IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/polsoc/v42y2023i1p104-116..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Political legitimacy and vaccine hesitancy: Disability support workers in Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Helen Dickinson
  • Anne Kavanagh
  • Stefanie Dimov
  • Marissa Shields
  • Ashley McAllister

Abstract

People with disability are an at-risk group in the COVID-19 pandemic for a range of clinical and socioeconomic reasons. In recognition of this, Australians with disability and those who work with them were prioritized in access to vaccination, but the vaccination targets were not met. In this paper, we analyze qualitative data generated from a survey with 368 disability support workers to identify drivers of COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy and why the implementation of this policy may have experienced challenges. We identify a range of themes within these data but ultimately argue that a major driver of vaccine hesitancy in this group is a mistrust of government and an erosion of employment terms and conditions. Drawing on the policy capacity literature, we argue that the “Achilles’ heel” for the Australian government in this case is the critical policy capacity of political legitimacy. This finding has important implications for where the government needs to increase/build policy capacity, strengthening its efforts and better relating to organizations that can be helpful in terms of developing public health messaging for disability support workers.

Suggested Citation

  • Helen Dickinson & Anne Kavanagh & Stefanie Dimov & Marissa Shields & Ashley McAllister, 2023. "Political legitimacy and vaccine hesitancy: Disability support workers in Australia," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 42(1), pages 104-116.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:polsoc:v:42:y:2023:i:1:p:104-116.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/polsoc/puac030
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:polsoc:v:42:y:2023:i:1:p:104-116.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/policyandsociety .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.