Governance-driven democratisation and democracy-driven governance: democratic radicalization and co-optation in the case of Barcelona

The participatory and deliberative democratic ideals that underpin participatory governance have gained much popularity with the media and political elites, with illustrious cases such as recent citizen assemblies in Ireland, the UKand France grabbing headlines. These so-called “invited spaces”, because they are generally top-down and opened by public agencies, have been criticised for sanitising and de-politicising participation. Indeed, right at a time when their numbers are growing, the space for meaningful citizen input is paradoxically constrained by technocratic decision-making and the related rise of authoritarian populism. However, the past decade has also witnessed a global expansion of calls for more transformative democratic participation, driven by anti-austerity movements, from Occupy to the Indignados, climate protests such as Extinction Rebellion, or movements for race equality such as Black Lives Matter.

In our paper, recently published open access in EJPR, we focus on changes in participatory governance in the city of Barcelona, whose recent history has included a significant shift from a top-down approach to participatory governance towards attempts to institutionalise more radical and bottom up forms of participation. Inspired by the demands of social movements following the 2008 financial crash and a period of punitive austerity measures, political actors associated with radical municipalist politics have attempted to reclaim and reinvent participatory governance since coming to city office in May 2015. In the paper we explore how these changes were implemented. We move beyond a static and dichotomous understanding of top-down and bottom-up participation and instead we document their dynamic relationship as part of broader processes of political and institutional change.

From governance-driven democratisation to democracy-driven governance

Our paper begins by conceptualising two forms of participatory governance: Mark Warren’s  “governance-driven democratization” and our own concept of “democracy-driven governance”. While it might sound like a tongue-twister, we believe that this distinction is important to capture recent developments in participatory governance. Warren’s governance-driven democratisation describes elite-led participation, which aims to respond to the crisis of trust plaguing representative institutions and help public agencies reach better decisions to increasingly complex issues, while defusing possible conflicts arising from such decisions. Democracy-driven governance, on the other hand, reflects social movement-led participatory governance, which reclaims the spaces of governance-driven democratisation and transforms them into something that can respond to bottom-up demands.

These two concepts are neither fixed nor mutually exclusive. Building on past work that has categorised spaces of participation and begun to theorise their fluidity, we set out to examine more precisely how governance-driven democratisation and democracy-driven governance emerge, develop and interact through a longitudinal analysis of governance changes in Barcelona from the 1980s to the present. We do this in three steps:

· First, we define the shared and divergent characteristics of both concepts. They are both forms of softly institutionalised citizen participation, or what we call routinised participation, but they differ in the reach and scope of the participatory governance they envisage. Governance-driven democratisation seeks to preserve and improve existing institutions by incorporating participation. Democracy-driven governance also seeks institutional improvement but draws much of its inspiration from the prefigurative and effervescent forms of bottom-up democracy that we see when social movements challenge existing arrangements.

· Second, we move beyond presenting a dichotomy by theorising that both forms exist in a dynamic relationship with each other. It is well established in the participatory governance literature that just as “claimed” spacescan close through assimilation, top-down spaces can open “new fields of power” and new opportunities of democratisation. We theorise that regime change, from governance-driven democratisation to democracy-driven governance, can occur at “tipping-points” whereby external shocks, or crises, interact with agential variables such as political leadership and institutional and structural variables such as political and economic context and associational density.

· Third, we put some empirical meat on the bones of this theoretical discussion, through a longitudinal analysis of changes in participatory governance in Barcelona.

The case of Barcelona

Following the democratic transition from Fascism in the 1970s, Barcelona’s participatory governance institutions developed into something closely resembling governance-driven democratisation. Over the 1980s and 1990s, a centre-left leadership oversaw a relatively successful process of post-industrial conversion into a tourism and service-based economy. The participatory infrastructure that had developed as a reaction to Franco’s regime was made functional to this growth model, with opposition placated trough incorporating actors from neighbourhood assemblies. Counter-hegemonic spaces began to flourish where social movements collaborated with critical public servants to develop alternative regeneration models. In what is clearly characteristic of a kind of coexistence and interaction between governance-driven democratisation and democracy-driven governance, Ismael Blanco foresaw that this “alternative network” could prefigure a more radical future approach to urban governance.   

The 2008 financial crash and the ensuing period of austerity marked the tipping point that shifted the governance trajectory. Social movements such as the Platform for Mortgage Victims (PAH) and the Indignados emerged nationally, and in Barcelona they led to the formation of the “movement-party” Barcelona en Comú (BeC) which won the 2015 Municipal elections on an ambitious platform, developed through direct forms of citizen participation and calling for social change and the rollback of neoliberalism. Once in government, the new administration embarked on an ambitious reform programme that ranged from public service re-municipalisation to the promotion of co-operative enterprises. Its policy agenda continued to be informed by citizens and social movements, through interlinked online and offline channels of participatory governance that built on and transformed the pre-existing participation infrastructure.

What can we learn from this case?

