This week we’re looking at the representation of disabled people in politics. Why are there so few disabled politicians? What impact does that have? And what can be done to level the playing field?
While one in five people in the UK is disabled, the proportion of disabled individuals among elected representatives is significantly lower. Despite broader discussions on inclusive politics, disability remains an often-overlooked aspect of the conversation. For many people working in this area, addressing such challenges isn’t just about fairness; it’s also about ensuring that disabled citizens have their voices heard in political decision-making.
A new book addressing these challenges was published last year, and a recent article in The Political Quarterly highlights its key themes. The book and article explore the structural barriers that disabled candidates and politicians face and provide actionable recommendations for change.
In this episode, we speak with the co-authors of both the book and the article:
Join us as we discuss the systemic obstacles, potential solutions, and the importance of disability-inclusive politics.
Mentioned in this episode:
Alan Renwick: Hello, this is UCL Uncovering Politics, and this week we're looking at the representation of disabled people in politics. Why are there so few disabled politicians? What impact does that have and what can be done to level the playing field?
Hello, my name is Alan Renwick and welcome to UCL Uncovering Politics, the podcast of the School of Public Policy and Department of Political Science at University College London. While one person in five living in the UK is disabled, the share of disabled people among elected representatives is much lower.
Yet, in the broader conversation on making politics more inclusive, disability often remains sidelined. For many people working in this area, addressing such challenges isn't just about fairness, it's also about ensuring that disabled citizens have their voices heard in political decision making. Well a new book exploring these matters came out last year, and an article outlining some of the themes of the book has now been published in the latest issue of our partner journal, The Political Quarterly.
Both the book and the article delve into the current structural hurdles that disabled candidates and politicians face, and they offer concrete recommendations for change. The co authors of the book and the article are Elizabeth Evans, Professor of Politics at the University of Southampton. And Dr Stephanie Reyer, Reader in Political Science at the University of Strathclyde. And I'm delighted that Elizabeth and Stephanie both join me now. And welcome to you both. It's great to have you on UCL Uncovering Politics. And let's start with a broad overview question about this subject. Why is it important to have disability representation in politics?
Stephanie, do you want to kick us off on that?
Stephanie Reyer: Yeah, so disabled people make up around 20 to 25 percent of the population in Britain and elsewhere. Um, so in some societies they're considered one of the largest minority groups. At the same time, disabled people are really strongly underrepresented among political representatives.
Probably most of us, if we think about the political representatives that we know, not that many disabled people or people who disclosed being disabled come to mind and we will talk a little bit more about the situation. In Britain and elsewhere later on, but generally it's widely accepted, even though we don't have a lot of actual data, it's widely accepted that disabled people are strongly underrepresented in politics.
They certainly don't make up the 20 to 25 percent of politicians that disabled people make up of the population. Um, and so whenever a group in society is less underrepresented in politics. That suggests that there's something not functioning well with the democratic system. Democratic and political equality isn't given because otherwise we would have more disabled people represented in politics.
So in that sense, disability representation is important as a matter of justice and democratic quality. But it's also particularly important because disabled people are such a minoritized group, a marginalized group in societies. A group experiences a lot of inequalities. And barriers in their daily lives.
Uh, disabled people tend to have lower achievements in terms of education, employment, and income. They have a higher risk of poverty. They tend to be less socially integrated. They have higher risks of being victims of violence, less access to healthcare, and so on. And many of these inequalities are due to a lack of accessibility of public spaces, for example, and a lack of awareness in society of the barriers that they face.
Disabled people face and ultimately, arguably a lack of, of willingness and awareness among political decision makers to tackle those issues. So this suggests that political decision makers haven't been paying enough attention and probably just aren't aware, sufficiently aware of the concerns of many disabled people.
And on this basis, there is a powerful argument to say that having more disabled people involved in the policymaking process as elected politician. It's very important because they are likely to be more aware of the concerns and the interests of the disability community and also better motivated, more motivated, a better place to represent them.
Finally, there's also the importance of role model. So the idea that you can't be what you can't see. Um, it's important that disabled people can see others who are like them, look like them, share similar experiences in positions of influence and power. Because that might motivate them to become more involved in politics.
So we know from our research and other scholars research that disabled people have lower turnout rate. They also have lower levels of trust in politicians and trust that politicians are responsive to their needs and concern. Um, and this might potentially be, be partly. Explained by a sense that there just aren't many politicians who are disabled and share the same experiences and understand the concerns that shabled citizens have, which then in turn basically makes them withdraw, not all of them, but makes some of them withdraw from, from electoral politics.
