Austerity Measures

The Routledge Handbook of Neoliberalism seeks to offer a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon of neoliberalism by examining the range of ways that it has been theorized, promoted, critiqued, and put into practice in a variety of geographical locations and institutional frameworks. Neoliberalism is easily one of the most powerful discourses to emerge within the social sciences in the last two decades, and the number of scholars who write about this dynamic and unfolding process of socio-spatial transformation is astonishing. Even more surprising though is that there has, until now, not been an attempt to provide a wide-ranging volume that engages with the multiple registers in which neoliberalism has evolved. The Handbook of Neoliberalism accordingly serves as an essential guide to this vast intellectual landscape. With proposed contributions from over 50 leading authors, the Handbook of Neoliberalism will offer a systematic overview of neoliberalism’s origins, political implications, social tensions, spaces, natures and environments, and aftermaths in addressing ongoing and emerging debates. Numerous books have been published on neoliberalism, including important edited volumes, but none of these contributions have attempted to bring the diverse scope and wide-ranging coverage that we plan to incorporate here. Most of the edited volumes and monographs on neoliberalism that have been published to date have a very specific thematic focus, either on particular empirical case studies, or alternatively attempt to wrestle with a specific theoretical concern. In contrast, the Routledge Handbook of Neoliberalism aims to provide the first comprehensive overview of the field.

With authors working at institutions around the world, the Handbook of Neoliberalism will offer a thorough examination of how neoliberalism is understood by social scientists working from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. Our goal is to advance the established and emergent debates in a field that has grown exponentially over the past two decades, coinciding with the meteoric rise of neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology, state form, policy and program, and governmentality. In short, the Handbook of Neoliberalism will intervene by both outlining how theorizations of neoliberalism have evolved and by exploring new research agendas that we hope will inform policy making and activism. The Handbook of Neoliberalism will include a substantive introductory chapter and seven main thematic sections. By presenting a comprehensive examination of the field, this edited volume will serve as an invaluable resource for undergraduates, graduate students, and professional scholars alike. We envision the book as both a teaching guide and a reference for human geographers, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, heterodox economists, and others working on questions of neoliberalism and its multifarious effects.

In this paper we analyze the historical roots of neoliberal housing policies, mottos and principles in Italy and Spain, two countries with a Mediterranean welfare regime, showing how they are embedded in the twentieth century fascist-dictatorial regimes of Mussolini and Franco. To stimulate economic growth in a situation of autarchy, both regimes saw the construction sector and the promotion of homeownership as keys to fuel the accumulation process while believing this guaranteed social order. After acknowledging these long-standing roots, we show how the current phase of neoliberalism, characterized by severe austerity policies, relies on similar principles, the main reforms approved in both countries proceeding mainly towards cuts to service provisions and resources, while the promotion of homeownership remains unchallenged.
Keywords: neoliberalism; housing policy; austerity policies; Mediterranean welfare regime; Italy; Spain

This paper seeks to extend geographic thinking on the changing constitution of the UK welfare state, suggesting the need to supplement ideas of the “shadow state” with an analysis of the blurring of the bureaucratic practices through which welfare is now delivered by public, private and third sector providers alike. Focusing on the growing convergence of the bureaucratic practices of benefits officials and food bank organisations, we interrogate the production of moral distance that characterise both. We reveal the ideological values embedded in voucher and referral systems used by many food banks, and the ways in which these systems further stigmatise and exclude people in need of support. Contrasting these practices with those of a variety of “ethical insurgents”, we suggest that food banks are sites of both the further cementing and of challenge to the injustices of Britain's new welfare apparatus.

