contesting austerity

Spanish Elections 26J: The Challenges for Unidos Podemos

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In this blog post Juan Carlos Monedero, co-founder of Podemos and Professor of Political Science at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, reflects on the results of the Spanish elections on the 26th June, and their significance for the development of a counter-hegemonic politics. The blog was originally written in Spanish and translated by CURA’s Dr Mercè Cortina Oriol. The original version is copied at the bottom of the article.

The regime crisis identified in Spain since 2008 and the emergence of new political parties on both the right (Ciudadanos) and the left (Unidos Podemos) are a sign of a process that affects the entire European Union. The fight against the regime of 1978 (the year of the Spanish Constitution) that Unidos Podemos represents transcends the two poles that have  epitomized Spanish (and European) politics: on the one hand, those who want to change the postwar social contract taking the neoliberal precepts and the frame of adjustment and competitiveness (the right, the extreme right and, in a shameful fashion, the socialist international) and on the other, those who want to return to the situation prior to 2008. The original space for Podemos consists, beyond these poles, in finding an answer to the crisis of civilisation that the world is facing.

The inability of the neoliberal model in aggregating citizen demands while accomplishing the mandates of capitalist accumulation turns into a growing public disaffection, and a challenge to the authorization that the governments receive from elections. This inability is added to three inherent aspects of the neoliberal model: the rise of individualist values and the criticism of “the political”; the role of corruption, which acts in this deregulated model as a kind of lubricating system; and the supranational forms of management of global capitalism (which William I. Robinson has called the emerging transnational state). Institutional corruption exacerbates the idea of inequality and the distancing between citizens and political elites. The “transnational state”, agent of the logic of adjustments in the social state -the role that Troika is representing-, leads to a claim for greater national sovereignty. Hence the “natural” way out of the neoliberal crisis is some form of populism, that is, a challenge to the system of political representation and an appeal to the people as the constituent subject that demands the recovery of the social contract or the signing of a new one, more inclusive, one. That context explains in the EU the rise of the extreme right in many EU countries, the Brexit, as well as the 15-M movement in Spain or “Reclaim the Street” in Portugal. The difference is that in Spain, 15-M posed a story that appealed to the own diagnosis of the left –pointing at the political and economic elites as responsible of the crisis and set in motion processes that chased away xenophobia. This is where Podemos was born. And its electoral fate is closely linked to the management of that past.

The general elections in December 2015 were the verification of the breakdown of bipartisanship in Spain. The traditional transfer of votes between the rightwing (PP) and leftwing (PSOE) hegemonic parties no longer worked, and a new force, Podemos, was just 300,000 votes far from the Socialists. On the right, the emergence of Ciudadanos remained in fourth place. It failed to meet electoral expectations and was thus not able to carry out the function it was born to – to serve as a crutch to the two main parties of the regime of 1978. The novelty of the elections resulted in an institutional consternation. The inability to form a government called for new elections in June 2016. The bulk of the political discourse of all parties in the campaign focused on blaming the other formations for the need for new elections. The PP presented itself as the party of order and the recovery of a peaceful past against the current uncertainties. The PSOE returned to a leftist discourse that it had left behind when it ruled the country and reformed Article 135 of the Constitution to prioritise debt repayment over social spending. All the electoral polls were indicating that PSOE would be overtaken by Unidos Podemos, the alliance between Podemos and Izquierda Unida (the latter had won in the December election a million votes and just two seats[1], which facilitated the alliance and a replacement of its general secretariat by a younger person). The prospect of overtaking the PSOE, led to a conservative electoral campaign, amicable with the Socialist Party and aimed at retaining those votes that, supposedly, Unidos Podemos would take from the PSOE. The result, however, was not as expected. A million votes were lost between December and June, far from overtaking the PSOE who ended celebrating not having been relegated to the third place, despite achieving the worst result in their history.

Why did Unidos Podemos lose one million votes? There are several reasons. With the December elections and the failure to form a government, the “novelty factor” withered for much of the electorate. Many decided to return to abstention. Another factor was the withdrawal of the support by some Izquierda Unida voters (we could talk about more than 300,000 voters that abstained or even went to the PSOE), who were angered because of a poorly explained alliance that placed their leader in an unattractive place (the fifth in Madrid’s electoral circumscription[2]).  The withdrawal of the support by these voters might also be explained by the memory of denigrations when unity between Podemos and Izquierda Unida was not possible in the December elections, as well as the ideological moderation of the alliance in an attempt to please the social-democratic voter.