BeC’s attempts at institutional change faced fierce opposition from a “pro-status quo coalition”, with influence over, and allies in local and national media as well as within the machinery of government. The limited regulatory powers of the City council constrained capacity for radical reforms, and this highlights the importance of democratic decentralisation to enable local projects for democratic deepening.

One of the major strategies followed by BeC to maintain momentum behind its reform agenda was the continued mobilisation of social movement allies. While important tensions arose as policy delivery failed to live up fully to expectations, empirical research highlights that critical social movements continue to see BeC as an ally, though maintaining their contentious capacity. But the stability of these alliances is by no means guaranteed.

We chose Barcelona as a paradigmatic case of the kinds of processes we want to theorise, but we think that the concept of democracy-driven governance travels just as well to contexts that are not as directly linked to the material fallout from capitalist crises. During the COVID pandemic, we witnessed an outpouring of bottom-up social action, not least through autonomous mutual support networks, providing a stark contrast with the more visible centralisation of power as governments entered crisis management. Will the post-Covid-19 world also generate opportunities for transition towards more radical democratisation? Given the connection between COVID and environmental destruction, might we expect calls for democracy-driven governance to arise from environmentalist groups? Further research into the conditions of emergence of democracy-driven governance might also help us to develop understanding of its resilience in the face of constraints and co-optative pressures.

Dr. Adrian Bua is Lecturer in Urban politics at De Montfort University
Dr. Sonia Bussu is Senior Lecturer in Politics and Public Administration at Manchester Metropolitan University

After the “Age of Austerity”: From COVID-19 to a New “Social Contract”? 

This article comments on findings from a survey of 1,151 respondents undertaken during July/August 2020 by the Institute for Applied Economics and Social Value (IAESV) and Centre for Urban Research on Austerity (CURA) at De Montfort University, Leicester. It explores a notable theme in the survey, the desire for a new programme of government with a more progressive, egalitarian and democratic character than the UK has seen perhaps for decades, and certainly since the global financial crisis of 2008-9. Whilst there has for some years been evidence of such a trend in public opinion, alongside a shift towards socially conservative values (also captured in the survey), the experience of the pandemic appears to have amplified the public appetite for change.

Asked whether government should return to business as usual, or introduce a new programme, 81.4% thought there should be a new programme of government. We then posed a succession of questions about what should happen in future, and what public governance priorities should be. Asked whether we should be placing a greater priority on socialism or free market capitalism, respondents were ambivalent. They were also ambivalent about the extent to which austerity had contributed to Britain’s lack of preparedness for COVID-19, with many neutral on the question and only a slight bias towards the view that it had been harmful. Nevertheless, there was pronounced support for a raft of measures that diverge from the austere public policy priorities of recent years.    

Spending in the Pandemic: We identified overwhelming public support for the increase in public spending in response to COVID-19 (88.9%), with further majority support for continuing higher spending for as long as the virus is a threat. There was less clarity about whether higher spending should continue longer-term regardless of whether the virus remains a threat. However, there was considerable support for increasing taxes on wealth and high incomes, along with a desire for greater social equality.   

Forward Priorities: As to what Britain’s national priorities should be in the coming decade, driving economic growth and funding world class public services topped the list, especially more funding for the NHS. Greater equality was a high or medium priority for a large majority, so too preparing for future crises – perhaps unsurprisingly given the pessimism also expressed about long-term prospects for the UK and the world. Tackling climate change was a high priority, though support for government investment in a “green new deal” was not as high as this level of concern might have suggested. Asked about how views had changed since the pandemic, respondents indicated that they were more in favour of NHS investment, infrastructure spending, higher taxes and spending than they had been beforehand. 

Work and Workers: A significant majority indicated that all workers should be paid a decent living wage and investing in job quality was a priority. Respondents saw class inequality as a significant problem and held positive views about essential and key workers, indicating that improved pay and conditions should be a priority for this group. Views towards overseas workers accessing free health care were positive, and a significant percentage of respondents indicated they had gained a new appreciation for the role of foreign workers during the pandemic. Perhaps surprisingly, a majority reported that they were more in favour of government spending on welfare and benefits than before, with nearly 50% saying they favoured payments regardless of individual need.   

Given common demographic and political biases in surveys, the findings should be treated with a degree of caution. Nevertheless, it is clear enough that there is no appetite for a return to austerity, and that there is an appetite for a new political-economic order. Politicians and commentators have tried to capture this sentiment, summoning the ghost of Roosevelt and the New Deal, while the Financial Times, fearful of rising alienation and social fracture, calls for a new “social contract”. The survey tacitly supports the view expressed by Dominic Cummings, that a majority would happily fleece the bankers and invest the money in the NHS, while also supporting socially conservative policies. 

