in the political economy
of welfare (Ferguson 2007, 2008, 2012; Scourfield 2007; West 2013; Beresford
2014; Mladenov et al. 2015; Lymbery 2014).
These conceptual perspectives can, broadly speaking, be located along two
analytical axes. The first of these is oriented around notions of citizenship and
disability rights; the second incorporates a critique of neoliberalism as it impacts
on social policy (Lymbery 2014). While they are not mutually exclusive, authors
tend to accord primacy to one or the other of these explanatory approaches. As
Lymbery (2014) points out, the two approaches have different analytical starting
points and arrive at different conclusions about the origins and possible future tra-
jectory of IF. This section will explore each line of analysis in turn, before looking
more specifically at what each contributes to the discussion around transnational
policy mobility.

Disability rights and citizenship

The first analytical approach gives primacy to social movements and international
norms as drivers of shifts in social policy. From this perspective, the proliferation
of individualised funding arrangements has resulted from normative changes in
the field of disability rights and citizenship, spearheaded by disabled activists and
civil society advocates (Power et al. 2013; Lord & Hutchinson 2003; Glasby &
Littlechild 2016; Thill 2015). In their book Active Citizenship and Disability:
24 Individualised funding: history, theory, practice
Implementing the Personalisation of Support (2013), Power, Lord and de Franco
explore these changes from an international perspective. They argue that with the
advent of personalisation, disability ‘support has been reconfigured and reframed
in accordance with a new generation of values and obligations centred on human
dignity and independent living’ (Power et al. 2013: 3). The significance of this
‘new generation of values’ is highlighted in a range of case studies, from Canada
to the UK, France and Sweden, where the guiding principles of reform are shown
to have a common basis in contemporary international disability rights norms. Of
particular importance are the obligations placed on states under United Nations
treaties to remove, and assist disabled individuals and organisations in removing,
‘obstacles preventing persons with disabilities from exercising their rights and
freedoms and making it difficult for them to participate fully in the activities of
their societies’ (United Nations 1993, quoted in Power et al. 2013: 22).2 There
are clear implications here for governments in terms of how they organise and
fund social services for disabled people. Not only must they ensure equal access
to personalised disability support services but they must also give expression to
principles of participation and self-determination in the governance of such ser-
vices, in order to promote independent living and to enable the realisation of the
rights and entitlements of citizenship (Morris 2014; Rummery 2002). In this way,
devolving control over the administration and funding of services is envisaged as
a means of encouraging ‘active citizenship’, as opposed to ‘enforced dependency’
(Power et al. 2013).
The significance of these changes becomes all the more apparent when we con-
sider how disabled people have experienced the ‘protective’ functions of welfare
in the past. Disability scholars have pointed out that as far back as the English
Poor Laws, regimes of welfare have been characterised by their discriminatory
and at times punitive approach to disability provisioning (Hampton 2016; Roul-
stone & Prideaux 2012). The Poor Law (Amendment) Act (1834), for instance,
established a system whereby people were classified and segregated on the basis
of their impairment and forced into congregate care in asylums and workhouses
(Stone 1984; Hampton 2016). According to Barnes (1991), residues of this insti-
tutionalised prejudice persist in contemporary, community-based social support
systems. This is despite hopes that the shift from institutional to community care
would overcome problems of depersonalised support, ‘rigidity of routine, block
treatment, social distance and paternalism’ that plagued institutional settings
(Power et al. 2013: 8). As Barnes notes:

It is evident that health and social support systems currently available to

disabled people are a product of, and a major contributor to, institutional
discrimination. They are organised around the traditional assumption that
disabled people are unable to take charge of their own lives.
(Barnes 1991, quoted in Roulstone & Prideaux 2012: 13–14)

With this being the case, disabled people have brought attention to the ways in
which regimes of welfare continue to deny their individuality and keep them
 Individualised funding: history, theory, practice 25
separate from mainstream society (Roulstone & Prideaux 2012; Barnes et al.
1999; Oliver 1990). Disabled people’s movements and disability advocates have
been central in this respect (Campbell & Oliver 1996; Needham 2011). Since
the 1970s, advocates have deployed internationally recognised disability rights
norms as a tool with which to highlight these injustices and shape the develop-
ment of more inclusive models of support in their home countries (Power et al.
2013). Earlier models of IF – direct payments in the UK, for instance – grew out
of these political struggles, as is detailed in Chapter 2. Their emergence is con-
sidered to have marked a significant shift in thinking away from the traditional
Keynesian model of mass welfare provisioning, towards more personalised, flex-
ible and self-directed forms of support that accord with modern notions of citizen-
ship (Hutchinson et al. 2006; Morris 2005; Duffy 2010). In sum, the assumption
here is that citizenship is the key lens through which we can understand the recent
proliferation in IF policies and the wider trend towards personalisation (Lymbery
2014). In this account, personalisation is viewed as a generally positive develop-
ment consistent with the advancement of disability-inclusive citizenship (Power
et al. 2013; Duffy 2010; Duffy et al. 2010).