And so there's this. potential vicious cycle that needs to be broken where when there are more disabled people represented in politics, we might also get more and more disabled people feeling motivated to enter politics. And of course, part of that mechanism would also be an increased accessibility of politics.
So very often politics only becomes accessible once there have been some individuals who have asked for greater accessibility. And that, that paves the way for future generations of politicians.
Alan Renwick: That's a really clear answer. Thank you so much. Elizabeth, do feel free to pick up and build on anything that Stephanie has said there, but I guess particularly it would be interesting to just explore a bit further the, the current state of representation of disabled people in the UK.
Elizabeth Evans: Yeah, thank you. I guess I would add to that, that the political representation of disabled people is a topic that hasn't received much attention, either from political actors, political parties, governments around the world, nor has it received much attention from political scientists either. So there's a lot we don't know about the representation of disabled people, and some of which we try to grapple with in our books and our ongoing work.
But it's also clear that disabled people themselves, which came up during our interviews that we did for the book, want more disabled representatives. So they feel underrepresented. And one of the key slogans of the disability rights movement is "nothing about us without us". And so having more disabled representatives is really important because it puts disabled people at the heart of policy making as well.
Rather than having policy created. That impact negatively, usually disabled people, you can have disabled people as part of the decision making process. So that's, that's really important in terms of thinking about the quality of policymaking that occurs, particularly in relation to disability, but also of course, in relation to health, to transport, to education as well.
So in the UK, we know that following the 2024 general election there are currently 10 MPs who have self described as disabled. None of those are conservative. So they're all Labour and on the Liberal Democrat benches. During the election campaign itself, disability didn't really come up as a major topic.
The manifestos didn't really pay much attention to disability either. And that was a source of frustration for. the disability groups within the political parties as well, feeling like their issues weren't really being discussed. Although there are only 10 MPs who, uh, describe themselves as disabled, Freedom of Information request from the Disability News Service revealed that 43 MPs had requested reasonable adjustments since becoming MPs.
Now that's quite interesting because there's clearly a gap between 10 MPs who are describing as disabled and 43 who are requesting reasonable adjustments. Now requesting a reasonable adjustment is not something that only disabled people do. I mean, some people prefer to have desks that you can stand up to work at.
Perhaps you have back, back problems. But nonetheless, it is something that we have discovered through our ongoing research that there are politicians and political actors who are disabled, who don't want to disclose the fact that they're disabled for fear of the stigma and discrimination that goes along with that.
So part of our research is also about how do we challenge and tackle some of the ablest underpinnings of our political system, not just in the UK, but in other countries as well.
Alan Renwick: Before we get on to that, I guess we should just clarify, how are we defining disability here? Because you were referring already there to a number of different measures and different ways in which we could get at that and When we're thinking about levels of disability representation in politics, you know, we're comparing numbers among MPs with numbers in the population as a whole, which I guess potentially are being measured using different definitions.
So how should we get our heads around this? Elizabeth, do you want to? Stephanie, go for it.
Stephanie Reyer: Yes. So there are many different, uh, slightly different definitions of disability. So the one that we tend to use in our work is. Um, one of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which says that persons with disabilities include those who have long term physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory impairment, which in interaction with various barriers may hinder the full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.
So what's really important about this definition is that it touches upon Both the impairments that people have, and here we already see that it's a very heterogeneous group. So it includes, as I said, long term physical impairment, but also long term mental health condition, learning disabilities, sensory impairments, and so on.
So it's a very, very diverse group. But the common experience of people who are within this group, who are disabled, is that they experience various barriers within society, which hinder their full and effective participation. on an equal basis with others. Now, this is a really important idea that has been emphasized by the social model of disability, which has been developed by disability rights advocates in the UK in opposition to the medical or individual model that used to be very widespread.
The medical model focuses more on an individual's impairment and how that can be addressed, whereas the social model says that Really, it's the barriers that exist within society that disable individuals who have impairment. But the idea is that by tackling these barriers, people can fully participate on an equal basis with others.
Uh, this is also why in the UK, we use the term disabled person rather than person with a disability to emphasize that people are being disabled by these barriers that exist. In society, but we also want to acknowledge that the convention around terminology differs between different regions in North America, for example, a person with a disability is much more common, whereas in the UK, we use the term disabled person, but of course, also disabled individuals anywhere might have their personal preferences in how to talk about disability now.