However, for a Conservative Party long wedded to preaching the evils of big government, tax and spend, the public demand for economic progressivism is likely to be extremely divisive, unlike the social conservative impulses with which many of its MPs and members in any case sympathise. However, as the Conservatives at least gesture to a more expansive role for the state in “levelling up”, Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is left with a puzzle about how to position itself. How can it plausibly oppose an agenda that it also espouses, albeit in a different form? What distinctive political ground can a party committed to moderating its post-Corbyn offer plausibly claim? How does Labour fight to reclaim the progressivist ground that it used to own?  If Boris Johnson is the unlikely face of a 21st century “New Deal”, does it oblige Labour to try and set out its own distinctive view of what this could mean under a Starmer government? Perhaps Labour strategists believe the party is better off keeping its counsel in the hope that a tired and lacklustre PM, heading a fractious party in a terrible public health and economic crisis, will eventually be hoist on his own petard. Electoral success for any party in the near future will depend on the ability to shape, challenge and respond to a new political conjuncture, crystallising at a most extraordinary point in the UK’s history. 

Professor Jonathan Davies

Professor Edward Cartwright

Dr Arianna Giovannini

Dr Jonathan Rose

 

Expanded Resources on the Journal of Urban Affairs Blog for Remote Classes: Video and Power Point presentation on the Special Issue “Worlds of Austerity” edited by Prof Jonathan Davies

This blog is originally posted on: https://juablog.com/2020/05/15/expanded-resources-on-the-juablog-for-remote-classes-video-and-power-point-presentation-on-our-special-issue-worlds-of-austerity-governance-and-resistance-in-eight-cities/ – please visit the JUABlog for the full content.


In trying to promote free access to much of the Journal of Urban Affairs’ content during the Urban Affairs Association’s 50th anniversary, we have expanded our offerings to include videos that can be used for remote classes while face-to-face classes have been cancelled due to COVID-19. A series of posts will be published to the JUABlog.


The first in this series is a video and Power Point presentation by Jonathan S. Davies, providing an overview of the research findings and major implications from his JUA special issue titled “Worlds of Austerity: Governance and Resistance in Eight Cities” (Vol. 42. No. 1, 2020) . Thanks to Taylor & Francis and UAA, this issue has been given free access since being published at the beginning of this year, and will continue to be free access over the coming weeks.


Be safe and stay healthy all!
With warm wishes,
Igor

Introduction to “Worlds of Austerity: Governance and Resistance in Eight Cities” (JUA Vol. 42. No. 1, 2020)

Jonathan S. Davies

This issue arises from a cross-national study of urban austerity governance after the global financial crisis. The research was undertaken between 2015 and 2018 in the eight cities of Athens (Greece), Baltimore, Barcelona, Greater Dandenong (Melbourne), Dublin, Leicester, Montreal, and Nantes. The issue comprises eight case study–based papers, together with an introductory essay by Professor Nik Theodore surveying urban austerity governance in the wider context of neoliberalism and neoliberalization globally.

The study, generously supported by the British Economic and Social Research Council, focused particularly on the politics of austerity and patterns of collaborative, or participatory governance in the post-crisis period. We sought to understand both how cities govern austerity and find more-or-less radical ways of resisting it or working around it. Three key messages emerge from the research, reflected in the JUA essays:

  1. Severe austerity corrodes and undermines the potential for constructive local state–civil society relations in a number of ways linked to rising alienation, social-spatial distancing, network damage, the hollowing out of local voluntary and community sectors, and the erosion of participatory spaces.
  2. Austerity bites very unevenly—more so than we expected. Cities able to maintain strong public and welfare services were better able to build and sustain participatory governance mechanisms than those which do not.
  3. Urban politics makes a significant difference to the way cities have been governed in the age of austerity. In particular, strong urban movements allied to municipalities can change the political conversation and create alternatives, notwithstanding hostile national governments and austerity-driven retrenchment.

A stakeholder facing report is available in English, French, Greek, and Spanish, and can be downloaded from https://cura.our.dmu.ac.uk/category/austerity-governance/.

Table of Contents

1. Governing through austerity: (Il)logics of neoliberal urbanism after the global financial crisis, by Nik Theodore

2. Urban governance and political change under a radical left government: The case of Barcelona, by Ismael Blanco, Yunailis Salazar, & Iolanda Bianchi

3. Austerity governance and bifurcated civil society: The changing matrices of urban politics in Athens, by Ioannis Chorianopoulos & Naya Tselepi

4. Why is austerity governable? A Gramscian urban regime analysis of Leicester, UK, by Jonathan S. Davies, Adrian Bua, Mercè Cortina Oriol, & Ed Thompson

5. Governing austerity in Dublin: Rationalization, resilience, and resistance, by Niamh Gaynor

6. The logics and limits of “collaborative governance” in Nantes: Myth, ideology, and the politics of new urban regimes, by Steven Griggs, David Howarth, & Andrés Feandeiro

7. “La coopération, c’est clé”: Montreal’s urban governance in times of austerity, by Pierre Hamel & Roger Keil

8. Variations on a collaborative theme: Conservatism, pluralism, and place-based urban policy in Central Dandenong, Melbourne, by Hayley Henderson, Helen Sullivan, & Brendan Gleeson

9. The austerity governance of Baltimore’s neighborhoods: “The conversation may have changed but the systems aren’t changing”, by Madeleine Pill

Professor Jonathan S. Davies is the Director for the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity, located at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK

Rapport de diffusion: Gouverner dans et contre l’austérité

Nous sommes ravis de publier notre rapport intitulé Gouverner dans et contre l’austérité. Le rapport présente les premiers résultats de nos enquêtes sur le gouvernance d’austérité en huit villes: Athènes, Baltimore, Barcelone, Dublin, Leicester, Melbourne, Montréal et Nantes.

