Freedom As Antipower: Mechanisms For Disabled People To Resist Domination By The New Zealand State

Abstract

Phillip Pettit’s republicanism offers a useful framework through which one can assess the constitutional position of disabled people in New Zealand society. For Pettit, a relationship is characterised by domination if one entity has the capacity to interfere, with impunity and at will, in another person's life and choices. Given the medicalisation of disability, which has privileged the voices of medical professionals over disabled people, New Zealand policy and law has placed disabled people in a unique position of domination with the state. Whether this can be overcome depends on mechanisms of antipower, or contestation, available to disabled people. This paper will assess the merit of Pettit’s framework through an in-depth assessment of disabled people’s legal access to antipower in the health and disability system. It will then demonstrate the framework’s worth in other relationships disabled people have with the state- the welfare and electoral system. Finally, it will demonstrate that policy developed in line with the principles of disability justice also has the capacity to meet republican standards, using the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as an example. Overall, this paper posits a new way of viewing the inequities disabled people face – through a republican lens.