This moderation in the discourse of Unidos Podemos even led Pablo Iglesias to state that Zapatero, PSOE’s President of the Spanish Government from 2004 to 2011, had been the best President of Spain’s democratic era, despite the 15-M being born in opposition to the policies of Zapatero. Iglesias also defined himself as a social democrat. This is a moderate definition even for PSOE members, who declare themselves socialist. Finally, the six elections held during the two years that Podemos has existed, have led to exhaustion. In a context of continuous elections, the representative, media-oriented and hierarchical side of the party have prevailed, while leaving aside the more deliberative and horizontal side represented by “the circles”[3]. That is to say, the side that is more closely linked to the desire for change that the 15-M forged.

The difficulties in forming a government after the June elections re-emphasised the failure of bipartisanship, but also made it clear that the alternative needs more time than that marked by a naive belief in a “Blitzkrieg” fuelled by a regime crisis. Unidos Podemos has not yet resolved its ideological corpus, its territorial or its internal organisation. As long as Unidos Podemos leaves these problems unresolved it is not likely to be seen as potentially governing force that can deliver an alternative vision for the country. Following two years of continuous elections, it’s time to take a pause to look inward and think about how it can be a new-fangled political formation that responds to contemporary challenges such as the degradation of employment, the environmental crisis, the aging of population, the growing wars, consequent migrations, rising violence as well as social anomie in general. The old parties are not offering solutions here that are not worryingly reminiscent of the decade of the thirties of the last century.

[1] The difference between seats and votes is explained by the proportional system that defines the Electoral Law in Spain. The system is based on the D’Hondt Method in combination with a plurinominal circumscription model. (TN).

[2] The electoral system in Spain is based on a closed list model for each electoral circumscription. In Spain there are 52 circumscriptions for the case of the General Elections. (TN)

[3] “The circles” are the name that took the grassroots organizations within Podemos. These organizations take the form of local assemblies. (TN)

Juan Carlos Monedero is co-founder of Podemos and Professor of Political Science at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. The blog was originally written in Spanish and translated by CURA’s Dr Mercè Cortina Oriol, with some help from Dr Adrian Bua. The original is copied in Spanish below.

La crisis de régimen que se identifica en España desde 2008, así como la irrupción de nuevas formaciones políticas tanto en la derecha -Ciudadanos- como en la izquierda -Unidos Podemos- son una señal de un proceso que afecta a toda la Unión Europea. La lucha que representa Unidos Podemos frente al régimen de 1978 (año de la Constitución) se coloca más allá de los dos polos que han resumido la política española (y europea): por un lado, los que quieren cambiar el contrato social de posguerra asumiendo los preceptos neoliberales y el marco de ajuste y competitividad (derecha, extrema derecha y, aunque de manera vergonzante, la internacional socialista) y por otro los que quieren regresar a la situación previa a 2008. El espacio original de Podemos consiste, más allá de estas impotencias, en encontrar una respuesta a la crisis de civilización que vive el mundo.

La incapacidad del modelo neoliberal de agregar demandas ciudadanas al tiempo que cumple con los mandatos de la acumulación capitalista se traduce, como es norma, en un crecimiento de la desafección ciudadana y una impugnación de la autorización para gobernar que reciben los gobiernos emanada de las elecciones. Esta incapacidad se suma a tres factores consustanciales al modelo: el auge de los valores Individualistas y la crítica a la “política”; el papel de la corrupción, que actúa en este modelo desrregulado como una suerte de lubricante del sistema; y las formas supranacionales de gestión del capitalismo global (lo que William I. Robinson ha llamado el emergente estado transnacional). La corrupción institucional exacerba la idea de desigualdad y el alejamiento de la ciudadanía respecto de las élites políticas. El “estado transnacional” agente de la lógica de los ajustes en el estado social -el papel que viene representando la Troika-, genera una reclamación de mayor soberanía nacional. De ahí que la salida “natural” a la crisis neoliberal sea alguna forma de populismo, esto es, una impugnación del sistema de representación política y una apelación al pueblo como sujeto constituyente que reclama la recuperación del contrato social o la firma de uno nuevo más inclusivo. Este marco es el que explica en la UE el auge de la extrema derecha o el Brexit, y también es el que da cuenta del movimiento 15-M en España o “Tomemos la calle” en Portugal. La diferencia estriba en que en España, el 15-M colocó un relato que apelaba al diagnóstico propio de la izquierda -culpaba a las élites políticas y económicas de la crisis- y puso en marcha procesos que ahuyentaron la xenofobia. De ahí es de donde nació Podemos. Y su suerte electoral está muy vinculada a la gestión que haga de ese pasado.