Nous accueillons chaleureusement les commentaires et les commentaires, vous pouvez télécharger le document sur l’hyperlien ci-dessus.

Έκθεση προς διάλογο: Η διακυβέρνηση της λιτότητας και η αμφισβήτησή της

Βρισκόμαστε στην ευχάριστη θέση της δημοσιοποίησης της έκθεσης με τα πρώτα συμπεράσματα από το  ερευνητικό πρόγραμμα για τη διακυβέρνησης της λιτότητας.  Η έκθεση τιτλοφορείται Η διακυβέρνηση της λιτότητας και η αμφισβήτησή της και καταγράφει συνοπτικά τα ευρήματα της έρευνας στις οκτώ μελέτες περίπτωσης, την Αθήνα, τη Βαλτιμόρη, τη Βαρκελώνη, το Δουβλίνο, το Λέστερ, τη Μελβούρνη το Μόντρεαλ και τη Ναντ.

Σας προσκαλούμε να δείτε και να σχολιάσετε το σχετικό κείμενο, το οποίο μπορείτε να βρείτε στον παραπάνω διαδικτυακό τόπο.

Informe divulgativo: gobernando dentro y contra la austeridad

Nos complace publicar y difundir nuestro informe para el proyecto Austerity Governance. Se titula “Gobernando en y contra la austeridad” y proporciona una visión general de los resultados iniciales de nuestros ocho estudios de casos sobre la gobernanza de la austeridad en Atenas, Baltimore, Barcelona, Dublín, Leicester, Melbourne, Montreal y Nantes.

Agradecemos sus comentarios y sugerencias. El documento se puede descargar en el enlace.

Dissemination Report: Governing in and Against Austerity

We are delighted to publish our dissemination report for the Austerity Governance project. It is titled Governing in and Against Austerity and provides an overview and reports initial findings from our eight case studies of austerity governance in Athens, Baltimore, Barcelona, Dublin, Leicester, Melbourne, Montreal and Nantes.

We warmly welcome comments and feedback, you can download the document on the hyperlink above.

Nantes and Collaborative Governance: ‘Participation? It’s in our DNA!’

GIF RGB 150 Pixels with BorderIn this post Andrés Feandeiro, Steven Griggs and David Howarth  report the findings from a second round of research in Nantes, carried out as part of the collaborative governance under austerity project, sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of its Urban Transformations Network.

When endeavouring to describe the style of governance in Nantes, it is commonplace to compare its form of collaboration to the passing game of the city’s famous football team. The team’s so-called ‘jeu à la Nantaise’, in which the ball moves quickly back and forth between players as they move up the field, seemingly fits for many of those key politicians and officials who aspire to encourage and embed citizen and community participation in the city. In the process of forging new urban development projects in Nantes, as one local senior policy planner typically informed us, ‘the ball circulates a lot between different actors, for a project that is a collective one.’ Or in the words of a policy officer, ‘participation: it’s in our DNA!’

In fact, the current Mayor, Johanna Rolland, has made the practices of co-construction and citizen dialogue one of the priorities for her first term in office. The city council has committed itself to renew participatory governance, which promises a ‘constant dialogue’ between local councillors and citizens. Framed in political terms, the commitments of the city council to co-production are best viewed as a response to the multiple crises facing Nantes and other cities in France, Europe and beyond. On the one hand, citizen dialogue is viewed as a means of countering the broader crisis of politics and social exclusion within communities. On the other hand, it is claimed that participation offers a better way of capturing the expertise of citizens as service-users, thus offsetting the deficiencies of traditional models of public service delivery.

But how are we to make sense of such participatory engagements? How does such political rhetoric translate into practice? Who participates, over what issues, and who decides? What, for example, is the representative legitimacy of civil society actors? And how, ultimately, are we to critically characterise the everyday practices of collaborative governance across Nantes? Though these are necessary and crucial questions, which go to the heart of current debates about urban governance and collaboration, especially during conditions of fiscal tightening, our research exhibits the difficulties of answering them. We thus begin by problematizing the complexities of the Nantes model.