Neoliberalism and individualised funding: the new face of consumerism

The second analytical approach adopts a more critical perspective towards
recent trends in IF. In this view, ‘[t]he appeal to citizenship – which is, as we
have seen, strong at the rhetorical level of policy – can be seen as masking the
real dynamics of policy . . . the neo-liberal insertion of consumerism into wel-
fare’ (Lymbery 2014: 303; Ferguson 2003, 2007, 2012; Scourfield 2007). As
Lymbery implies here, this line of analysis starts with an acknowledgement of
the gap between policy rhetoric, on the one hand, and policy practice or imple-
mentation, on the other. Rhetorically, IF signals a clear commitment on the part
of governments to the advancement of disability rights through personalisation
(Duffy 2010). Indeed, there is much to be said about the norms of disability-
inclusive citizenship, which would seem to have informed this new policy tra-
jectory. Yet an adequate theory of policy must also take into account and be able
to explain the extra-discursive dimensions of policy, most importantly, how it
is put into effect through institutional changes and political action. Analyses
that view IF through the prism of citizenship fall short in this regard because,
as critics point out, and as I show in later chapters, it is consistently the case
that what governments do in the name of personalisation does not reflect their
progressive rhetoric, not least the values of social citizenship. On the contrary,
the language of citizenship has served to disguise measures that erode social
protections and inhibit choice and control for disabled people (Morris 2011). At
the same time, discourses of citizenship and rights have increasingly given way
to a consumerist ethos of choice, in the same vein as the free market principles
of Milton Friedman. As these inconsistencies would suggest, it is necessary
to look beyond language and consider the role that politics and ideology have
played in shaping policy outcomes.
26 Individualised funding: history, theory, practice
This second explanatory approach views neoliberalism as the main ideologi-
cal driver of the globalisation of IF. For Harvey, ‘[n]eoliberalism is in the first
instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-
being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and
skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property
rights, free markets, and free trade’ (2005: 2). We have already encountered one
of the foundational principles of neoliberalism – that is, the idea that economic
freedom trumps all other social–political objectives and that unfettered markets
(as opposed to social planning) are the best mechanism for maximising economic
efficiency and enhancing freedom of choice (Friedman 2002 [1962]). Underly-
ing this theory is an under-examined conviction about the self-correcting proper-
ties of markets (Stiglitz 2008). While the ‘neoliberal narrative’ perpetuates this
conviction – that markets, given the right conditions, regulate themselves indepen-
dently of government, according to the laws of supply and demand – there is, it is
argued, nonetheless a role for government under neoliberal capitalism, namely in
constructing and maintaining the institutional frameworks that underpin capitalist
commerce (Mirowski & Plehwe 2009: 436; Jessop 2002b; Aglietta 2000 [1979];
Harvey 2005; Brenner & Theodore 2002). This often entails processes of trade
liberalisation, the corporatisation and privatisation of industry, and the deregula-
tion of labour markets alongside measures to curb the power of organised labour
(Harvey 2005). Thus, neoliberalism operates both at the level of ideas and at the
level of policy and institutions (Cahill 2014). As a theory, neoliberalism implies a
separation of economic and political spheres, while in practice it involves, in fact
necessitates, a particular mode of pro-market state intervention in the economy
(Jessop 2002a; Brenner & Theodore 2002).
Yet neoliberalism also entails state intervention in the realm of citizenship
(Ong 2006; Mirowski & Plehwe 2009). This is the key claim from which it is
argued that IF policies epitomise a particular form of market-oriented interven-
tion, whereby the rights and entitlements of citizenship are converted into mar-
ketable commodities, and the citizen’s role is reduced to that of a consumer (Carr
2014; Beresford 2012; Gibbs 2013; Lymbery 2014; Clarke et al. 2007; Scourfield
2007; Jordan 2006). Social democratic and Marxist-inspired scholars develop this
critique in different ways. From a social democratic perspective, IF is a neoliberal
undertaking in so far as it commodifies areas of social life that, for reasons to do
with citizenship and equality, ought to be kept separate from the sphere of the
market (i.e., profit-driven enterprise). By replacing in-kind and contracted dis-
ability provisioning with a system of cash transfers, IF transforms disability ser-
vices into objects of commercial exchange. Accordingly, relations of citizenship
are transformed into commercially oriented market transactions, such that ‘there
is no separate content of the notion of citizenship other than as customer of state
services’ (Mirowski & Plehwe 2009: 437). In such a system, ‘[t]he abstract rule
of law is frequently conflated with or subordinated to conformity to the neoliberal
vision of an ideal market. . . . there is no separate sphere of the market, fenced off,
as it were, from the sphere of civil society. Everything is fair game for marketiza-
tion’ (Mirowski & Plehwe 2009: 437).
 Individualised funding: history, theory, practice 27
Classical Marxists go further in asserting that civil society and the state were
never, and can never be, ‘fenced off’ from the market sphere, for ‘[s]tate welfare
is not a distinct or separate area of social life but exists, and is intimately tied to,
the central drives and social relations of capitalism’ (Ferguson et al. 2002: 2). If
this is the case, then consumerist policies such as IF are not merely a function of
neoliberal hegemony, nor products of the influence and pervasiveness of neolib-
eral ideas. As Ferguson argues, they must also be understood within the ‘wider
framework of neoliberal capitalism’ and the structural imperatives it generates
(2012: 57). This structural emphasis foregrounds the fact that capitalism’s essen-
tial dynamic is to colonise and commodify all areas of social life. It is a dynamic
driven by capitalist competition and the need to continually find new areas for
the profitable investment of capital. Thus, capitalism as a whole depends on the
spread of market mechanisms like IF in order to extend commodification and to
provide capital with new arenas for growth. This is necessary for the reproduction
of capitalism as a system, whose restless dynamic continually enlarges its sphere
of operation and pushes capital to expand beyond its point of origin (Gough 1979,
2000; Offe 1984; Jessop 2002b).
From this follows a somewhat different conception of how consumerist poli-
cies, such as IF, impinge on citizenship. Not only does the ‘citizen’ become com-
modified in an abstract, discursive sense, as per Clarke et al.’s ‘citizen-consumer’
(2007: 1). In a material sense, so too do the social relations of citizenship become
(even more deeply) embroiled in processes of capital accumulation (Ferguson
et al. 2002). In a system of IF, the very substance of citizenship – a disabled per-
son’s right to support and to live independently on an equal social footing with
other citizens – can only be realised through, and is therefore conditional upon,
profitable exchange in the marketplace, as budgets holders are in effect customers
‘buying’ support in a commercial environment. This means that the fulfilment of
a certain social need in respect of disability is intrinsically tied to the provision
of support for profit (or surplus, at least, in the case of not-for-profit providers).
In such a system, disability-inclusive citizenship ‘turns squarely on an economic
logic that identifies participation in regimes of capitalist accumulation as the ulti-
mate sign of equality’ and inclusion (Rossiter & Wood 2005: 364). Here we see
how, from a classical Marxist point of view, consumerist policies resonate with
the systemic imperatives of capitalism, those of competition, profit-maximisation
and constant accumulation.
But to what extent does neoliberalism explain the movement and mutation of
IF from country to country? One way to answer this question would be to say
that IF has flourished in places where neoliberalism is dominant, since, as we
have seen, IF has a certain affinity with the neoliberal reform agenda (Ferguson
2012; Lymbery 2014; Mladenov 2015). This affinity is surely a crucial part of
the explanation. But on its own it is insufficient, for it does not tell us much
about the mechanics of policy movement – how, as well as why, (certain) policy
models become globalised, and what happens to them, and the places they move
through, in the process. Structuralist accounts, moreover, can explain the diffu-
sion of consumerist policies in terms of the inner workings of capitalism, while
28 Individualised funding: history, theory, practice
still neglecting grounded empirical questions about individual and group agency –
questions such as who are the agents enacting and mobilising policy? Can these
individuals properly be described as neoliberals? If not, what are their political
commitments? How have they leveraged their power and resources in and across
the specific geopolitical contexts in which they operate? And, how have these
contexts shaped their policy advocacy?
To date, little work has been done at the transnational level to address these
questions. That is to say, there is a lacuna in the critical policy literature regard-
ing the historically and geographically specific ways in which IF policies have
been mobilised in and across advanced capitalist countries. Consequently, there
is a lack of understanding surrounding IF’s global and networked dimensions. An
analysis by Boxall et al. (2009) is one exception. They explore how IF has been
‘imported’ into the UK from the United States, concluding that there has been
little coherence between countries that have adopted the IF model. In their words:

[t]he international history of individualised funding does not support the view
of policy transfer as the passing, from one place to another, of a coherent set
of ideas . . . It has been more akin to a bushfire flaring up in different loca-
tions, with mere sparks of an idea travelling from place to place. The extent
to which the fire has taken hold has depended not so much on the relevance
and value of the idea to local circumstances, but rather its popular appeal to
those people . . . who could put it into action.
(Boxall et al. 2009: 508)

Needham (2011) is more cognisant of how local political and economic circum-
stances affect policy translation. Quoting Coleman, she argues that ‘[n]ew discourses
will emerge and gain widespread acceptance if they are more or less congruent
with the prevailing culture into which they are being introduced’ (Cole-
man 2007: 202, quoted in Needham 2011: 76); hence, ‘the development of
personalisation needs to be understood in relation to broader state restructuring,
welfare redesign and cultural change over 25 years’ (Needham 2011: 76). Yet
Needham’s (2011) consideration of material or structural factors does not go much
further than this. Her focus is on personalisation as a travelling ‘policy narra-
tive’. Therefore, throughout her analysis, she tends to subordinate politics – and
questions of power more generally – to the exploration of meaning, interpretation
and social construction.
In summing up this section, we can point to inadequacies in both the approaches
outlined thus far. First, accounts focused on citizenship cannot adequately explain
why IF policies have taken the form they have. This is especially true in countries
such as the UK and Australia where, as I show in coming chapters, IF has become
inextricably linked to neoliberal programmes of austerity and marketisation, in
many ways curtailing rather than extending citizenship. Such accounts pay insuf-
ficient attention to the broader ideological and political–economic contexts in
which IF policies have been implemented. By some accounts, policy diffusion is
merely a technical process of learning or copying from other countries (see, for
 Individualised funding: history, theory, practice 29
example, Duffy & Williams 2012). When the object of diffusion is acknowledged
to have strong social and moral dimensions, as IF does, primacy is given to ideas
and global human rights norms (see, for example, Power et al. 2013; Needham &
Dickinson 2018). This conception of diffusion as an apolitical or otherwise purely
normative process obscures the political–economic conditions that have enabled
IF’s rapid diffusion, especially amongst liberal, market-oriented welfare states. A
more satisfactory explanation can be found in accounts which foreground neo-
liberal capitalism as the key force driving the global proliferation of marketising
reforms such as IF.
Yet if the first approach gives norms and ideas around citizenship primacy
over political–economic factors, the second approach has difficulty in explain-
ing, at least in any detailed way, processes of neoliberal policy mobility. Existing
accounts focusing on neoliberalism generally see diffusion as a top-down process
driven by ‘enlightened experts and political elites’ (Larner 2014: 191). Alterna-
tively, they neglect questions of mobility altogether, limiting their analysis to a
single country case study. This mode of analysis has a number of pitfalls. First,
its theorisation of neoliberalism tends to assign it a structural homogeneity that
Larner (2014) and others (Collier 2012) argue is unwarranted. Neoliberalism, in
Larner’s view, has a ‘flexible and chameleon-like nature,’ such that neoliberal
policies are often ‘actively articulated’ with and animated by progressive social
agendas (2014: 193). This is clearly borne out in the case of IF, which escapes
easy labelling due to its links with the disability movement. Kingfisher likewise
argues that neoliberalism is ‘neither unitary nor immutable, and it is always in
interaction with other cultural formations or discourses’ (Kingfisher 2002: 165,
quoted in Larner 2014: 196). For Larner (2014: 194), the question is not about
neoliberal hegemony, per se, but about how ‘this particular political project has
been able to articulate with other political projects, and what happens to these
projects as a result of that articulation’ (Larner 2014: 195).
Second, because this approach to neoliberalism typically assumes that the key
agents of policy mobility are those in positions of immense power, such as politi-
cal officials and multilateral institutions, Left-leaning social movements and civil
society advocates are often overlooked as bearers of neoliberal ideas. If, follow-
ing Larner (2014: 194), ‘we accept that neoliberalism and social movements are
more actively articulated than previously acknowledged, what does this mean for
our analyses?’ It may mean, for instance, that our methodology should incorpo-
rate a wider range of policy actors, such as the ‘elites’ of civil society. It may also
require us to look more carefully at neoliberalism in its ‘actually-existing’ forms –
at ‘the actual initiatives, ideas and techniques involved’ in marketisation (Larner
2014: 191) – rather than trying to fit such initiatives into pre-existing theoretical
schemas. When we consider the actors involved in mobilising IF, for example,
it becomes clear that individuals and movements of the New Left and socially
engaged NGOs are deeply implicated in the spread of such marketising reforms.
This claim warrants further elaboration of what I mean by the term ‘New Left’,
which is admittedly an imperfect and sometimes overly homogenising label, but
which nonetheless refers to a phenomenon that requires naming. Thus far I have
30 Individualised funding: history, theory, practice
used the term as a shorthand for movements organised along lines other than class.
This includes, for example, movements for women’s emancipation, LGBTQI+
rights, environmental justice, disability rights, de-colonisation and racial equality.
Often, these movements will encompass liberal, radical and socialist currents,
as indeed the disability movement does. In using the term New Left, however, I
am alluding not only to the non-class nature of these political mobilisations but
also to a particular ideological orientation that posits culture, identity and the
body as crucial sites of power and struggle, which are often assumed to trump
social class as an explanatory variable. A key unifying feature of these movements
is the rejection of frameworks (for example, ‘orthodox’ Marxism) that see gen-
dered, racialised, ableist and sexual oppressions as functionally determined by the
workings of capitalism (Fraser 2013; Butler 2008). New Leftists seek to expand
the focus of such struggles to include ‘extra-economic’ domains of injustice and
oppression, such as the patriarchal home and the paternalist state. Often, the focus
lies with harms arising from society’s misrecognition or non-recognition of differ-
ence, the degrading and discriminatory treatment of minorities, and other harms
rooted in the ‘symbolic order’ of society (Fraser 2013: 159).
According to Flacks (2007), there are two other notable features that unify
New Leftist movements. The first is a ‘continuing demand for forms of participa-
tory democratic decision making’, as a counterweight to the centralised power
of the state (Flacks 2007: 3195). The second is a commitment to ‘decentralised
forms of social movement mobilization and decision-making based on affinity
groups, loose coalitional networks, Internet-based communication, and so on’
(Flacks 2007: 3196). In the disability space, over the past three decades or so,
radical social movements have been in decline and in their place have emerged
NGOs and other professionalised advocacy networks (Meyers 2016). Many of
these display the features Flacks describes, in that they are international in scope
and organisational architecture. As I detail in Chapter 3, these networks are often
more deeply enmeshed in the policy process and are politically more centrist and
inclined to compromise than their grassroots activist counterparts. Throughout
this book, I use the terms ‘Left-liberal’, ‘centre-Left’ and ‘transnational Left’ –
again terms that I acknowledge come with certain drawbacks – to refer to this
emerging caste of globally connected, civil society elites acting in close proximity
to power.
This study therefore addresses two main gaps in the critical policy literature.
For one, it explores an area of policy that has hitherto been left out of debates
about neoliberal policy mobility. It aims to bring attention to disability and dis-
ability policy as issues central to debates around the welfare state and its contem-
porary restructuring. In addition to this, the study builds on and extends previous
work carried out by those in the tradition of radical social work/social policy, by
expanding the field of focus beyond the nation state. Its methodological approach
is transnational by design. By incorporating multiple countries into the study, I
am able to show how IF has become a global policy trend propelled not (only)
by hegemonic actors on the Right of politics but by activists and advocates of
the transnational Left. In so doing, I bring a transnational perspective to debates
 Individualised funding: history, theory, practice 31
around the neoliberalisation of disability policy and contribute new insights into
the role that social movements and transnational advocacy networks play in shap-
ing patterns of neoliberal policy diffusion.