That's, that's the definition, but of course it's still extremely broad and the question is how does one define, you know, or, or determine whether someone is disabled, especially when it comes to these barriers and the extent to which people feel that they experience barriers which hinder their effective participation in society, that's very subjective and that's the approach we've taken in our research.
very much. So whether it's surveying individuals, surveying citizens, or whether it's asking politicians to be interviewed by us, we always rely on their self identification as disabled. So in a survey, we would ask, do you identify as, as disabled or similar questions? Whereas with our interviews with politicians.
We would have a call asking for politicians or aspiring politicians to talk to us based on whether they self identify as disabled. Now that becomes really difficult when we're then looking historically at how many politicians there have been who are or were disabled, especially because the language has also changed so much over time.
So in our book, we actually go back to 1866 and analyzing the numbers of disabled MP and analyzing their speeches in parliament. And there we have to use other, other terms as well, other than disabled, but it can be really difficult when it comes to health conditions, like cancer, for example, often people with cancer are, are categorized as disabled, but they might not always see themselves.
as disabled. That's true for a lot of different health conditions, mental health conditions, and so on. Neurodivergence as well. So the line isn't always clear and we find it really important to rely on people's self identification as disabled. Ultimately what we're interested in is the experience of disabled people in politics.
And how that's tied to them being disabled. So that element of self identification is very important in our research.
Alan Renwick: Elizabeth?
Elizabeth Evans: Yeah, if I could, if I could just add to that. It's also true that disability is a very fluid category and people often move in and out of the category over their lifetimes. We know that disability is positively associated with aging.
We know we have an aging population. Therefore, the size of the disability population is likely to grow. And the point about disclosure and sort of identity is really important because research from Leeds shows that around 70 percent of disabled people have what's called an invisible impairment. So you wouldn't be able to tell by looking at them.
So that then changes a bit, perhaps how people perceive and interact with someone who doesn't have a visible impairment versus someone who has an invisible. and raises questions about the point at which you might disclose that.
Alan Renwick: But so there are lots of problems in measurement and definition here, but nevertheless, you're quite clear that we can confidently say that there is under representation of disabled people in politics in the UK today, both in terms of Descriptive representation, so simply numbers of disabled people in politics, but also in terms of what we sometimes call substantive representation.
So the representation of disabled people's policy preferences and interests in politics. So you're very clear that we can be confident of that as a kind of starting point for, for analysis here.
Elizabeth Evans: Yes. I think we'd confidently make the claim that disabled people are underrepresented both in terms of their numerical presence and in terms of the substantive representation.
of issues and interests that are of importance to them. We can think about interviews we've done with disability activists who have told us about their sort of frustrations at the way in which disability certainly in many. Post industrial countries tends to be thought of in relation to work and benefits and tends to be cited within those government departments as well.
So it's seen, disability is seen as a problem of getting people into work rather than, say, thinking about any other issue. That's certainly what came up during the 2024. UK general election, but we also know that there's a gap in terms of the preferences of disabled people being further away from the views of, say, governments.
Do you want to come in here, Stephanie?
Stephanie Reyer: In our book, we look at survey data from across Europe. We look at political preferences on a number of dimensions, such as the general left right ideological dimension, but also other dimensions like support for public spending. And we find that, first of all, there is a gap in preferences between disabled and non disabled people, which also shows us that disability is an important and relevant political identity.
It does actually influence people's political views and political preferences. And we find that, on average, the positions of governments across Europe on these issues are further away from the preferences of disabled people than those of non disabled people. But also looking at the party manifestos, you see that disability isn't mentioned very much across the different parties.
There are differences between parties in the UK, but generally the number of mentions is quite low.
Alan Renwick: Okay, so that's really clear. So we have a very clear picture of under representation of disabled people in British politics. And then I guess the next question relates to, well, what are the causes of this under representation?
And again, this is something that you investigate a lot in the book and also in the article. Maybe before we go into that further, it would be useful for us to say just a little bit more about the research methods that you use in the book. You've already talked a little bit about using surveys and interviews with people.
Would be helpful to hear just a little bit more about what you do with each of these methodologies. So Stephanie, do you want to tell us a bit more about some of the survey research and some of the survey experiments that you do in order to get into this question of the underlying causes of underrepresentation?
Stephanie Reyer: So in the book, we use a number of different surveys to study the preferences. Of, of citizens and to see whether there are gaps in preferences between disabled and non disabled citizens. We also, in our previous research, have looked at political behavior, electoral turnout, using cross national survey data that has been collected by, by other researchers.