Problematizing participation and collaboration

It is worth noting from the outset that such exercises in participatory governance are not without their tensions and contradictions. Nantes seems unable to escape the charges that have dogged attempts to engage citizens and communities across numerous cities, whether they take the form of labelling participation a new mode of incorporation, or as little more than top-down information giving, or ultimately as an exercise in failed representation. Commenting on the analogy of Nantes’ governance with the passing game of its football team, one of our respondents thus suggested that ‘the question asked is: who do you look for when building a team, and when [do] you pass the ball? […] You may pass the ball, but in the final instance you are obliged to follow […] because the project is too advanced.’

Such criticisms were mirrored in other assessments, which characterised neighbourhood forums as an ‘inconsistent [form of] democracy’, which ‘do not change fundamental decisions’, or which ‘too often… put [communities] in front of things’ that have already been decided. It was claimed, for example, that practices of engagement often remained far too concerned with information-giving, thus becoming little more than ‘pedagogy’, that is, ‘an attempt to explain the project.’ And perhaps more importantly, it was argued that such forums were said not to engage with those people most in need, challenging efforts to combat social exclusion; for ‘people who are truly in vulnerable positions are not in the know, or do not keep themselves in the know, or are not free, for these types of things… they do not go to these meetings…’

Indeed, questions were repeatedly asked about the legitimacy of civil society actors involved in participatory forums and their capacity to represent communities across Nantes. Civil society actors were charged with being ‘apolitical’, non-contestatory and deeply embedded in practices of ‘top-down’ urban governance. One neighbourhood officer commented that ‘we don’t invite organizations (such as unions) that we don’t know, but they don’t come knocking on the door either…. The associations involved in citizen’s dialogue are generally socio-cultural (ones) without an advocacy role… there are none which seize on these occasions to re-orientate urban policy.’

Criticisms, messiness and marginal voices

Yet counter-narratives are also evident and have been readily voiced in our encounters across Nantes. Criticisms of the inability of communities to exercise powers of decision-making were repeatedly countered by the value of keeping such powers in the hands of locally elected politicians. The Nantes model clearly embeds decision-making in the hands of locally elected representatives, while downplaying claims for participatory decision-making below those of representative democracy. In other words, councillor or politically-led decision-making is deemed to be no ‘bad thing’ as ‘it is their [local politicians] job after all.’ Indeed, the basis for judgements on the governance of the city quickly shifted ground, moving from input to output forms of legitimacy, validating practices of coproduction with the assertion that in any case ‘most people are happy with what has been done.’

Such judgements bring out the messiness of practices of participation, co-production and the politics of urban collaboration. They contrast the top-down governance of coproduction with the capacity of communities to challenge dominant policy framings and transform such arenas. It was repeatedly argued by key actors that there are no neat readings of such participatory initiatives in Nantes, for ‘each time that you put a debate into the public arena, there are always those people who seize it and manage to construct some counter-power.’ Forms of resistance were thus deemed to be part and parcel of the governance of participatory forums across the city.

But it is difficult to ignore that much of the resistance and challenge to socio-economic crisis and austerity within civil society tend to exist in parallel to the formal participatory apparatus of urban governance. Civil society actors who advance counter-hegemonic, anti-austerity projects have, on the whole, chosen not to engage in the formal structures of citizen dialogue across the city, especially in relation to the crisis of available and affordable housing in the city. Indeed, these actors see little strategic value in investing in such arenas: ‘Because we have a very militant position, they do not want to see us everywhere. There is … a roadblock… We always have this dialogue where they (the city council) do not want to hear certain things. So (the dialogue) becomes completely stuck in these meetings’. At the same time, their legitimacy and ‘political’ motives are questioned by elected representatives and urban policymakers. As one such policy actor explained: ‘you know the people… (and) unfortunately behind (them), there is often a political party or a political opinion or ideologies… So the guy says ‘I’m a citizen’, but in fact behind (him) there is also a political party that expresses itself…’

Characterizing governance in Nantes

What does this mean for the characterisation of the governance of Nantes? In many ways, our field research has encountered the ‘messy realities’, contradictory readings, and ill-fitting narratives that typically characterise urban regimes. Arguably, parallel forms of ‘dialogue’ appear to be one of the defining contradictions of the Nantes model of participation and these idiosyncrasies of urban governance ‘à la Nantaise’. As if to sum up such difficulties, one of our respondents argued resolutely that while community participation across Nantes could not be dismissed as ‘mere communication’ and ‘display’ – it was not ‘just illusion or propaganda!’ He was, however, quick to add that this did not mean that it had ‘the value of an exemplar, as it is often said.’ At least for this respondent, the truth, sat somewhere in the ‘messy’ middle.

Of course, countless interventions have grappled with the dangers of subsumption, or of forcing complex differences across cities into the constraining frameworks of national, city, or even neighbourhood regimes. Urban theory is replete with references to convergence and divergence, spaces of hybridisation and adaptation, and how local traditions mediate national programmes and broader forces. Do we thus conclude, rather simply, that collaborative governance is in a rather ‘messy’ state of flux? Although tempting, such judgements, like those that either summarily dismiss or endorse practices of governance in Nantes, do not get us very far. In fact, they beg a further set of questions. More precisely, our fieldwork has led us to recognise how collaborative governance under austerity requires a careful deconstruction that exposes the tensions and contradictions of the underlying assumptions of the dominant regime across cities, while enabling their critical evaluation and re-inscription.

