Collective Action and Civil Society: Disability Advocacy and EU Decision Making

A new book explores how changing structures of governance have created an opportunity for disability advocacy groups to challenge policy making.

In Collective Actions and Civil Society: Disability advocacy and EU decision making, published by Emerald Publishing, Dr Claudia Coveney, Lecturer in the School of Sociology and Social Policy, highlights the European Disabled People’s Movement (EDPM), and assesses its role and collective action within EU governance. Within the book, Dr Coveney also develops a collective action framework for campaigns led by disabled people’s organisations.

A book launch, hosted by the Centre for Disability Studies, took place in December. Dr Coveney was introduced by Professor Miro Griffiths, and, with discussants Dr Tom Campbell and Emeritus Professor Mark Priestley, she shared insights from her research and details of the collective action framework that is laid out in her book.

Dr Coveney sat down with us to discuss her new book, share insight into the research process and details of her future research plans.

Tell us a bit about your new/latest book

This book looks at the connecting interface between social movements and structures of governance – civil society. This space holds opportunities and tensions for social movement organisations in that they can secure representation for governments to call on and consult in decision making and policy which can progress claims making efforts. They also risk being subsumed into policy processes and losing independence in these spaces, as well as alienation from wider movements. This book looks at the context of the disabled people’s movement in the EU and the ways the movement has capitalised on developments in EU social policy in particular to progress its aims.

Can you give us an insight into the research process and journey leading up to publication?

I collaborated with an EU-level disabled people’s organisation (DPO) that works in this space and looked at the particular context of EU social policy in answering these questions. We developed the research questions and topics together and I was given access to members and archives to conduct this research. I also produced an output from the research that aims to aid the advocacy work of DPOs in this area, the collective action framework (discussed in Chapter 6 of this book).

What do you hope readers will take away from the book? Are there any people in particular that you would like to read the book?

One of the main findings is that this civil society space can hold different potential at different times and organisations have adapted to these changes. This is reflected in the content and nature of the collective action campaigns they run using the civil society space. Another important finding is that these organisations and their campaigns change these spaces themselves, which I argue is a point of optimism and hope for future advocacy. These are not static spaces. I hope researchers and activists alike find use in this book and the collective action framework.

What’s next for you?

I’d like to continue looking at the impact of changing structures of governance on social movements, particularly disabled people’s movements. I’m interested in how movements might use international legal frameworks in different governance contexts and how the collective action framework can be further developed from this.

Dr Claudia Coveney is a Lecturer in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds. Alongside collective action and civil society, her research interests include EU disability politics, social movements, decision-making in the hollow state and network governance. She is also involved in the School of Sociology and Social Policy’s award-winning MSc Disability Studies, Rights and Inclusion. Dr Coveney can be found on X/Twitter @dr_claudia_c.