But a big part of our research relies on survey experiments that we have conducted. And the aim has been to analyze how voters, citizens, perceive Disabled candidates, our question was whether, and to what extent, negative stereotypes about disabled politicians and prejudice against disabled candidates might be one of the reasons for why we see so few disabled, uh, candidates or, or elected politicians in office.
So we set up a survey in Britain and in the U S where we included descriptions of hypothetical fictional candidates. With a number of characteristics, and one of those characteristics is whether they're disabled or not. We looked at candidates with a mobility impairment who use a wheelchair, at a blind candidate, um, and a deaf candidate as examples of disabled candidates with disabilities that are quite well known among the population.
And we randomly varied whether respondents saw one of the disabled candidates. or a non disabled candidate where no disability was mentioned. And we then asked respondents a number of questions about how they perceived these politicians based on the description, which also included a number of other characteristics and experiences of the politician.
And the randomization of these traits and, and the disability then allows us to identify whether respondents perceptions of these politicians are affected by whether the politician is disabled or not.
Alan Renwick: And what did you find?
Stephanie Reyer: So, our findings were rather surprising to us, but in a very positive sense.
Voters, citizens, both disabled and non disabled, tend to perceive disabled candidates rather positively. So, they see them as more compassionate and caring than non disabled candidates. They see them as more honest and more hard working. Um, and they see them as particularly competent on issues that are commonly thought of being related to disability, where maybe disabled candidates are expected to have specific personal experiences and interests.
So these include healthcare, public spending, and minority rights. So we see that citizens also tend to perceive can, disabled candidates as being more, both more interested in tackling these issues, but also more competent. in addressing these issues. We find that when we look at the vote choice, actually there is hardly any effect of candidate disability at all.
We find that there is a small positive effect among left wing voters who have a small preference for a disabled candidate. And that can be explained by a preference of a lot of these voters to have a greater representation of underrepresented groups in politics. But overall, there's very little net effect of a candidate's disability on their chances of getting elected based on the results from our survey experiment.
We also looked particularly at disabled respondents, and we found that they feel better represented by disabled candidates than by non disabled candidates. And that's particularly the case for people who are not only disabled but also identify with the disability community. So those who really have a strong group identity, they find it even more important to have disabled representatives.
Alan Renwick: So the evidence from these survey experiments seems to be that the attitudes of the general public, at least in the voting booth and in evaluating electoral candidates, are not the source of the problem here. I mean, I guess there's always a bit of a question with survey experiments like this. Are people just giving the answers that they think they ought to be giving rather than what they would truly do if it wasn't a, if they weren't answering a survey, but they were actually evaluating a real candidate in their constituency?
Do you have any thoughts on that?
Stephanie Reyer: Yes. That's always a concern with using survey data to study how voters think about politicians from particular groups, especially if it's a group that's highly stigmatized, but where There might be a desire, a desire not to express that stigma, even in a, in an anonymous online survey.
So we use these survey experiments with a particular design to tackle that issue as much as possible. So we included other characteristics of the candidates as well, um, so that voters could judge the candidates based on all kinds of characteristics, not just whether they're disabled or not. And the particular technique of the survey experiment means that Respondents aren't aware that they are asked to evaluate a disabled politician or candidate, whereas other respondents are, are asked to evaluate a non disabled candidate, and they're not aware that that's the interest of the researcher.
So we're using these, these particular techniques and this survey design to tackle that issue of, of not getting at the real, the potential real prejudice that, that there is. So, yeah, we're fairly confident.
Alan Renwick: So, so far so positive in terms of the story. You also conduct lots of interviews, so qualitative interviews with people in politics in various different settings.
Elizabeth, do you want to tell us about those interviews, the sorts of people you were interviewing and the kinds of questions that you were exploring through those interviews?
Elizabeth Evans: Yeah. I mean, the results from the interviews are definitely less positive about the situation. The experiences of disabled candidates who have faced stigma, discrimination, a lack, lack of accessibility, if they've managed to be selected in the first place. Many disabled people who are active in political parties, finding it difficult to get selected. Barriers, whether that's financial barriers, whether that's A lack of accessibility in terms of the buildings that local party meetings are held in or accessibility in terms of the way in which material is provided to people in order to engage with party politics or just.
Uh, stigma and discrimination. So we interviewed the book over 80 disabled politicians, disabled candidates, disability activists within the political parties. And we were really interested in finding out what their experiences were, whether barriers existed, whether they'd received any support or encouragement, whether any reasonable adjustments had been made in order to facilitate their greater participation in the political process.