Put differently, we need to understand the conditions that over time make possible specific hegemonic coalitions across cities like Nantes, as well as the forms of resistance to dominant coalitions and the potential for the construction of ‘counter-powers’. In so doing, we avoid the temptation to squeeze collaborative governance into pre-determined or over-simplistic categories, while foregrounding the situated judgements of researchers engaged in the field. In short, in claiming that collaborative governance in Nantes is ‘messy’ and in a state of flux, further questions have to be raised. Why does the ‘mess’ take this form? And what alternative spaces and prospects for ‘bottom-up’ change does such a ‘moving target’ offer? It is the answers to such questions that will ultimately shed further light on how ‘metropolitisation’, multi-level governance, and political instability in France impact on urban ‘participation’, citizen dialogue and co-production across Nantes.

Andrés Feandeiro is a research assistant on the Collaborative Governance under Austerity project at De Montfort University, Steven Griggs is Professor of Public Policy at De Montfort University and David Howarth is Professor in Social and Political Theory at the University of Essex.

Montreal: In search of a new approach for defining social solidarity

GIF RGB 150 Pixels with BorderPierre Hamel, Roger Keil and Grégoire Autin report on findings from a second round of research in Montreal carried out as part of the collaborative governance under austerity project, sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of its Urban Transformations Network.

Montreal is renowned for its social and cultural dynamism. It is an important point to underscore as the city continues to struggle to improve its performance in terms of job creation and support for innovation in a variety of sectors, renewing hope in the improvement of working and living conditions for all citizens. It is necessary to remember that structural problems remain at the scale of the city-region. For example, the system of post-secondary education is less successful than elsewhere in turning out university graduates and Montreal’s labour market continues to struggle to integrate immigrants more than in comparable North American cities, as noted in a report released by the ‘Institut du Québec’ (IQ) in November 2015.

In some respect, a discrepancy has always prevailed within Montreal’s neighbourhoods, at least if we go back to the beginning of the 1960s, between, on the one hand, the dynamism of civil society – and more specifically community and voluntary sector organisations – and, on the other hand, the difficulty of the economy to offer well-paying jobs, especially for retaining new immigrants. Furthermore, this situation is no longer exclusively a major concern for new immigrants. Precarious working conditions have been rising almost in all sectors of activity since the beginning of the new Millennium. Nonetheless, among Canadian metropolitan regions, Montreal remains characterized by the quality of overall living standards due to the low social polarization and reasonable housing affordability.

In that respect, the city is demonstrating a dual character. This is due to a tension between social innovation and efficient economic activity. This challenge is anything but new. To some extent, all metropolitan regions are torn between, on the one hand, favoring adjustments to the international market place through, for example, promoting competitive clusters, and on the other, sustaining social solidarity. While those two strategies do not necessarily need to be incompatible, in capitalist economies they mostly are. What can a city do to overcome those contradictions? The answer can be found in local culture and political choices made by the local state and civil society alike.

Like in other urban jurisdictions in this research project and beyond, austerity has been on the agenda in Montreal. But, as we noted in our earlier blog post hard austerity policies have traditionally not been favoured by governments of the city, the province of Quebec and the recent federal government of Canada. Still there is repeated reference to rigeur in the policy landscape, the French term most often used when referring to austerity measures at all levels of government. The overall social consequences of austerity policies remain difficult to assess. But a large consensus prevails among the respondents to our investigation that those policies have been affecting the most vulnerable population groups.  In this respect, an ambiguity exists regarding the time period of reference.

Since their return to power at the provincial level, the Liberals adopted a series of austerity measures in order to reduce the Quebec public debt, the most significant one among Canadian provinces after Newfoundland and Labrador. This has been used as a the main rationale by Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, elected in April 2014, to go forward with drastic measures: cutting expenses in health care and education systems, welfare programs and salaries of government employees. Severe damages in service provision in those areas for some specific social groups have resulted from that. The children living in deprived areas and/or in need of specific educational support, poor people waiting for access to social housing, or recipients of social assistance are among the groups who have been the most affected by those measures.

This said, austerity policies are not an invention created by Premier Couillard in 2014. As a number of our respondents mentioned, this goes back to the Fordist crisis of the 1970s and its repercussion on welfare policies. From this moment onwards, the social compromise between economic elites and workers as managed by the state was put aside. In its place, social policies were managed increasingly through contracts with the private sector and/or community-based groups.

