ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the reduction of disability organising to service provision and the attendant institutionalisation or non-governmental organisation (NGO)-isation of the postsocialist civil society. It explores patterns of political misrepresentation that have plagued postsocialist civil society in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The chapter highlights the weaknesses of disability organising in CEE and traces these weaknesses to the state socialist suppression of associational life in civil society. It also explores critically the depoliticising effects of postsocialist neoliberalisation. The chapter describes the incorporation of disability organisations into structures of tokenistic participation, using the critique of postsocialist 'tripartism' as a guideline. Since reports and analyses of postsocialist disability organising are very scarce, at several points the chapter focuses on analyses of women's initiatives and organisations as a proxy. Moreover, disabled people in the state socialist CEE remained cut off from the ideas, events and networks of the emergent disability counterpublics in Western Europe.