At what points disabled people were kind of dropping out of being involved in politics. And actually, I think what we found by the time we'd finished our book project is also that there's, there's a sort of pre-stage to all of this, which is that there's a disability voting gap and that many disabled people.
are prevented from participating and engaging in the political process in the first place through inaccessible voting systems and structures. So we go through the various stages at which disabled people experience barriers and discrimination, both from the point of initial voting through to joining political parties.
Very often the parties don't have accessible websites. Local parties don't meet in accessible venues. Through to the point at which you're a candidate, at which you might experience some discrimination and then the experiences of disabled politicians once they're elected, finding it difficult to carry out their representative duties.
because of barriers that exist there as well. So our interviews were really designed to, to capture the whole kind of journey through of being a disabled person, trying to be involved in politics and how politics simply doesn't work very well for disabled people. And I think in part that also goes to the way in which we think about politics and the kinds of ideas about who makes a good politician.
And although we have the survey data to show us that people don't discriminate against disabled candidates, we know that the ways in which we tend to think about politicians tends to take as a normalized kind of ideal, a non disabled. Politician, which then makes it very hard for those few who become elected to kind of break through and to kind of break down the stigma associated with disability.
So we interviewed anyone who wanted to be interviewed. We worked with the disability groups within the political parties in order to reach out to as many people as possible. Obviously for the smaller parties with fewer financial resources as well, it was difficult for those disabled activists to be able to access the support and the reasonable adjustments that they required.
But even within the larger parties, too often there is a failure to make those reasonable adjustments. We interviewed disabled candidates who couldn't attend their own campaign events because it was held in an inaccessible venue, which is obviously totally unacceptable.
Alan Renwick: And it's interesting listening to you there. It sounds like you're thinking that notwithstanding this survey experiment results, the problems that we have here are not problems associated just with a few kind of parties or organizers or the money that's available within parties and how they choose to use their money in order to resource different activities, but it's actually a much deeper cultural problem and structure of ways of in which we think about these issues that is underlying the difficulties that disabled people experience.
Elizabeth Evans: Yes, I mean, I think levels of disability related hate crimes, disability discrimination, we know these increase during times of economic precarity. And so these kind of situations have been exacerbated, obviously, by the financial situation over the last decade or so, which have made it even harder for disabled people who are struggling to feed themselves and heat their own homes to have the spare time to even engage.
in party politics in the first place. And that came through very strongly from some of the interviews that we undertook with disability rights activists.
Alan Renwick: What then are the solutions? What are the measures that could help to remove the barriers that disabled candidates face? Stephanie, do you want to start off on this?
Stephanie Reyer: Yeah. So in terms of solutions to make politics more accessible for disabled people, there's really a number of smaller steps that can be taken that can be tremendously helpful already. But we also need to really rethink the entire way that politics is done. So for parties to hold events in accessible venues, to provide material in accessible formats, that's really important.
For parliaments. as well in Britain and around the world to ensure that the buildings are accessible. These things are, are very important, but to some degree, they're already on the radar of those institutions and those actors. But then there are also a number of issues where I think the awareness is really lacking.
It's really the way that election campaigns and selection processes are conducted, for example. So we found that events like hustings can be really inaccessible for a number of people. People with various impairment and disability types, those stages might be inaccessible again, but also the speed of the debate can be really difficult for, for example, people with anxiety or deaf people who will have a sign language interpreter there.
And these are really fundamental parts or aspects of how politics is conducted. Also the expectations that politicians are always working. That they are always available either to be in parliament, participate in debate and get to parliament to vote, to the chamber to vote, but also that they're constantly accessible to their constituents.
This is also something that, that we as a society need to rethink. Um, and there's also research showing that politicians have really high levels of mental health. Problems, not only pre existing conditions, but also as a result of the stresses of the job. And this can be particularly difficult for disabled people.
For example, those with energy limiting conditions. Things that can be done include thinking about how we expect campaigns to be conducted, how political parties expect campaigns to be conducted. So we've heard of cases where candidates had to knock on a certain number of doors. As a candidate for their party.
So thinking about more creative methods like conducting campaigns more online, or having a stationary stall from where the campaign is conducted. These are really small steps that can be done, but that require a bit of a rethinking of how politics are, is conducted. Then there are also things that might require a little bit more changes and policies.