In that respect, above all, austerity has become a public issue that necessarily involves a rebalancing of relations between the various internal components of the state, and new relations between state and society. From a sociological perspective, the question of social cohesion is expressed in different terms compared to the Fordist era.  As public action gains legitimacy from expertise, and proposes diverse partnership mechanisms for managing public services, the democratic deficit is growing.  Henceforth, solidarity among citizens cannot rely exclusively on a blind faith in state capacity to manage solidarity and reduce inequalities. Democratic crisis and the legitimacy deficit of the state (at all levels) are necessarily on the agenda again.

This is why the coalition ‘Main rouge’ – opposed to pricing and privatisation of public services – supported by several groups active in the community sector but also by some trade unions, student and women movements, organized rallies to oppose the Couillard’s government austerity policies.  In November 2016, 1200 community groups even organized a two day strike in order to contest the chronic underfunding of their activities while serving a continuously increasing clientele..

Building a coalition against policies and programs managed by the state has proved to be a difficult task in Montreal for two reasons. First, the vast majority of community groups continue to rely mainly on the state for financing their internal operations. For that matter, mobilization against the state cannot be taken for granted. In addition, when governmental specific resources are available for dedicated projects, a competition over subsidies can occur among groups.  Second, the collaboration between the community sector and the trade union world is not self evident. This is not new, of course. The objectives of those two categories of actors are not always on the same page. Sometimes, it can be the case – one can recall, for example, the political project of the trade union left in the 1960s and 1970s in Quebec when, among other things, political action around urban and municipal issues was encouraged and supported by major labour federations in the Montreal region. But divergent interests also exist. In the past, as it is still the case nowadays, the community sector is concerned about the most vulnerable populations that are confronted with social exclusion, which is normally not the case for the members of trade unions. Constructing a politics of solidarity is difficult under these circumstances.

In regards to the crisis of democracy and the definition of new paths for overcoming this crisis, fighting against poverty and exclusion remains a central issue in OECD countries. For that matter, initiatives coming from civil society provided a source of innovation and a played a forerunner role in coping with a lack of social cohesion. The case of Community Development Corporations (CDCs) is a good example. At the beginning of the 1980s, these corporations were introduced by community-based groups in Montreal’s old working class neighborhoods in response to de-industrialising processes underway since the 1970s. Not only did these actors promote a social vision of economic and urban development, they also defended an integrated vision of the urban, so to speak, a vision that can be associated with the idea of a just city or with the spirit of the urban as conceived by Henri Lefebvre. On the terrain of Montreal neighborhoods, what they have achieved has paved the way for the project of social economy (Chantier de l’économie sociale) launched by the Quebec government through the Chantier de l’économie et de l’emploi in 1995. The activities underway with the Neighborhood Tables as well as the experiments with local programs of urban revitalisation (Revitalisation Urbaine Intégrée) initiated by the municipal administration in cooperation with community groups are also indebted to their action.

However, if these initiatives are welcome for overcoming sectoral biases ingrained in traditional governmental programs, their visibility and the support received by the state remain very weak. They are lacking resources and institutional support to cope with the contradictions underneath social and economic exclusion.

In Montreal, the picture of socioeonomic poverty is far from the key element when we are trying to grasp the city image. Nonetheless, social movements and community actors cannot forget that dimension. As they mobilised against the neo-liberal vision of social policies management, or struggled over economic and social issues, they explored new avenues for building social solidarity. Without all the answers to improve the living conditions of the general population, they revealed however being essential stakeholders. In many ways, fighting against austerity measures was also an occasion for exploring a new approach in defining social solidarity.

Pierre Hamel is Professor of Sociology at the Université de Montréal; Roger Keil is Professor and York Chair in Global Sub/Urban Studies at York University, Toronto; and Gregoire Autin is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the Université de Montréal.

 

Austerity and grassroots mobilization in Athens: The emergence of an urban governance divide?

GIF RGB 150 Pixels with BorderIoannis Chorianopoulos and Nayia Tselepi report on findings from a second round of research in Melbourne carried out as part of our collaborative governance under austerity project, sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of its Urban Transformations Network.

In our last posting we discussed the collaborative governance shift noted in the government of the City of Athens by reason of funding cutbacks and reduced revenue raising capacities.  In this light, the City administration turned to the private sector and NGOs, creating a wide range of joined up schemes that exist by virtue of their ability to generate or attract resources.  Our focus here is ‘civil society’, and its responses to austerity and municipal collaboration.  Civil society is the sum total of a wide range of social actors that operate outside the realm of the state apparatus and the private market.  In order to align and position our research in relation to this heterogeneous domain of associations, we drew from the Gramscian standpoint.  Civil society was explored in respect of its role in urban governance and its stances on the changing matrices of Athenian urban politics.

The proliferation of grassroots initiatives

Economic crisis, whether in the form of a cyclical contraction or a severe long lasting recession, is seen as triggering particular civil society responses, driven by welfare need. Such mobilisation, in turn, is perceived as an incipient ‘social movement’ to the extent that it involves a campaign that extends beyond any single event, and a collective effort that frames key issues and claims alternative world views.