The policy mobility approach

In the discussion so far, I have argued that while IF is widely recognised as part
of a global process of market-oriented state restructuring, a lacuna exists in the
critical literature in regard to the international diffusion of IF policies. This book
seeks to address that gap though a cross-national investigation of IF as an object
of neoliberal policy mobility. Of the two approaches outlined previously, the sec-
ond approach (focused on neoliberalism) has been shown to have greater explana-
tory power and therefore be a more promising point of departure for illuminating
the broader political and economic factors at play in policy mobilisation. Yet the
structural political economy approach I have advocated also presents a number of
theoretical and methodological challenges to the study of mobile policies.
In theoretical terms, any such approach will benefit from dispensing with the
view of neoliberalism as a monolithic, deterministic force upon policy (Peck et al.
2018). At the same time, neoliberalism should not be conceived as so flexible, so
transient and so localised, that the identification of shared patterns and transna-
tional commonalities that license theoretical generalisations become impossible
(Brenner et al. 2010). The required approach needs to be attentive to neoliber-
alism’s systemic characteristics, while also being sensitive to its malleability,
fluidity and contextual specificity. Describing what is needed to supplement struc-
turalist approaches, van Velsen notes that:

[t]he structural frame of reference is still a prerequisite for [such an] analysis.
But we now want something in addition: the statics of the structure, ‘the per-
manent edifice in which social relations and activities are congealed’ as Forte
put it (1945: 252) should be supplemented and enlivened by an account of the
actions – both ‘normal’ and ‘exceptional’ – of the individuals who operate the
structure, ie, the processes going on within the structure.
(1967: 141)

The required methodological orientation, then, is one that is able to capture the
dynamic processes ‘going on within the structure’ without losing sight of the
structure itself. The specifics of ‘how, why, where and with what effects policies
are mobilised, circulated, learned, reformulated and reassembled’ demand close
attention, though they must also be ‘acknowledged to be conditioned by wider
ideological and institutional contexts’ (McCann & Ward 2013: 3, 9).
The ‘mobility turn’ in human geography and policy studies was a response
to precisely this set of theoretical and methodological challenges (Collier 2012).
For proponents of this new direction in policy scholarship, policy mobility,
contextual specificity and hybridisation were not aberrations from the norm of
neoliberal globalisation. Rather, they were considered fundamental features of
32 Individualised funding: history, theory, practice
‘actually-existing neoliberalism’ and therefore worthy of critical, empirical inves-
tigation (Peck et al. 2018; Brenner & Theodore 2002). Peck et al., for example,
argue that:

[w]hile the ideology of neoliberalism defers to the sovereignty of a sin-

gular, transhistorical, and uniquely efficient market, the inescapably more
murky reality is that actually existing programs of neoliberal transformation
are always contextually embedded, institutionally grounded, and politically
mediated – for all their generic features, family resemblances, patterned
dynamics, and structural interconnections. Adequate analyses of neolib-
eralization must therefore confront this necessary hybridity and complex
spatiality, since it is not only problematic, but analytically and politically
misleading, to visualize neoliberalism purely in ideal-typical terms, as if
characterized by incipient or extant functionality.
(Peck et al. 2018: 9, emphasis added)

The ‘mobility turn’ was an attempt to deal seriously with, and incorporate, the
best insights of post-structuralism and governmentality approaches, particularly
in regard to problems of abstraction (McCann & Ward 2013). Governmentality
scholars Ong (2006) and Collier (2012) are often referenced in this debate as crit-
ics of ‘grand theories’ of neoliberalism (Ong 2006: 13, quoted in Brenner et al.
2010: 200). Collier, for instance, argues that ‘neoliberal policies or programmes
[tend to be] fused with other things’ (2012: 187); hence, conceptions of neoliber-
alism as a ‘big leviathan’ – always and everywhere dominant – are exaggerated
and analytically ‘sloppy’ (2012: 187, 193). Ong also takes aim at structural politi-
cal economy for its tendency to ‘“metaphorize neo-liberalism as an economic
tsunami that attacks national space,” effectively flattening out or “steamrolling”
all before it in a one-way process of epochal transformation’ (Ong 2007: 4, quoted
in Brenner et al. 2010: 199). As Ong (2006, 2007) and Collier (2012) see it, these
abstractions obscure more than they reveal about the real workings of neolib-
eralism. They imply homogeneity and unidirectional convergence, whereas any
up-close, grounded investigation will show that neoliberalism manifests itself in
multiple, complex forms (or ‘techniques of governing’), which have to be contex-
tualised in order to be understood (Ong 2006: 13).
In response to these criticisms, proponents of the policy mobility approach
have made various attempts to crystallise its aims and distinguishing features.
According to Larner, what is needed is ‘a more careful tracing of the intellec-
tual, policy and practitioner networks that under-pin the global expansion of
neo-liberal ideas, and their subsequent manifestation in government policies and
programs’ (Larner 2003: 510). For Peck, ‘the methodological challenge here
is to develop adequate conceptualizations and robust empirical assessments of
policies “in motion,” including descriptions of the circulatory systems that con-
nect and interpenetrate “local” policy regimes’ (2003: 229). Underlying each of
these claims is a subtly different theoretical rationale to that offered by structural
political economy.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
688. Chats about Germany. By M. Brown. (Cassell) 2s. 6d.
689. Round Africa. By E. C. Bruce. (Cassell) 2s. 6d.
690. The Land of Temples. By M. Field. (Cassell) 2s. 6d.
691. New Zealand. By B. Francis. (Cassell) 2s. 6d.
692. Glimpses of South America. (Cassell) 2s. 6d.
693. A Ramble round France. By J. Chesney. (Cassell) 2s. 6d.
694. The Land of the Pyramids. By J. Chesney. (Cassell) 2s. 6d.
695. The Eastern Wonderland. By B. C. Angus. (Cassell) 2s. 6d.
696. Peeps into China. By E. C. Phillips. (Cassell) 2s. 6d.
These have ‘pictures’ to every other page, and are wonders of
cheapness and really interesting writing.
697. In the Polar Regions. (Nelson) 2s. 6d.
698. In the Temperate Regions. (Nelson) 2s. 6d.
699. In the Tropical Regions. (Nelson) 2s. 6d.
All the above are compilations full of interesting descriptions and
good illustrations.
700. Little Lucy’s Wonderful Globe. By C. M. Yonge. (Macmillan)
4s. 6d.
Sketches of child life in various lands, adapted to Frölich’s
illustrations. Too dear for a prize, but children like it when lent to
them.
701. Child Life in Chinese Homes. By Mrs. Bryson. (R.T.S.) 5s.
702. The Children of Africa. (Hodder & Stoughton) 5s.
Fully illustrated, very easy and amusing, though China is better
done than Africa as being a less wide field.
703. Early English Voyagers. (Nelson) 5s.
 The voyages of Drake, Cavendish, and Dampier excellently told.
704. Letters from Egypt. By J. Whately. (Seeley).
A model of the style of thing.
705. Germany. By S. Baring-Gould. (Sampson Low) 3s. 6d.
706. Egypt. By Stanley Lane-Poole. (Sampson Low) 3s. 6d.
707. Denmark and Iceland. By E. C. Otté. (Sampson Low) 3s. 6d.
708. France. By the Author of ‘Mlle. Mori.’ (Sampson Low) 3s. 6d.
709. Japan. By S. Mossman. (Sampson Low) 3s. 6d.
710. Russia. By W. R. Morfill. (Sampson Low) 3s. 6d.
711. Austria. By D. Kay. (Sampson Low) 3s. 6d.
712. Greece. By L. Sergeant. (Sampson Low) 3s. 6d.
713. West Indies. By C. H. Eden. (Sampson Low) 3s. 6d.
714. Peru. By Clements Markham. (Sampson Low) 3s. 6d.
715. Australia. By J. F. Vesey Fitzgerald. (Sampson Low) 3s. 6d.
716. Spain. By Wentworth Webster. (Sampson Low) 3s. 6d.
717. Sweden and Norway. By F. H. Woods. (Sampson Low) 3s. 6d.
These are not so ornamental as Cassell’s series, though they
have maps and illustrations; but if I may judge from the two
specimens I have seen—namely, ‘France’ and ‘Germany’—they are
full of interest and information amusingly given, and would be
excellent for any intelligent person in need of knowledge of some
special place. Very good for town or club libraries where the readers
rise above fiction.
718. Great Waterfalls. By John Gibson. (Nelson) 2s. 6d.
Well-illustrated descriptions of cataracts and geysers.
719. A Jolly Fellowship. By F. Stockton. (Kegan Paul) 5s.
The droll adventures of three American schoolboys who make a
tour by themselves in Florida and Cuba.
720. Road to the North Pole. (R.T.S.) Series I. and II., 1s. each.
An excellent abstract of the American Arctic expeditions of the
‘George Henry,’ the ‘Polaris,’ and the ‘Jeannette.’

