Austerity governance and bifurcated civil society: The changing matrices of urban politics in Athens

ABSTRACT

In this article, the shift from government to governance in local affairs is viewed through the “rescaling” lens and the changing relations between state and civil society via a scalable interpretation of the Gramscian notion of the “integral state.” The case in point is Athens, in which formal and informal collaborative vehicles for decision making were explored. At the city hall level, we show how the rescaling of the local state and the politics of austerity is influencing the recomposition of civil society, shaping a new form of “elite pluralism” based on the power and influence of third-sector multinationals. At the civil society level, we investigate the variety of grassroots collaborative initiatives that have sprung recently up, underscoring their firm avoidance of austerity-related agents, policies, and institutions. Austerity is changing the matrices of Athens's urban governance. It is bifurcating civil society into an elite sector partnering with the city and a grassroots element that positions itself outside the austerity machine.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Jonathan Davies for his insightful comments on parts of this work in its early stages.

Notes

1. Reference is made here to the introduction of the regional tier of administration (1986), the transformation of prefectures into political authorities (1994), and the amalgamation of municipalities (1997) into 1,034 units.

2. Public–private partnership as formally defined and encouraged by the EU (see Commission of the European Communities,, 2004).

3. The Migrants Integration Council is an advice-giving body in the form of a forum that bridges the municipality with city-based third-country national organizations. Likewise, the municipal Deliberation Committee engages the local authority, local businesses, and civil society in goal-setting efforts. In an attempt to involve as wide a range of local voices as possible, a quarter of its members are randomly recruited individual citizens (Chorianopoulos, 2012).

4. Actor codes used in this article are as follows: EP = elected politician; UP = unelected politician; LO = local authority official; TU = trade union official; VSE = voluntary-sector employer or employee; SB = small business employee/owner; CA = community activist; CBO = community-based organization; PA political activist. Gender codes are M, F, or other.

5. The bailout agreement (2010) introduced quantitative restrictions on employment policy in the public sector (Ministry of Finance, 2014).

6. According to figures provided by the Centre of Athens Labour Unions (2017), between 2013 and 2017 a total of 23,497 workers stopped participating in their unions’ electoral processes, representing approximately 20% of the unionized labor force in the region.

7. An indication of the variety of these initiatives and their alternative political–economic orientation is provided by Kavoulakos and Gritzas (2015), recording in Athens a total of 68 social medical centers, 84 alternative currency initiatives, 71 education collectives, 58 “no middlemen” markets, and 140 cooperative enterprises.

8. During 2015 the team served more than 10,000 portions of food in various areas.

9. Examples of such web platforms include “volunteer4Greece” and “solidarity4all.”

10. The “One Stop” initiative is such an example. Two semiformal NGOs (the Bridge and Ithaca Laundry), together with Parea, one activist group (The Unseen) and a number of individuals gather twice a week in the synAthina venue, offering food and a variety of services (legal advice, first aid, laundry, haircuts, showers, etc.) to the homeless population.

Additional information

Funding

The research discussed in this article draws from the Economic and Social Research Council–funded study of Collaborative Governance Under Austerity (grant number ES/L012898/1).

Notes on contributors

Ioannis Chorianopoulos

Ioannis Chorianopoulos is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, University of the Aegean. His research interests relate to urban governance, residential segregation, and austerity urbanism.

Naya Tselepi

Naya Tselepi received a doctorate in human geography from the University of the Aegean, Greece, in 2016. Her main areas of research include collaborative governance, “the commons,” and enclosures, borders and mobilities, biopolitics and control, and the philosophy of assemblages.