Las elecciones generales de diciembre de 2015 fueron la constatación de que el bipartidismo se había roto. El trasvase tradicional de votos entre el partido hegemónico de la derecha (PP) y el de la izquierda (PSOE) ya no funcionó y una nueva fuerza, Podemos, quedó apenas a 300.000 votos de los socialistas. Por la derecha, el surgimiento de Ciudadanos se quedó en una cuarta posición y lejos de las expectativas, por lo que no servía para lo que había nacido: servir de muleta a algunos de los dos grandes partidos del régimen de 1978. La novedad de las elecciones se tradujo en consternación Institucional. La incapacidad para formar gobierno convocó a nuevas elecciones en junio de 2016. El grueso del discurso político de todos los partidos en la campaña se centró en echar la culpa a las demás formaciones de la convocatoria de unas nuevas elecciones. El PP se ofrecía como el partido del orden y la recuperación de un pasado tranquilo frente a las incertidumbres. El PSOE regresaba al discurso izquierdista que abandonó cuando gobernó y reformó el artículo 135 de la Constitución para dar prioridad al pago de la deuda por encima del gasto social. Todas las encuestas señalaban el adelanto al PSOE por parte de Unidos Podemos (la alianza de Podemos e Izquierda Unida. Este último partido había obtenido en diciembre un millón de votos y solamente dos escaños, lo que facilitó la unión y un relevo en su secretaría general por una persona más joven), lo que llevó a una campaña electoral conservadora y amable con los socialistas dirigida a retener esos votos que, se suponía, se arrebataban al PSOE. El resultado, sin embargo, no fue el esperado, perdiendo respecto de las elecciones de diciembre un millón de votos y alejándose el “sorpasso” a los socialistas que, pese a obtener el peor resultado de su historia, celebraron como un triunfo no haber sido relegados al tercer puesto.

¿Por qué Unidos Podemos perdió un millón de votos? Las razones son varias. En las elecciones de diciembre se agotó para una parte del electorado el “factor novedad” de Podemos, que al no traducirse en gobierno decidieron regresar a la abstención. Fue importante la retirada de apoyo de una parte de los votantes de Izquierda Unida, enfadados por una alianza mal explicada que situaba a su líder en un lugar nada atractivo (el número cinco por Madrid). También influyó en estos sectores (podríamos hablar de más de 300.000 votos que se abstuvieron o votaron incluso al PSOE) la moderación ideológica a la búsqueda de contentar al votante socialdemócrata y la memoria de las descalificaciones cuando la unidad no fue posible en las elecciones de diciembre.

Esa moderación en el discurso de Unidos Podemos -Pablo Iglesias llegó a afirmar que Zapatero, del PSOE, había sido el mejor presidente de la democracia española, cuando el 15-M nació contra las políticas de Zapatero, o se definió como “socialdemócrata”, cuando esa definición es moderada incluso para los miembros del PSOE, que se definen como socialistas). Por último, seis elecciones en dos años -los de la existencia de Podemos- llevan al agotamiento, al tiempo que primaron la parte electoral, representativa, mediática y jerárquica del partido, que dejaba de lado la parte más deliberativo y horizontal que significan los círculos. Es decir, la más vinculada al deseo de cambio que marcó el 15-M.

Las dificultades para formar gobierno después de las elecciones de junio volvían a insistir en la quiebra del bipartidismo, pero también dejaban claro que la alternativa necesita más tiempo que el que marcaba una ingenua creencia en un Blitzkrieg alentado por la crisis del régimen. Unidos Podemos aún no ha resuelto ni su corpus ideológico ni su organización territorial ni su organización interna, y mientras que no cierre estos aspectos no parece probable que pueda ser vista como una fuerza de gobierno que porte una idea diferente de país.

Tras dos años de elección tras elección, le corresponde parar el balón, mirar hacia adentro y pensar cómo debe ser una formación política de nuevo cuño en el siglo XX que dé respuesta a la quiebra del mundo del trabajo, la crisis medioambiental, el envejecimiento de la población, las crecientes guerras y las consecuentes migraciones y aumento de la violencia y la anomia social. Aspectos para los que los viejos partidos no tienen solución que no recuerde inquietantemente a los años treinta del siglo pasado.