Uh, in parliament, for example, introducing or, or expanding electronic voting, a lot of MPs find it really difficult to, you know, get back and forth within Westminster from their office to the chamber to vote, holding more meetings in a hybrid format, something that we saw during the pandemic is possible and was being done, but has been rolled back.
Um, to a large degree, and this would also be very helpful for other groups as well. For example, politicians with caring responsibilities. So a lot of these changes that would help make politics more accessible for disabled people would also make politics more accessible for all kinds of other groups.
Another change that is discussed a lot, but also brings with it a lot of questions and potential issues is job sharing. So having two individuals. And then a big point that is being lobbied on a lot at the moment by disability rights organizations and activists is financial support for candidates. So the UK is actually quite advanced in international comparison when it comes to supporting candidates financially, because we used to actually have the access to elected office fund.
The Westminster between 2012 and 2015, which provided financial support for disabled candidates with the idea of leveling the playing field. And a lot of the, the funding went into paying for transport, for example, taxis, paying assistants that would go canvassing with candidates, sign language interpreters, who could help deaf candidates campaign or attend meetings, assistive technology.
Mobility aids, even things like posting leaflets instead of going from door to door and distributing them. So that financial support for disabled candidates was generally perceived as extremely helpful by candidates. But the Access to Elected Office Fund finished in 2015. There was another follow up interim fund, the Enable Fund, between 2018 and 2020.
But that also hasn't been continued. And even though The previous government has promised to, to put in place another fund of that kind that hasn't happened yet. So, as I said, there's a lot of campaigning happening. And in Scotland, for example, there is an access to elective office fund at the moment. And in Wales, there has been an interim fund as well.
So this is definitely something that is or has been on the political agenda. But that isn't in place right now, and that wasn't in place for the 2024 election.
Elizabeth Evans: And just on that access to elected office point, it, we're talking a relatively small amount of money here. I mean, it's literally a couple of hundred thousand pounds, and most of the disabled candidates that were applying to the access fund were only asking for extremely modest amounts.
usually somewhere between 500 quid and a thousand pounds. So this is a small amount of money for the government to invest. It also levels the playing field because it allows candidates from smaller parties who wouldn't be able to get the extra funding from their own political party to, to access this fund in order to enable them to stand.
But it also kind of creates an environment in which it makes it clear that Increasing the number of disabled candidates and increasing the number of disabled politicians is a good thing, right? It's, it's something that we want to encourage as a society. It's something that we put value on. The idea that disabled people have something positive to contribute and aren't just the subjects of state policy, but can play a key role in creating it as well.
Alan Renwick: So it sounds like your kind of final message to politicians and policy makers is there's a real big problem here that they need to address, but it's not impossible to address it. There are steps that can be taken in some ways, quite small steps, but steps that would just have big, big impacts further down the line.
Elizabeth Evans: Yes. And I think we, I mean, we're quite, I mean, we're not making the claims that increasing the number of disabled politicians will eradicate ableism and disablism in society. Because we can learn the lessons from women's representation. Having a woman prime minister doesn't eradicate sexism. So it's not that this is the solution to disability inequality, but it's one of the key ways in which we can help to address the inequalities that disabled people experience in society.
Alan Renwick: Well, thank you both so much. This has been such an illuminating conversation on a topic that, as you say, rarely gets aired in political science, but is nevertheless an incredibly important one. And you've also given us a bit of hope at the end there that there are some concrete steps that can be taken.
So thank you. We've been discussing the book Disability and Political Representation written by Elizabeth Evans and Stephanie Rayer and published in March 2024 by Oxford University Press. And also we've been discussing the article No Level Playing Field, Barriers to Disability Representation in Politics published towards the end of last year in the Political Quarterly.
As ever, we'll put the details in the show notes for this episode for both of those publications. And if you haven't taken time to look at it yet, do remember that the Political Quarterly is a journal that, much like this podcast, seeks to make the latest research about politics and policy accessible and relevant to wider audiences.
So it's well worth exploring. Next week, we will be looking at new research examining the factors that shape people's political attitudes. To make sure you don't miss out on that or other future episodes of UCL Uncovering Politics, all you need to do is subscribe. You can do so on Apple, Google Podcasts, or whatever podcast provider you use.
And while you're there, we'd love it if you could take a moment of time to rate or review us too. I'm Alan Renwick. This episode was produced by Eleanor Kingwell Banham and Kaiser Kang. Our theme music is written and performed by John Mann. This has been UCL Uncovering Politics. Thank you for listening.