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Despite solidarity being a central term in discussions about political struggle and allyship, the concept is rarely connected to disability in the scholarly literature. Historically, solidarity has often been theorised with respect to ideas of contribution through work, whereas disabled people have been presumed to be unable to contribute to the common good. Hence, there is a need to crip our understanding of the concept. Drawing on feminist and disability theory, I argue that a recognition of a shared vulnerability that implies mutual dependencies can be figured as the foundation of solidarity. This can serve as the basis for political alliances between different groups struggling together for societies where we carry our shared vulnerability as equals. This way of understanding solidarity has implications far beyond the field of disability studies, not least as an antidote to the ubiquity of austerity and workfare, targeting disenfranchised groups as well as the working class more generally.

This dissertation examines contemporary politics targeting people with intellectual disabilities. Since this group first emerged, under labels such as 'idiocy' and 'mental deficiency', around the turn of the 20th century, its members have been seen as lacking the capacities necessary for citizenship and full societal belonging. For the last forty years, however, liberal democracies and international organizations have set out to include the group through policies promoting citizenship, emphasising 'self-determination', 'independence', and 'autonomous decision-making' as key ambitions. As a result, institutional care has been downscaled and replaced by socially integrated living arrangements. This is often described as a shift of paradigms in disability politics. I argue that this shift means that the same ideas of humanity, as characterised by 'reason' and 'rationality', that was once used as a yardstick to define and exclude 'intellectual disability', are now being put to work to include the group. The purpose of the thesis is to provide a theoretical understanding of what happens after the introduction of this kind of politics, in the era that I call 'post-institutionalisation'. I do so by approaching the government of this group as an instance of what Foucault called 'biopolitics', which denotes the efforts of governments to manage human life, and by drawing on Judith Butler's theorising of subjectivity.The dissertation proceeds in three analytical steps. In its first part, by focusing on how 'intellectual disability' is constituted by scientific and classificatory knowledge, I argue that this diagnosis came into being and persists for purposes of government. Rather than being a biologically rooted condition that policies respond to and target, it is a political and normative category that is made to appear as biological and natural. In this way, a firm line between 'normalcy' and 'intellectual disability' is constructed. In the second part, I examine how this group today is targeted by policies aiming for inclusion and citizenship. The result of how intellectual disability is both seen as the opposite of the norm of the 'good citizen' and as the target of citizenship inclusion, is a politics that simultaneously includes and excludes intellectual disability. Thus, rather than discarding the power exercised over people with intellectual disabilities, power has transformed into a biopolitical regime that seeks to mould members of this group to become included citizens, whilst concurrently upholding their exclusion by continued constraints. Lastly, in the third part of the study, I examine the possibilities of contesting the contemporary biopolitical regime. Here, the main argument is that a productive critique of the government of intellectual disability needs to reconsider the notion that humanity is defined by its capacities of 'reason' and 'rationality'.

In recent years, counterradicalization work has come to focus on empowering vulnerable communities and individuals through programs implemented by local governments and welfare services. This article examines this new regime of counterradicalization, focusing on how such programs seek to immunize people allegedly susceptible to radicalization by making them "active citizens." In contrast to the stated ambitions of these programs and much scholarly work on prevention, we do not see counterradicalization by citizenship empowerment as a way of giving back power to the communities where terrorism emerges. Rather, these programs are set up to manage the self-image and behaviors of individuals perceived as "risky," which means that they operate by shaping subjects. Undertaking an in-depth analysis of two programs of prevention through empowerment, we outline the rationalities underpinning this new way of countering radicalization, showing how they make use of "citizenship" as a political technology.

This article aims to understand the prevalent leadership models in seven prominent leadership development programmes targeting emerging and aspiring civil society leaders in Sweden and the United Kingdom (UK), which have two different civil society regimes. An analytical framework based on ideal-typical leadership models (transactional, transformational and collaborative) helps us distil how programmes conceptualise first the relationship between leaders and the subjects of leadership, and second, how they conceptualise core leadership qualities. Our analysis of documents and interviews with programme designers finds that programmes in both contexts predominantly conceptualise leadership in an individualistic and personalised way. Yet, Swedish programmes have a stronger focus on top-down leadership models, whereas programmes in the UK increasingly incorporate elements of the collaborative leadership model. The identified similarities and differences call for further systematic analysis of the relationship between external, structural and organisational factors and the content of leadership development programmes across civil society regimes.

Top civil society organisations (CSOs) face a particular legitimacy dilemma as they need to have leaders who are seen as legitimate by the elite groups they interact with, and by those they represent. This article investigates how they handle this dilemma by studying legitimation practices of newly appointed leaders. Based on Weber's theory of authority and Pitkin's theory of representation, the article investigates 114 public announcements of governance leaders in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the EU. The article finds a common model of civil society elite legitimation beyond national differences. The observed model draws on two types of claims: promoting leaders as excellent and astounding professional leaders (charismatic authority) and as able spokespersons (substantive representation). Major European CSOs hence legitimate their leaders as being 'on par with' other top leaders, as an elite among other elite groups, similar to trends of personalisation in politics and business.