Regimes of austerity

Abstract

This article discusses the European wave of contention catalysed by the financial market crash of 2008/9 and the subsequent imposition of austerity measures by governments across the continent. It develops two central arguments. First, it argues that we need a clearer and more sharply differentiated understanding of the operation of austerity as a social and political phenomenon than can be accounted for by reading the crisis of austerity as a solely material set of grievances. Second, it dissociates austerity into a series of interconnected regimes, which are fiscal, ideological, political and civic. In so doing, I show how the material aspects of austerity are intimately tied to the ideational, institutional and spatial enclosures they create, enabling us to see more clearly how the practice of austerity is intimately tied to the progressive dismantling of collective democratic space. The transformative potential of anti-austerity mobilizations accordingly lies in their capacity to develop an alternative moral economy grounded in new forms of solidarity and sociability, whether in workplaces or in the civic squares.

Keywords:

• Austerity
• strikes
• occupations
• pro-democracy movements
• enclosure

Acknowledgements

I’d particularly like to thank Dimova Gergana, Kevin Gillan, Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik, Tom O’Brien, Martin O’Shaughnessy, Vicki Whittaker, and most of all, my co-editor Cristina Flesher Fominaya, for their help, encouragement, and critical feedback on the writing of this article.

Notes

1. ‘Public sector strike rallies held across the UK’, BBC News, 1 December 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15953806.

2. The EU’s Excessive Deficit Procedure places states’ fiscal policies under the monitoring of the European Commission. The U.K. entered in 2008; Spain, Greece, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria entered in 2009; Denmark entered in 2010.

3. In Ireland, at the March 2011 general election the free market conservative Fine Gael replaced the more centrist Fianna Fáil as the dominant governing party, but did so in coalition with the centre-left Labour party.

4. For leisure centres, see protests against plans announced in 2013 by Manchester and Birmingham city councils to achieve local budget cuts by closing five and nine leisure centres and swimming pools, respectively, replacing them with a smaller number of privately run leisure centres: ‘Protest over Manchester swimming pool closure plans’, BBC News, 2 February 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-21306818; ‘Nine Birmingham leisure centres face closure through council cuts’, BBC News, 26 November 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-25105623. For Barnet, see ‘Squatters reopen Friern Barnet library after council closes service’, The Guardian, 11 September 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/sep/11/squatters-reopen-friern-barnet-library. A BBC investigation, based on Freedom of Information requests, found that between 2010 and March 2016 the number of council-run libraries in the U.K. fell from 4290 to 3765. During this period, local councils closed 343 libraries, and transferred a further 232 out of local authority control (174 to community groups, and 58 outsourced to private concerns). At the same time, the number of paid library staff positions was reduced by approximately 25%, as paid staff were replaced by unpaid volunteers. See ‘Libraries lose a quarter of staff as hundreds close’, BBC News, 29 March 2016, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-35707956.

5. See ‘“Two legal reform projects undermine the rights of assembly and expression in Spain” – UN experts’, UN Human Rights Council press release, 23 February 2015, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=15597&LangID=E.

6. Amanda Brown, speech to the ILO Conference 2016, ‘TUC speaks out against the Trade Union Act’, 6 June; see https://www.tuc.org.uk/CAS-TUC.