Based on decades of evidence-based research and technical assistance, Public Administration and Disability: Community Services Administration in the US brings together the diverse, expert perspectives and discusses the leading efforts of the past three decades in the field of disability and community services. The book highlights the development of

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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.

Prize-winning author Martha Derthick draws on the recent experience of the Social Security Administration to examine the quality of policymaker's guidance and the feasibility of their policies. Derthick concludes that many structural features of American government hinder good administration, that policymakers lack concern for administration, and that they often miscalculate the administrative consequences of their policy choices. To illustrate this argument, Agency Under Stress analyzes two much-publicized cases of poor performance by one of the biggest and best established of U.S. government agencies, the Social Security Administration. The first case is that of the supplemental security income program to support needy blind, aged and disabled persons. Given responsibility of administering the program in 1974, the Social Security Administration was unequal to the task: many payments were made in error; many eligible persons were not paid; computer systems were not ready; field employees worked millions of hours of overtime; and other agency programs suffered. The second case is that of an eligibility review that Congress ordered the Social Security Administration to conduct for disability insurance recipients in the 1980s. The results were similarly traumatic: of over 1.2 million cases examined, 495,000 had benefits terminated, and, flooded with appeals, the courts ruled overwhelmingly against the agency. Derthick's analysis and conclusions have far-reaching implications for how the government can effectively serve its clients.

Disability, Civil Rights, and Public Policy examines how implementation policies in these areas evolved through protracted political struggles among a variety of persons and groups affected by disability rights laws. Efforts to influence these policies extended far beyond the process of legislative enactment and often resulted in struggles played out in the courts and the executive branch. The role of symbolic politics, the strengths and weaknesses of the contemporary models used for policy implementation, and the politics of administrative policymaking play key roles in this study.