ADVENTURES.
These are truthful adventures, in contradistinction to the Kingston,
Ballantyne, Verne, and other ‘books for boys’ which abound. Where
we should lend those we should give these.
721. Real Stories from Many Lands. By Lady Verney. (S.P.C.K.)
9d.
The wonderful first navigation of the Colorado. A terrible conflict
between a horse and a tiger, and the escape of Grotius. Easy, and
likely to satisfy the children who ask ‘Is it true?’
722. Perils of the Deep. (S.P.C.K.) 4s.
Collections of the most striking and memorable wrecks and other
trials of sailors. Just the book for men or boys invalided.
723. Peril and Adventure. By L. Valentine. (Warne) 2s.
724. Valour and Enterprise. By L. Valentine. (Warne) 2s.
725. Brave Days of Old. By L. Valentine. (Warne) 2s.
726. Daring and Doing. By L. Valentine. (Warne) 2s.
727. On Honour’s Roll. By L. Valentine. (Warne) 3s. 6d.
728. Heroism and Adventure. By L. Valentine. (Warne) 3s. 6d.
729. Sea Fights and Land Battles. By L. Valentine. (Warne) 3s.
6d.
 Noble deeds, true and inspiring, such as should go to the heart of
brave lads.
730. A Book of Golden Deeds. By C. M. Yonge. (Macmillan) 4s.
6d. Selection, 1s.
Heroic actions in all ages.
731. Heroes of the Arctic and their Adventures. By Whymper.
(S.P.C.K.) 3s. 6d.
732. Across the Pampas. By Sir F. Head. (Murray) 2s.
One of those spirited and delightful books that never grow stale.
733. Anson’s Voyages. (S.P.C.K.) 2s. 6d.
Compressed, and ever interesting.
734. Wanderings in South America. By Charles Waterton.
(Macmillan) 6s. or 6d.
The most delightful of true travellers’ wonders.
735. Lady Brassey’s Voyage in the ‘Sunbeam.’ (Longmans) 6d.
Later aspects of the world.
736. Ride to Khiva. By Col. Fred. Burnaby. (Cassell) 1s. 6d.
Highly interesting in the present state of things. Where there is a
set of readers open to the interest of books of travels, a watch had
better be kept on Mudie’s second-hand list.
737. Around and About Old England. By C. L. Matéaux. (Cassell)
3s. 6d.
738. Huc’s Life and Travels in Tartary. (Nelson) 1s.
The adventures of the two Jesuit missionaries made a great
sensation at the time of publication, and are most amusing.
739. Egypt and Nubia. By J. St. John. (Chapman & Hall)
 A book with much reading in it, and likely to be very much read if
still in print.
740. Two Years in the Region of Icebergs. (S.P.C.K.) 1s.
 HISTORY.
History is seldom very acceptable to young people of the working
classes. They do not live in a sufficiently cultivated atmosphere to
keep up interest in what they learn at school; but sometimes an
event or perhaps an historical tale rouses their curiosity, and those a
little more cultivated ought to learn to read for themselves. Histories
are particularly desirable as prizes, since they may be used and
referred to through life. Moreover, everything should be done to get
pupil-teachers beyond the mere cram of names and dates.
741. The Story of Russia. By M. E. Benson. (Rivingtons) 3s. 6d.
742. The Story of Norway. By C. E. Sedgwick. (Rivingtons) 3s. 6d.
743. The Story of Switzerland. By F. M. Lee. (Rivingtons) 3s. 6d.
744. The Story of Spain. By Julia Huxley. (Rivingtons) 3s. 6d.
745. The Story of Denmark. By C. E. Sedgwick. (Rivingtons) 3s.
6d.
746. The Story of Holland. By Isabel Don. (Rivingtons) 3s. 6d.
747. The Story of Iceland. By Letitia Macoll. (Rivingtons) 3s. 6d.
Capital brief sketches of people, country, and history. Not difficult,
but familiar and amusing. Illustrated and prettily got up.

SHORT STORIES ON HISTORY.

748. English. (S.P.C.K.) 3s.
749. France. (S.P.C.K.) 1s.
750. Germany. (S.P.C.K.) 1s.
751. Spain. (S.P.C.K.) 1s.
752. Sweden. (S.P.C.K.) 1s.
These are history chiefly in conversation. They are fairly well done,
but it is generally difficult to excite interest in foreign histories.