Taking the recent debate on austerity as a starting point, this paper discusses contradictions in current processes of neoliberalisation using the marketisation of elderly care in Switzerland as an example. Just as in other countries, an austerity rationality in public spending and the neoliberal restructuring of public health services paved the way for the emergence of private suppliers of 24 hours home care. These new agencies hire migrant women from Eastern European countries and sell packaged care services to the elderly. In so doing, they play a key role in reconfiguring care according to a market logic. They shape the working conditions of live-in migrant care workers and the definition of care itself as a marketable good. In our paper, we analyse the strategies of these new corporate intermediaries based on a market analysis and on interviews with their representatives. We argue that the marketisation of elderly care in Switzerland is illustrative of today’s neoliberalism in that it combines progressive and regressive aspects and owes its emergence to its ambiguous entanglement with many other discourses. The paper illustrates how the transformation of the home into a new space of commercialised care relies on the production and economic valorisation of social and mobility differentials.

This paper draws on the capabilities approach as a framework for examining the impact of the global economic crisis and austerity on quality of working life and work-life balance. Our paper focuses on Greece, an extreme case of a country in economic crisis, characterised by a weak institutional basis. We build on the work of Barbara Hobson and colleagues who first applied the capabilities approach to explore work-life balance capabilities. Our study contributes to the development of theory by emphasising the sense of entitlement concept within the capabilities approach and by proposing a modified conceptual framework that encapsulates the link between capabilities, agency, and the sense of entitlement, where the latter acts as a cognitive ‘filter’ that enhances or weakens an individual’s perception of her/his agency to enact on her/his capabilities. Drawing on the accounts of twenty Greek professional and managerial workers, we illustrate how the crisis and austerity measures have eroded working conditions and thus the sense of entitlement, leading to the weakening of our participants’ agency and capabilities to achieve quality of working life and work-life balance.

The global financial crisis prompted dramatic increases in unemployment and market instability in nearly every state. While the negative effects on national economies have been widespread, distributional outcomes have varied among different labor market groups, particularly between men and women. This article analyzes the gendered impact of the Great Recession on labor markets across the OECD, using random effects modeling of 28 countries across 14 years. We argue that although the start of the crisis afflicted male workers the most, the turn from stimulus toward fiscal austerity policies – including social spending and public employment cuts – exposed women to greater instability.

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Austerity policies — policies of retrenchment in the government budget involving spending cuts and tax increases—are claimed to boost support for radical political parties. We argue, counter to the common wisdom, that austerity measures actually reduce support for radical parties on both ends of the ideological spectrum. Austerity policies force traditional left-right politics to the forefront of political debate with the traditional mainstream parties having a stronger ownership over those issues. We  systematically explore the impact of austerity measures on the rise of radical right- and left-wing parties in 16 developed countries over a 30-year period, while controlling for a number of socio-economic variables. We find that austerity policies that rely on tax increases affect radical parties on the left and the right in different ways than fiscal adjustments based on spending cuts.

We compare the distributional effects of austerity measures that have been introduced in 6 EU countries in the period of large government budget deficits following the 2007-8 financial crisis and subsequent economic downturn. We explore the effects of policy changes presented as "austerity measures" in Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Portugal and the UK, using the EU microsimulation model EUROMOD and the Irish national model, SWITCH. The six countries have chosen different policy mixes to achieve varying degrees of fiscal consolidation. We focus on the first round effects of increases in personal taxes, cuts in spending on cash benefits and reductions in public sector pay across the distributions of household income. There is a range of important conceptual and consistency issues to be addressed when doing such analysis, particularly in a comparative setting. These include how to identify "austerity measures" in a consistent manner, the relevant time periods to consider, the assumptions behind the counterfactual scenarios and the scope of the policies considered. Using a set of common assumptions we find that the burden of fiscal consolidation brought about through changes in components of household disposable income is shared differently across the income distribution in the six countries. At one extreme, in Greece, the better off lose a higher proportion of their incomes than the poor and at the other, in Portugal, the poor lose a higher proportion than the rich. Bringing increases in indirect taxes into the picture can alter conclusions about the overall distributional effect, increasing the cost most for those with lower income and making the overall incidence of the measures more regressive.

