GOVERNING IN AND AGAINST AUSTERITY: INTERNATIONAL LESSONS FROM EIGHT CITIES (original) (raw)
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The Urban Governance of Austerity in Europe
The 2008 financial crash and ensuing austerity have brought critical perspectives on political economy into academic debates in democratic theory and public administration. One important area of contention regards " collaborative " and " network " forms of governance. Advocates argue that these comprise an epochal shift that resolves many pitfalls of state and market oriented governance, a consensus that was especially popular during the 1990's and early 2000's. This chapter reports research carried out in five cities in Europe (Athens, Barcelona, Dublin, Leicester, Nantes) exploring the impact of austerity politics on the ideology and practice of collaborative governance – would it endure, or be unravelled by, post-crash exposure to austerity and distributional conflict? The chapter concludes that severe austerity erodes the foundations for strong collaborative governance. The inability to survive the return of distributional conflict leads us to conclude that collaborative governance is fully functional only in times of growth.
Introduction: Local Public Services in Times of Austerity
Governance and public management, 2018
Local Governance in Europe has recently undergone dramatic retrenchment due to the fiscal consolidation adopted by the central governments because of the economic crisis and the consequent decline of fiscal capacity. From 2010 to 2014 a wave of financial cutbacks and limits on public expenditure was enacted by most of the Eurozone central governments (Lodge and Hood 2012). These measures envisaged reductions of provisions and resources as well as new arrangements implemented to save costs (e.g. central budget supervision, reorganization, privatization and program termination) (Kickert., Randma-Liiv and Savi 2013). This retrenchment severely affected local policies across Europe and particularly degraded their core business: the public services. As demonstrated by a recent research (Wollmann, Kopric and Marcou 2016), public services increasingly became a crucial and strategic core of local governance in Europe. In recent years, local authorities have managed a large percentage of the public expenditure on producing and delivering public services to citizens. Hence the steering of services at local level became of major importance for the public sphere, on the one hand, and for citizens' rights-insofar as citizens' proximity to local power enhances transparency, public scrutiny and participation-on the other (Wollmann 2014). Accordingly, the public services (ranging from welfare services-health and social services-to public utilities-water provision, waste collection, transport) may now be considered a crosscutting and significant key to understanding the extent of the retrenchment and its detrimental impacts. As a result, the Local Public Service (LPS) will be the unit of analysis adopted in this book to reflect on austerity policy and look for recommendations. A large body of studies have recently focused on austerity policies and their capacity to solve problems
Austerity in the city: economic crisis and urban service decline?
Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 2014
The city is a significant level of geography at which to examine the economic, political and social implications of austerity. We consider how the financial crisis originated in the urban and became part of a broader state crisis with consequences for cities. We then explore political implications that include the undermining of democratic processes and the rise of new 'austerity' regimes. We also consider implications for key social groups. Arguments are illustrated with evidence from North American and European cities. Finally, we explain how scholars have theorised the situation, which in turn sets the stage for policy and political solutions to the present crisis.
City government in an age of austerity: Discursive institutions and critique
Environment and Planning A
Austerity is an increasingly important feature of urban society in Western countries, both as a site interwoven with the crisis tendencies of capitalism and as spaces mitigating austerity programmes instigated by nation states. Cities have therefore become key spaces in the mediation of ‘austerity urbanism’, but where such processes involve deliberation, making the production of consensus highly problematic. Such tendencies require far greater intellectual sensitivity towards the practices of agents as they seek to enact social control and coordination, as well as subordinate resistance and critique. ‘Pragmatist Sociology’ is utilised in this paper to examine the construction and deployment of discursive institutions seeking to control the behaviour of actors, including reducing critique, with the intention of legitimising austerity programmes. Such discursive institutions establish semantic links between the discursive aims of those seeking to control and the pragmatics of the ever...
Interrogating urban crisis: Cities in the governance and contestation of austerity
Urban Studies
The meaning of 'urban crisis', and its applications in concrete struggles to govern and contest austerity urbanism, remains under-specified analytically and poorly understood empirically. This paper addresses the lacuna by opening up the concept of urban crisis to critical scrutiny. It begins by exploring how urban 'crisistalk' tends to over-extend the concept in ways that can render it shallow or meaningless. The paper looks secondly at different applications of the terminology of 'crisis', disclosing key framings and problematics. In the spirit of critical urban studies, it focuses, thirdly, on practices of crisis-resistance and crisis-making. The paper concludes by summarizing the six urban crisis framings linked to six urban problematics, in order to inform future studies of austerity urbanism and assist in developing more reflexive approaches to the concept.
2017
Introduction From a crisis of the state in Greece to bankruptcy in the city of Detroit, the effects of austerity have had stunning policy implications in much of Europe and North America since the ‘great recession’ started in 2007-08. The history of contemporary austerity is remarkable for how quickly policy consensus was established between global economic institutions, central banks, and national policy makers. After a short flirtation with policies which promoted economic stimulus, politicians in country after country made the case for the necessity of “fiscal consolidation” or austerity, often pushed by the large international lending institutions, such as the IMF, World Bank and the European Central Bank. National (and sub-national) varieties of austerity were rolled out across much of Europe and the US, much as it had been across developing countries in previous decades.
AUSTERITY REGIME AND URBAN GOVERNANCE The (Re)Constitution of Urban Spatiality
This paper aims to elaborate how Austerity Regime, through its derived policies, constitute and reconstitute urban spatiality by informing and structuring the way of its inhabitants perceive and behave in response to the dynamic situation they are facing. The underlying intuitions on which this paper is based are, first, that the austerity regime and the crisis that entails it reconfigure the subject positions of the agents involved and the relations among them around central ideas that differ, though still related to ones prior to the crisis. Second, as a respond to the crisis, the austerity regime is constituted based on certain perception on what the crisis is, how it poses certain problems, and how to address these problems the best. Utilizing Logics of Critical explanation, focusing on welfare policies on housing and employment derived from the austerity frameworks, this paper aims to critically elaborate how the new perceptions, ideas, and behaviors are constituted through those policies and how, on their turn, they simultaneously constitute and (re)constitute the urban spatiality. In doing so, this paper takes the cases of urban governance in some cities in United Kingdom. The loci for the analysis cover the areas of policy processes related to policies in the areas of housing and employment.
Introduction : the politics of austerity in comparative perspective
2014
The introduction explores the politics and political economy of austerity in comparative perspective, setting out the context of current austerity policies and discourse in Europe. It places the specific exploration of the dynamics and particularities of French austerity politics under Hollande within a broader context of changes since the 1980s to democratic institutions and electoral practices, the politics of European integration and the conditions of complex economic interdependence resulting from processes of deregulation, liberalisation and globalisation. It establishes the rationale behind the focus of the articles in this special issue on, firstly, the link between popular approval of elected politicians, democratic legitimacy and austerity; secondly, the politics and dynamics of state reform processes at the national and subnational levels which are integral to delivering on austerity-oriented commitments to reduce public expenditure; and thirdly, on the increasingly asymme...