JUVENILE ENGLISHMEN’S HISTORICAL

LIBRARY.
753. History of England. By J. M. Neale. (Masters) 1s. 6d.
754. History of Greece. By J. M. Neale. (Masters) 2s.
755. History of Rome. By S. Fox. (Masters) 2s.
756. History of Spain. By B. J. Johns. (Masters) 2s.
757. History of Portugal. By J. M. Neale. (Masters) 2s.
758. History of Ireland. By T. K. Arnold. (Masters) 1s. 6d.
759. History of Scotland. By W. B. Flower. (Masters) 2s.
Plainly got up, but telling much that is useful.
Aunt Charlotte’s Histories, by C. M. Yonge, namely—
760. Scripture. (Marcus Ward) 6s. or 2s.
761. England. (Marcus Ward) 6s. or 1s. 6d.
762. France. (Marcus Ward) 6s.
763. Germany. (Marcus Ward) 6s.
764. Greece. (Marcus Ward) 6s.
765. Rome. (Marcus Ward) 6s.
766. America. (Marcus Ward) 6s.
These, except the two first, of which there are cheaper editions,
are too full of illustrations not to be costly.
767. Lectures on the History of England for Working Men and
Women. By M. Guest. (Macmillan) 6s.
An epitome of life and manners in England, actually composed for
and read aloud to an audience of mechanics.
768. The Story of the Crusades. (Nelson) 1s. 6d.
769. Children of Westminster Abbey. By Rose Kingsley.
(Sampson Low) 5s.
Descriptions of the building and the monuments, with histories of
the persons there buried, showing a most loving hand.
770. Stories of the Tower. By M. Wilson. (Cassell) 2s.
Narratives of the chief events, and histories of the chief prisoners
of the Tower. These two should be in all libraries for Londoners.
771. Two of England’s Wars; or, Theodore and Coffee. (R.T.S.)
1s. 6d.
Well and shortly told histories of the Abyssinian and Ashantee
campaigns.
772. Talks about the Laws we live under. By C. M. Yonge. (Walter
Smith) 2s.
An endeavour to give a popular account of our institutions and
authorities.
773. The Citizen Reader. (Cassell) 1s. 6d.
The same work, so much better done that it is to be regretted that
it should be so evidently intended as a school-book.
774. Cawnpore. By Sir George Trevelyan. (Macmillan) 6s.
A terrible history, riveting interest.
 BIOGRAPHY.
A real life often speaks more plainly and effectively than a hundred
sermons or exhortations. And as childhood is outgrown, intelligent
persons will have a curiosity about those whose names they may
have heard.
Cassell’s World’s Workers, namely—
775. General Gordon. (Cassell) 1s.
776. Charles Dickens. (Cassell) 1s.
777. Titus Salt and George Moore. (Cassell) 1s.
778. Florence Nightingale. (Cassell) 1s.
779. Sir H. Havelock. (Cassell) 1s.
780. Abraham Lincoln. (Cassell) 1s.
781. Livingstone. (Cassell) 1s.
782. Franklin. (Cassell) 1s.
783. Cobden. (Cassell) 1s.
784. Handel. (Cassell) 1s.
785. Turner. (Cassell) 1s.
786. G. and R. Stephenson. (Cassell) 1s.
 These are full of life, not too long, and exactly suited to their
purpose.
787. Life of Dr. Kane, the Arctic Hero. By M. Jones. (Nelson) 2s.
788. Baron von Humboldt. By M. Jones. (Nelson) 2s.
Illustrated, and excellent for presents.
789. Sir David Wilkie and his Works. (Nelson) 2s.
790. Charles Kingsley. People’s edition. (Kegan Paul) 4s. 6d.
This is a book that should be widely dispersed among the more
intelligent, especially where there is much temptation to scepticism.
791. Charles Lowder. (Kegan Paul) 3s. 6d.
A biography that wins the heart as much as did the man.
792. Life of the Earl of Shaftesbury. By Edwin Hodder. (Cassell)
7s. 6d.
So noble, pure, devoted, and charitable a life ought to be known to
all.
793. Sister Dora. By M. Lonsdale. (Kegan Paul) 2s. 6d.
Excites the warmest enthusiasm.
794. The Story of a Fellow-Soldier. By F. Awdry. (Macmillan) 2s.
6d.
An abridged life of Bishop Patteson.
795. An Elder Sister. By F. Awdry. (Bemrose) 4s. 6d.
Bishop Charles Mackenzie and his sister Anne.
796. Life of Oberlin. By Mrs. Butler. (R.T.S.) 3s. 6d. or 6d.
The latter very small, but in cloth.
797. Nelson. By Southey. (Warne) 2s. 6d. (Routledge) 1s.
Needs no praise.
798. Life of Washington. 1s.
799. From the Log Cabin to the White House. (Warne) 1s.
800. From the Tan Yard to the White House. 1s.
The two latter are lives of Garfield and Grant, sensationally but not
unwholesomely told.
801. Hannah More. By Anna J. Buckland. (R.T.S.) 3s.
Very well told.
802. Book of Worthies. By C. M. Yonge. (Macmillan) 4s. 6d.
Chiefly from ancient history.
803. Biographies of Good Women. By C. M. Yonge. (Walter
Smith) Vol. I. 6s. Vol. II. 7s.
804. Notable Workers in Humble Life. By the Rev. E. N. Hoare.
(Nelson) 2s.
An admirable and inspiriting book. Dick, Edward, Pound, Duncan,
here appear as men who looked not to raise themselves in a worldly
sense, but for better things.
805. The Peasant-Boy Philosopher. (Routledge) 3s. 6d.
Life of James Ferguson.
806. A Few Good Women. By Catharine MacSorley. (Hogg) 3s.
6d.
Lives of Mrs. Somerville, Lady Derby, the Princess de Lamballe,
&c.
807. Heroes of the Indian Empire. By R. Foster. (Cassell) 2s. 6d.
Lives of our great men in India from Clive to Havelock.
If more historical biographies are desired, there is an excellent
series edited by Professor Creighton; also some good ones of
S.P.C.K., but those here selected are chiefly those that are modern
enough to interest the average library reader, of the sort who does
not want either fiction or absolutely religious biography.
It is not easy to choose among the many lives of the Queen that
the Jubilee has brought forth. S.P.C.K. and R.T.S. have each a large
handsome one and a penny one. ‘The First Lady in the Land’ (Wells
Gardner, Darton, & Co.) is cheap and attractive. Tulloch’s ‘Life of
Queen Victoria’ (Nisbet) for boys and girls, and Miss Yonge’s
‘Victorian Half Century’ (Macmillan), 1s. or 1s. 6d., have both had the
honour of Her Majesty’s correction, and are both for the young;
Tulloch’s, perhaps, for the youngest. Another life of Queen Victoria
(Nelson), 1s. 6d., is a marvel of cheapness and very prettily told.
 CHURCH HISTORY.
808. History of the Early Church. By Miss Sewell. (Longmans) 4s.
6d.
Easy narrative, going through the first three centuries.
809. The Mother Church. By C. A. Jones. 3s.