SOURCE: A Network for Change

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In this post Federico Guerrieri introduces SOURCE, an online network coordinated by the New Economics Foundation, that is designed to catalyse collaboration between academics, policy professionals and civil society organisers from across Europe committed to tackling the biggest economic, environmental and social challenges we face today.

From solving the tragedy of the commons, to building a financial system fit for purpose, or shaping the future of work to tackling climate change, it is becoming increasingly clear that the current system is incapable of addressing the interlinked crises of environmental unsustainability, economic instability, and social inequality.

There are a number of emerging approaches that offer insights into how an economy could operate differently, but we urgently need an inspiring public narrative that outlines how an economy that delivers economic wellbeing for all within environmental limits would work – and the intellectual thinking that is necessary to get to this point.

The Source network identifies issues and looks for tipping points where systemic change can be created. By collaborating with campaigners and policy makers, Source aims to support the development of an economy that delivers economic wellbeing for all within environmental limits.

The network brings together in one place a diverse range of inspirational voices from the worlds of academia, civil society, and grassroots organisations. This platform provides an online space for discussion and constructive debate, but it is also a meeting point to forge new working collaborations across Europe. The Source platform also provides members with the opportunity to exchange information about relevant activities, initiatives, and events taking place all over Europe, and to build key relationships with new research partners.

Source’s approach is summarised as follows

  • Align – Source has created an online community of academics, policy professionals and civil society organisers committed to systemic change. Although diversity is actively pursued and valued, so is the fact that all those in the network share the view that transforming the economy for planet and people is critical and to be achieved requires an organised systemic approach. In this way we will be more effective at developing proposals and actions that tackle the big, interconnected economic, environmental and social challenges we face today.
  • Generate cultural debate – Economic transformation always involves raising big moral questions about how the economy operates and our aim is no different. Every month the network identifies issues and looks for tipping points where systemic change can be created. Discussions are hosted via the network’s online platform giving every member the opportunity to be involved, and to exchange thoughts with leading academics, policy professionals and civil society organisers.
  • Take a systemic approach – Focusing on short-term impacts and running issue-based campaigns will always be important but to deliver far-reaching change then on its own it is simply not enough. Following each online debate, a Briefing Paper will synthesize the findings of the online discussion, aiming at outlining the current economic system’s dysfunctionalities. The Briefing Paper informs the formulation of a Base Research Paper, which develops and shares the alternative solutions and supporting evidence. Collectively, this series of research papers will form the building blocks of a new economic narrative that is shaped by all participants.

By collaborating with campaigners, academics, policy makers, and other civil society organisations, Source acts as a catalyst and aims to:

  • Demonstrate that an alternative exists: Theories and reasoned argument have an important role to play but critically so does making things real. Source supports the development of pan-European initiatives by collaborating with progressive civil society organisations across Europe;
  • Organise: Just because more research is being done, campaigns being run and local initiatives developed does mean necessarily that something bigger is being achieved. Strategy wins and the aim of transformational change demands requires strategy and alignment. by collaborating with campaigners, Source develops toolkits and materials to support civil society groups committed to systemic change;
  • Popularise the transformation: If we do not make the systemic approach and the big moral questions relevant to people we will not see the transformation we are aiming for. Source will collaborate with media partners from across Europe to disseminate and promote its proposals;
  • Achieve policy impact: Source ultimately aims to influence the policy process at the local, national and European levels by collaborating with policy makers and policy professionals all across Europe.

If you are interested in joining Source, please visit www.sourcenetwork.org, or get in touch with Federico Guerrieri, federico.guerrieri@neweconomics.org

Federico Guerrieri is European Co-ordinator at the New Economics Foundation

Follow the Protest: Exploring the Limits and Torsions of Collaborative Governance in Nantes

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In this post Steven Griggs, David Howarth and Andrés Feandeiro  report the findings from the exploratory 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, and led by Prof. Jonathan Davies.

Referendum watchers in June 2016 may have been rightly fixated on the Brexit vote, which led to the people of the United Kingdom choosing to leave the European Union. But there was another referendum that took place just three days later, even if its political legitimacy as a referendum or consultation was more open to question. On Sunday June 26, in the French department of Loire Atlantique, local citizens voted on whether to give a green light to the construction of a new international airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes. The new airport, some 20 kilometres to the north-west of Nantes, would replace the existing Nantes Atlantique airport.