According to various research accounts, more than 2.500 grassroots schemes have emerged in Greek cities during the crisis, signifying a discernable social movement with a prominent presence in Athens.  For “Omikron Project”, an informal group of 40 volunteers mapping grassroots initiatives in an attempt to address the stereotypes of ‘idleness’ and ‘helplessness’ projected to the country:

“During the last three years [2013-2016], grassroots initiatives in Athens more than doubled, while a total of 70 per cent of the networks that existed prior to 2013, do remain active.  These are groups that operate informally on principle, and only a few turn into NGOs. They don’t want to have any dealings with the state or with handling funds. They just want to offer a way out to the crisis.  That means a lot as we see a different civil society emerging; different from the one that surfaced in the 1990s because of EU funds”.

Informality in practice

The sheer diversity of goals and practices that characterize Athenian grassroots initiatives renders their classification an unfruitful exercise.  However, a number of key common traits were noted, referring primarily to their informal features and their contrariety to prescribed structures and institutions associated with austerity.  Informality is underscored by the absence of any legal status in the majority of cases, and by the voluntary nature of their activities.   Even groups that decided to acquire a legal form in order to participate in a wider range of formal fundraising bids, they also operate along self-organised and voluntary-based lines.  Voluntarism is facilitated by the social media and the presence of dedicated web platforms, such as “volunteer4Greece” and “solidarity4all”, which communicate grassroots activities and needs to an increasingly receptive public.  More than that, however, ‘volunteerism’ complements ‘informality’ as a key trait of grassroots’ mobilization, shaping a contentious political stance that draws from a growing frustration with formal structures and institutions.

“Volunteerism is a form of resistance. It’s a statement, exposing the absence of the authorities from where they are needed; it’s a way to show and deal with the problems the city is facing”.

The second common trait that grassroots initiatives share is their opposition to austerity, the socio-economic impacts of which is the key reason behind their mobilization.  In this light, agents, practices and institutions associated with austerity are purposefully avoided, even by the less radical sides of this movement.

Relations with the City

‘Collaboration’ in the Athenian civil society realm refers to a markedly different process than the one observed in the City administration.  Voluntarism suggests a firm attempt to create ‘self-managed’ spaces of encounters amongst citizens, forming collective solidarity efforts that avoid hierarchies.  It doesn’t come as a surprise, therefore, that relations between the grassroots and the City of Athens are virtually nonexistent.

The views of civil society networks regarding the collaborative governance policies launched by the City range from the guarded to the outright contentious.  In the first case we see groups that use municipal resources in order to promote their goals.  The example of the “One Stop” initiative sheds light on this standpoint.  Two NGOs together with two informal social solidarity networks and a number of individuals, gather twice a week in a municipal building offering food and a variety of services (legal advice, first aid, laundry, haircut, showers, etc.) to the homeless population.  “One stop” is also using a municipal web platform, called “synAthina”, that’s facilitating unofficial groups and individual initiatives to make its actions and events known. None of the groups involved in this scheme, however, is willing to invest further in any type of relations with the City administration.

“No, we don’t collaborate with any state institutions.  Yes, we’re an NGO, but we don’t want to be seen as yet another organization that’s funded by the state to return a fraction of what it gets to the people in need.  This view might not do justice to many NGOs, but it’s a strong one and we hear it all the time;  “…ah, you’re there, so you get a piece of the pie as well”, so to speak”.

The more outspoken and drastic viewpoints reject outright any association with the City, accusing the current municipal administration for endorsing the framework of austerity policies.  The culmination of an already thorny relation, however, appears to be the 2015 national referendum.  Voters were asked on whether to approve of the austerity-laden bailout conditions in the country’s government-debt crisis proposed jointly by the EC, the IMF and the ECB.  The Mayor’s leading role in the national campaign for accepting the proposal, broke any remaining links with the more radical of grassroots’ networks.  As stated:

“The referendum wasn’t about the Euro or Grexit. It was about austerity. You can’t stand out as the main proponent of the “yes” vote, as the mayor did, knowing that what we stand for is negated by the “yes” vote.  That’s why very many solidarity networks have pulled out from synAthina ever since.  The networks don’t trust the City any more”.

At first hand, the apparent distance between the City and the grassroots reflects the decades’ long trajectories of hierarchical municipal administration, restricting the emergence of avenues of communication.   Institutional legacies aside, the City’s current compliant role in administering austerity policies fuzzed local relations further.  As municipal collaborative policies didn’t allow any room for contesting austerity, a series of counter-hegemonic voices surfaced and asserted their presence in the civil society realm, primarily in the form of social solidarity networks.   The anti-austerity origins of this movement shaped its political orientation, arresting relations with the City.  What is unfolding in Athenian politics, is an austerity-driven governance divide.

Ioannis Chorianopoulos is an Associate Professor at the Dept. of Geography, University of the Aegean.

Naya Tselepi is Ph.D. holder in Geography.  Naya is currently a Research Fellow at the Dept. of Geography, University of the Aegean.