ABSTRACT
The final chapter draws together the main threads running throughout the book. I argue that while social movements and TANs have played an important role in shaping and facilitating the diffusion of IF, such diffusion is always mediated by the national institutional contexts, political economies and path dependencies encountered, which modify the form, if not the substance, of IF regimes targeted at the disability sector. IF advocates have been critical in the development of more personalised, flexible and self-directed forms of support that promote inclusive citizenship for disabled people. Yet this laudable objective has been compromised by another set of objectives with which such advocacy has frequently become entangled. More specifically, the linking of disability rights advocacy to a neoliberal agenda emphasising consumer sovereignty, cost-containment and the primacy of markets has blunted the emancipatory potential of increased autonomy for disabled people. Taken together, these various strands interweave to provide a unique approach to understanding the international spread of IF regimes in welfare generally and disability in particular.