Simply told history of the early English Church.
810. Church History. By the Rev. J. M. Neale. (Walter Smith) 3s.
6d.
Vividly told as a congenial subject. The first three centuries.
811. Eighteen Centuries of Church History. By C. M. Yonge.
(Walter Smith) 5s.
An attempt to give salient facts in short easy chapters.
812. Turning-Points of General Church History. By the Rev. E.
Cutts. (S.P.C.K.) 5s.
Very valuable as giving the most important events in ready form
and short compass.
813. Turning-Points of English Church History. By the Rev. E.
Cutts. (S.P.C.K.) 3s. 6d.
Equally good and nearer home.
814. Church History. By the Rev. A. D. Crake, B.A. (Rivingtons) 7s.
6d.
Full and interesting; up to the Council of Nicæa.
815. English Church History. By Canon Perry. (Murray) 3 vols.
7s. 6d. each.
Admirable histories of the Church in England.
816. Student’s Church History. (Murray) 2 vols. 7s. 6d. each.
A valuable epitome.
817. Epochs of Church History. Edited by Canon Creighton.
(Longmans) 2s. 6d. per vol.
These are The Church and the Roman Empire, by the Rev. A.
Carr. The Church of the Early Fathers, by the Rev. D. Plummer.
The University of Oxford, by Hon. G. L. Brodrick. The
Reformation in England, by G. G. Perry. The Church and the
Puritans, by H. O. Wakeman. The Evangelical Revival, by Canon
Overton. The English Church in Other Lands, by the Rev. H. W.
Tucker.
These are excellent to give to schoolmasters or persons with
some education and knowledge of history, but needing further
elucidation of ‘turning-points.’
818. English Church History. By C. M. Yonge. (National Society)
1s. 6d. and 2s.
An easy account. Meant for schools.
819. Lights and Shadows of Church History. By the Rev. W.
Hardman. 4s.
A series of excellent brief sermon lectures on the most noted facts
in the growth of the Church. It has the merit of not being too long,
and is fit for readers of superior education.
 NATURAL HISTORY.
I have not found natural history popular in libraries. Indeed, I have
known a magazine given up because there was too much of it. The
children have a large amount of it in their Readers at school, where
they like it, as it is a less dry subject than is presented by many of
their lessons. If they belong to the Band of Mercy they sometimes
have to get up the subject, and there is no doubt that this conduces
to the cure of wanton cruelty. But though, as an alternative to a real
study, children will enjoy an anecdote, and though a master,
mistress, or friend can lead them to use their eyes and assist in
some pursuit or collection, it is only the exceptional ones with a
developed taste who will voluntarily read more than an occasional
story. Where there is a real taste in one direction, technical books
can be supplied, but the aim of the lending library can only be to give
out works of general information or interest, such as may lead to a
love of nature, prevent wanton or careless barbarity, and possibly
excite a wholesome taste in some special direction. The S.P.C.K.
has excellent technical and popular manuals, but these are fit for
those who wish to study their subject, and should be possessed, not
borrowed.
For lending may be suggested:—
820. Population of an Old Pear Tree. From the French of Van
Bruyssell. (Macmillan) 4s. 6d.
Capitally illustrated, and full of loveliness of description of the
insect inhabitants of the tree.
821. Chapters on Popular Natural History. By Sir J. Lubbock.
(National Society) 1s. 6d. and 2s.
Though published as a reading book, this is better for lending.
822. Outdoor Common Birds. Eighty illustrations. (Warne) 1s. 6d.
Even country children need this. They observe birds very little, and
hardly know the names of any; even local provincial names are few,
and they need to learn not to regard birds as enemies to be robbed
and slaughtered.
823. Our Dogs. By Mrs. Beecher Stowe. (Nelson) 1s.
Real dogs—very good for readings and prizes for a Band of
Mercy.
824. Songs of Animal Life. By Mary Howitt. (Nelson) 1s.
825. With the Birds. By Mary Howitt. (Nelson) 1s.
Perhaps children have come to look on poetry as necessarily
lessons. If not, these are excellent gift-books for little ones.
826. Talks with Uncle Richard about Wild Animals. By Mrs.
Cupples. (Nelson) 1s. 6d.
827. Stories of the Cat and her Cousins. By Mrs. Surr. (Nelson)
1s. 6d.
828. Stories of the Dog and his Cousins. By Mrs. Surr. (Nelson)
1s. 6d.
829. Tappy’s Chicks. By Mrs. Cupples. (Sonnenschein) 2s. 6d.
Interesting stories of animal life.
830. Homes without Hands. By the Rev. J. G. Wood. (Longmans)
10s. 6d.
Very delightful accounts of the constructions of moles, bees, &c.
831. Hidden Homes. By M. A. Paull. (Nisbet) 2s. 6d.
 Many of the same facts as in Mr. Wood’s book, but made easy and
put into a story. The ants and bees tell their habits pleasantly.
832. Birds’ Nests and Eggs. By the Rev. C. A. Johns. (S.P.C.K.)
3s.
Encouragement in birds’ nesting is not desirable, but if there be a
school museum such a book as this is wanted.
833. Bird Songs and Bird Pictures. (R.T.S.) 1s.
834. Homes of the Birds. (Nelson) 2s.
835. Lessons taught by Dumb Animals. (S.P.C.K.) 8d.
836. Jenny and the Insects. (Nelson) 2s.
837. Botany Reading Books. (National Society) 1s. and 1s. 8d.
838. Rambles in Search of Wild Flowers. By Miss Plues. (Bell) 7s.
6d.
This is a real manual by which the names of English flowers may
be found.
839. The Herb of the Field. By C. M. Yonge. (Macmillan) 6s.
Easy botany for young children.
840. Apples and Oranges. By Mrs. Dyson. (R.T.S.) 3s. 6d.
An excellent book, giving the marvellous structure and history of
fruits in a delightful manner, fit for any reader.
841. White’s Selborne. (Macmillan) 6s. (Walter Scott) 1s.
842. Sea Monsters and Sea Birds. By Dr. G. Hartwig. (Longmans)
2s. 6d.
843. Wild Animals of the Tropics. By Dr. G. Hartwig. (Longmans)
3s. 6d.
844. Wild Animals of the Bible. By the Rev. J. G. Wood.
(Longmans) 3s. 6d.
845. Homes under the Ground. By the Rev. J. G. Wood.
(Longmans) 3s. 6d.
These are full of anecdote and interest for young people.