Roughly half of the electorate turned out to vote (51.08 per cent) in the referendum, with a little over 55 per cent of the local residents (55.17 per cent) voting in favour of the construction of the new airport. However, this overall victory masks a fragmented electorate, with villages and towns close to the proposed site for the new airport voting against the project. In the city of Nantes itself, opponents and supporters of the new airport were divided by only 100 votes, with the ‘yes’ vote winning just 50.05 per cent of the share of the vote.

Plans to build a new airport were first mooted in the 1960s. They dropped off the political agenda in the wake of the 1970s oil crisis. But they reappeared in the early 2000s, driven in part by the lobbying of the then Mayor of Nantes, Jean-Marc Ayrault, and his particular brand of urban boosterism. Renewed interest in the airport also served to re-ignite opposition to the proposed development. Campaigners brought together farmers, local residents, politicians, and environmental activists, thus giving a voice to a counter-expertise throughout the legal and planning processes, while drawing in support from across France and Europe. Protesters set up camps and took over vacant compulsory-purchased farms on the proposed site of the airport, transforming the government purchased ‘zone to develop’ into the ‘zone to defend’, where they pursued alternative forms of social organisation. Indeed, their expulsion from the proposed site in 2012 attracted national and international media attention as protesters clashed with riot police.

What, if anything, does this mean for the study of austerity and collaboration in Nantes? At first glance, it may appear that this story of the airport development operates outside of – or parallel to – the everyday practices of governance in the city. After all, it is, despite claims to the contrary, a national infrastructure project, which is subject to national planning practices. Indeed, the decision to hold a referendum was presented as an initiative of François Hollande, the French president. Here, however, we argue that the construction of the airport has come to act as a symbolic issue for protest and contestation across the city of Nantes. It has brought together a broad coalition of groups and campaigns, and poses a challenge to the dominant model of collaborative governance and the Nantes project of urban regeneration and economic boosterism. In other words, it has (potentially) come to define the very limits of collaborative governance and the Nantes model of participatory engagement.

Nantes has arguably not suffered the vagaries of austerity associated with other cities in France. The city continues to attract people and investment; it has reasserted its status as the capital of the west of France, transforming its workforce in the process. Since the closure of its shipyards in the 1980s, the city has been associated with a series of urban renewal initiatives, for example the development of its tram system, the regeneration of the Malakoff neighbourhood and the Ile de Nantes. Successive municipal leaders, not least Jean-Marc Ayrault, have sought to position Nantes at the forefront of European cities, developing its international reputation and attractiveness for its practices of innovation, culture and the environment. In 2015, Nantes was the European Green Capital.

This is not to deny the existence of deprivation across many neighbourhoods of the city. One of the key challenges facing politicians and policymakers in Nantes, repeatedly expressed in interviews, is the increasing number of people in various communities who were deemed to be at risk of falling off the back of the economic growth motor of Nantes. Yet, this risk of social exclusion was not constructed by local officials as a simple consequence of austerity. Budgetary constraints were clearly recognized. But viewed against the backdrop of a city that continues to grow and broaden its local tax base, Nantes was seen as facing a triple crisis. Economic constraints were interwoven with political challenges, as French citizens turn away from traditional politics, and social challenges were discerned in the form of the weakening of established community networks; all of which have prompted demands for new forms of service delivery and governance.

Much of the policy and political response to this triple crisis comes firmly under the rubric of collaborative governance. On the one hand, Nantes has embraced inter-communal collaboration, which has led to the sharing and coordinating of services with its local municipal partners in the inter-communal organisation that is Nantes Métropole. Nantes has indeed become one of the new metropolitan areas recently established by the French state. On the other hand, Nantes city council has invested markedly in moves towards citizen dialogue and co-governance. Like many other developments, this tradition within the city dates back at least to the mayoral term of Jean-Marc Ayrault. But it has become the defining policy commitment of the current Mayor Johanna Rolland. Indeed, building on its neighbourhood forums across the new urban space, the city has engaged in a number of ‘big conversations’, most notably its nine-month consultation on the management of the Loire river, which flows through the city and its region.

