‘We're Reaping What We Sowed’: Everyday Crisis Narratives and Acquiescence to the Age of Austerity

Abstract

The British public have seemingly accepted the inevitability of the Coalition-government's ambitious fiscal consolidation plan despite the fact that it may harm many. In this context of general acquiescence, many existing accounts appeal to elites: notably, how the narration of a Debt Crisis has rendered the ‘age of austerity’ as both a logical and common-sense response to the UK ‘living beyond its means’ in the pre-crisis years. Utilising the notion that elite-driven crisis narratives must resonate with the ‘mood of the times’, this paper analyses non-elite crisis narratives. Specifically, it looks at how homeowners from middle-class neighbourhoods justify fiscal consolidation – drawing on a series of focus group interviews to do so. It is argued that the shared popular wisdom and experiences are extrapolated from the personal to make sense of the state level – but in a way that tends to legitimise spending cuts. A key aspect to this mood of the times, it is argued, is the notion that the British public are, as one participant put it, ‘reaping what we sowed’.

Keywords:

• financial crisis
• austerity
• everyday politics
• economic ideas

Notes on contributor

Liam Stanley is a doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham, where he is completing his thesis into the politics of fiscal consolidation in the UK. His research interests lie in political economy, economic sociology and social science methodology. He has recently published in Politics, Political Studies and Parliamentary Affairs.

Notes

This article greatly benefited from conversations with and comments from Edward Ashbee, David Bailey, Stephen Bates, Claes Belfrage, André Broome, Ian Bruff, John L. Campbell, Martin Carstensen, Erica Consterdine, Joelle Dumouchel, Iver Kjar, Amin Samman, Leonard Seabrooke and Matthew Wood, as well as those who made comments at presentations in Birmingham, Morecambe, Erfurt and Copenhagen. Thanks are also due to the anonymous reviewers for perceptive and helpful comments, the focus group participants for agreeing to take part, and to the ESRC (studentship award ES/I901825/1) for funding.

1. The parallel here with the work of Luc Boltanski and his co-authors (especially Boltanski and Thévenot 2006) should not go unnoticed. However, while influential, it remains in the background since any attempt to synthesise their considerably complex theoretical apparatuses into the short space I am afforded here would not do it justice.

2. In regard to political science literature, this concept of the actor corresponds with the idea of the ‘bricoleur’ in some institutionalist literature (e.g. Campbell 1998: 383; Carstensen 2011).

3. This strategy of selecting a ‘paradigmatic' group is mirrored by Kidder and Martin's (2012) methodology, in which they select white, Southern, small business owners and managers as an American anti-statist population likely to produce the anti-tax discourse they were interested in.

4. Each area, itself, was selected on the basis of average house prices (see the appendix) and party of local MP in order to ensure variety. Groups A1 and A4 have Labour MPs and lower average house prices, while groups A2 and A3 have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs and higher average house prices.

5. In June 2013, the second of these recessions – from late 2011 to early 2012 – was ‘revised away' due to new data from the Office for National Statistics. However, at the time of the focus group interviews, the double dip recession was still on official record and a prominent part of public debate.

6. However, these groups, while quiescent and cynical about the potential for change at an elite-political level, were far more positive about the potential for grassroots community-based change – which itself may be a reflection of the recruitment strategy outlined above.

7. The moral failings of politicians and bankers – often discussed in terms of one all encompassing ‘undeserving rich’ group – was often given as a core reason for the crisis. For reasons of space, this is not explored here. For this reason, the selective analysis presented here should not be taken to reflect the breadth of discussions in the focus groups.

8. This experiential knowledge is, however, likely to be biased. As the behavioural economic and public choice literature tells us, people are likely to remember losses over gains – what is done to them rather than what is done for them – and then extrapolate from those experiences (Kahneman and Tversky 1984; Weaver 1987: 373; Pierson 1996).

9. Note that this quote comes from an unpublished draft version of the reference.