ABSTRACT

This chapter analyses Swedish disability policies in terms of ideas and values about redistribution. It describes social policy interventions relating to the dominating policy ideals. Swedish conceptions of disability are formed in the context of a centralist state that imposes universalist principles through legislation. Institutional care and treatment were based on a medical model, implying that disability was a consequence of decease and impairment, which in turn required segregated measures and a specialization of support and interventions. Concepts of normalisation and integration were launched as key ideas in disability policy. Many of the ideas put forward by Swedish politicians, accepted as guiding ideological principles, also link to the so-called social model of disability elaborated by United Kingdom disability researchers, because barriers in the institutional and physical environment were emphasized. In the aftermath of the introduction of the relational model of disability, the political debate has come to involve structural and institutional barriers in society.