In this paper, we examine how conservation-planning and local regeneration in historic urban cores have been reshaped under austerity conditions and how local planners and local government more generally have negotiated or navigated this emerging austerity terrain. We seek to contribute to wider debates on 'austerity urbanism', by examining the impacts of austerity on local planning and how planning officials have attempted to moderate austerity largely imposed by central government (entrenched roll-back neoliberalism) but often through the further roll-out of neoliberalism in local growth strategies. Drawing on the experience of three Irish urban centres, we examine efforts to 'sell' the historic city. Both nationally and within the three case study areas, a common overarching theme was evident in the initial post-crisis response to urban development: an emphasis on utilising heritage as a potential economic regeneration pathway. However, while drawing on intangible heritage and heritage narratives for place-branding, the actual protection of tangible built heritage assets was undermined through a greater emphasis on 'flexible' planning responses to managing heritage, which seek to minimise barriers to development.

The recent economic crisis shaped a new wave of protest in Europe mobilising thousands of people. Austerity measures brought not only the ‘usual suspects’ onto the streets, they also awoke less frequent demonstrators. What brought all these people to the streets? Are their motivations the same for participation in all demonstrations? We compare participants in two types of mobilisations against austerity: those called particularistic (which are reactions to particular anti-austerity issues), and those universalistic (which address much broader issues such as questioning the political system). We also compare two typologies of participants taking into account their participation history: regular and occasional protesters. Employing a two-by-two design defined by type of demonstration (Particularistic vs. Universalistic) and the individual’s participation history (Occasionals vs. Regulars), we found that the differences between demonstrations were smaller than those within types of protesters. Nevertheless, even in this period of hardship, motivation to participate in particularistic or universalistic
protests differ depending on the perceptions of political system, ideological positioning and organisational embeddedness. Interaction analyses showed that different levels of identity, trust in institutions and satisfaction with democracy are crucial in driving people to participate in different types of demonstrations as occasionals or regulars.

The proliferation of debt crises around the world since the 1980’s has generated debt-repayment negotiations prioritizing austerity in debtor countries. This forty-year history of debt crises in the Global South and North now allows comparison of these negotiations and their impacts. We examine the distinct and historically specific trajectories in Latin American and Greece, highlighting the foundations of each experience of debt crisis.  We focus on the institutions responsible for managing crisis and their reliance on similar austerity strategies to compel debtor countries into a neoliberal restructuring of their economies.  This paper examines the similarities and differences in austerity policy through a comparative-historical analysis of Latin American and Greek experiences of debt crisis.  The results of such policies and the political actors involved in implementing austerity are also examined.

Following the outbreak of the 2007-2008 financialized capitalist crisis, many governments in Europe adopted the austerity as a crisis management strategy. However, contrary to early expectations, the austerity deteriorated economic and social situation, bringing about dramatic changes in traditional political settings of many countries. Although it is plausible to trace this political crisis especially in Southern Europe, the recent political paradigm change in France, as a developed capitalist country, represents a very exceptional case. In the age of austerity, French radical left FG and FI, and radical right FN, respectively, ended the hegemony of PS and UMP on national party system. However, despite the simultaneous rise of radical actors, the rise of the former has been largely ignored in the literature. Therefore, in this article, the main reasons behind the regroupment of the French left, which became evident in recent years, have been analyzed. Specifically, the effects of structural political economic conditions, social mobilization, social protest dynamics and political institutional conditions on left competition will be discussed. It is argued that the failure of PS to respond rising crises by alienating its traditional program with the Third Way movement and its integration to mainstream crisis management strategy by implementing austerity policies in the Hollande period triggered the electoral ascent of radical left. However, at the same, the presence of weak anti-austerity social mobilization as well as FN’s dominance on public discourse have significantly limited the electoral success of the aforementioned actors.


Finansallaşmış kapitalist krizin patlak vermesinin ardından Avrupa' da birçok hükümet, kriz yönetim stratejisi olarak kemer sıkmayı benimsemiştir. Ancak kemer sıkma, erken beklentilerin aksine, iktisadi ve sosyal durumu ağırlaştırarak birçok ülkede geleneksel siyasi ayarları alt üst etmiştir. Özellikle Güney Avrupa' da bu siyasi krizin izlerini sürmek mümkün olmakla birlikte, gelişmiş kapitalist bir ülke olmasına rağmen Fransa' da meydana gelen siyasi paradigma değişikliği, oldukça istisnai bir örnek teşkil etmektedir. Bu bağlamda kemer sıkma çağında Fransa' da radikal sol FG ve FI ile radikal sağ FN, sırasıyla, PS ve UMP'nin ulusal parti sistemi üzerindeki hegemonyasını sona erdirmiştir. Ne var ki radikal aktörlerin eş zamanlı yükselişine rağmen literatürde ilkine yönelik ilgi zayıf düzeyde kalmıştır. Bu nedenle, bu makalede, Fransız solunda son yıllarda belirgin hale gelen yeniden gruplaşma eğiliminin temel nedenleri analiz edilmektedir. Spesifik olarak, yapısal politik ekonomik koşullar, toplumsal hareketlilik ve toplumsal protesto dinamikleri ile politik kurumsal koşulların sol rekabete etkileri tartışılmaktadır. Araştırmada PS'nin 1990'larda Üçüncü Yol akımına eklemlenmesinin ardından geleneksel programına yabancılaşarak yükselen krizlere yanıt verememesi ile Hollande döneminde ana akım kriz yönetim stratejisine eklemlenerek kemer sıkma politikaları izlemesinin radikal sol partilerin yükselişini tetiklediği savunulmaktadır. Bununla birlikte kemer sıkma karşıtı zayıf toplumsal hareketlilik ile FN'nin kamusal söylemi tayin eder hale gelmesi, söz konusu aktörlerin seçim başarılarını kayda değer biçimde sınırlandırmıştır.

The economic crisis following the financial meltdown in 2007 had disparate impacts for citizens of the southern and northern Eurozone member states. In this study, we analyze public debates in Germany and Greece, two countries that have attracted global attention during the crisis, through a political claims analysis based on newspaper articles published between 2005 and 2014. The article makes use of multiple correspondence analysis to detect the patterns governing the discursive construction of the European financial and economic crisis. Our findings corroborate the expected differences between the Greek and German debates in regard to core issues and assessments. However , the de-alignment of political cleavages in both countries is notable and stresses seemingly an underlying mainstreaming process that limits the diversity of crisis-related claims.

Este artigo, reconhecendo a relevância das dimensões territoriais e urbanas para uma melhor interpretação da atual crise e seus principais impulsionadores, bem como das suas consequências e reacções sociopolíticas, analisa a evolução recente da Área Metropolitana de Lisboa, perante tempos de crise económica e de políticas de austeridade. O artigo propõe duas conclusões, a merecer estudo adicional com o objectivo de uma sua possível teorização mais alargada: 1) podem distinguir-se fases distintas da crise e uma correlação entre estas, as políticas de austeridade implementadas e a correspondente ampliação dos efeitos da crise nos tecidos
socioeconómicos territoriais; 2) verifica-se o aumento de um confronto de natureza estruturante entre políticas top-down de escalas europeia e nacionais e as dinâmicas sociopolíticas de escalas mais locais e mesmo bottom-up, redesenhando-se os quadros geopolíticos territoriais por formas crescentemente
distintas e mais complexas; de divergências, aproximações e intersecções de base multi-escalar.

This article examines how "resilience" appeared and became embedded as a keyword in Arts Council England's (ACE) policy discourse from 2010, initially in response to the financial crisis in Britain and the government's call for austerity. The general dynamic of what we call policy keywords here is thereby exemplified, while throwing light on Arts policy making at a specific historical juncture in Britain. Some of the features of such policy keywords are considered here: in terms of connotative ambiguities and associations, definitions, and naming or branding practices. Their distinctive purchase in ACE's "resilience" policies is analysed in the process. The policies were designed to reduce public spending by appealing to normative agendas which, in this instance, seemed contingent on a larger and immediate impetus and were derived from the field of "ecological economics".