However, what are the limits of this collaborative governance in addressing this triple crisis? To answer this question, let us return to the plan to build an international airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes. In many ways, this issue has become a mobilising or “nodal” issue for a number of demands against both national and local policies, in which protesters against the airport have also contested the dominant narrative of urban boosterism which has underpinned the official discourses of Nantes. At the end of February 2016, demonstrators against the new airport linked the campaign against the airport to a number of adjacent grievances and demands.

Such articulations were captured in a statement from Christine Poupin, one of the national leaders of the New AntiCapitalist  Party, who participating at the February 2016 anti-airport protest in Nantes claimed that ‘there is a moment when it becomes necessary to say “STOP” … STOP to the airport obviously, but also STOP to its world, and its world is the same as that as the state of emergency as that of the destruction of the employment law…’ Students protesting in Nantes against the reform of labour rights made similar equivalences between struggles, with the regional newspaper, Ouest-France reporting: ‘they shout against police violence, the airport, capitalism, government, bosses.’. Indeed, the project at Notre-Dame-des-Landes has come to be seen as an ‘ideological battle’, in which there is a challenge both to the entire growth model, which many commentators have suggested is a key motif of the Nantes project, and to the very legitimacy of the French state. As expected, the referendum, which François Hollande publicly constructed as putting an end once and for all to debate over the airport has clearly failed to do so.  Local residents have vowed to continue their campaign, with judicial reviews still in place over environmental impacts of the planned infrastructure on water and on rare species. Moreover, as we suggested above, protesters on the ZAD, the renamed  ‘zone to defend’, which covers the proposed airport site, have established their own camps; they have built spaces in which to develop and showcase new ways of living, as well as exhibiting new forms of relationships. They are also preparing to defend another attempt to evict them forcibly from the site.

Such protests and campaigns, coupled with the painful creation of alternative spaces, evoke the limits of new forms of collaborative governance, while exposing various techniques and forms of depoliticisation. The latter might be seen as endeavours to exclude potential alternatives to the current regimes and models of governance under the guise of ‘pragmatic politics’ and the reaching of a rational consensus. Our intuition in this regard is that certain forms of protest and alienation may be rendered invisible or displaced by the dominant discourse of integration and community cohesion (as was arguably the case in the UK as part of the Third Way discourse). It is also possible in this regard that the local and national media focus on the overt and intense protests against the building of a new international airport in Nantes may serve unwittingly to conceal other sets of underlying tensions and cleavages. The protests against the airport have been largely spearheaded by middle-class environmentalists, peasants and anarchists, whereas the troubled neighbourhoods affected by the financial crisis tend to reflect class and ethnic divisions. By ‘following the protest’, while remaining attentive to the way in which ‘political resistance discloses the true operation of power’, our future fieldwork will focus on these related issues.

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

Governing Austerity in Dublin

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This post outlines the main findings from the first round of research carried out by Dr Niamh Gaynor and Dr Eamonn McConnon in Dublin as part of the Collaborative Governance under Austerity project. It forms part of a series of blogs from the eight comparator cities in the project.

Situated at the centre of Ireland’s booming ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy from the late 1990s to 2007 and home to a quarter of the country’s population, Dublin has experienced a sharp contraction and decline since the rupture of the property bubble and associated banking crisis of 2008 onward.  The resultant austerity policies – adopted as a condition of an IMF/European Commission and European Central Bank bailout package in 2010 – have impacted significantly on the city at a number of levels.

Socio-economically, austerity has hit the poorest and most marginalised in the North and Inner City severely.  It has also impacted on a newly squeezed middle class, many of whom live in younger suburbs to the West of the city.  There has been a drop of 21 per cent in mean disposable income across the city and the drop in the income of the unemployed is reported to stand at 22 per cent.   Correspondingly, the rate of unemployment rose from 38,000 in 2006 to a high of 90,000 in 2012.  Although this figure dropped to 75,000 in 2015, interview respondents highlight consistent difficulties in meeting debt and bill payments, and poverty and inequality appear widespread and pervasive.  Political discourse and action on this has coalesced around the city’s massive housing crisis which is affecting working-class and middle-class families alike.  The combination of unemployment and escalating costs and taxes associated with austerity have led to widespread mortgage arrears and dispossession.  Homelessness is now a major issue across the city, most particularly in West Dublin.  With its roots in the city’s previous austerity cuts of the 1980s when the shift from local authority to public-private partnership management and provision began, the current housing situation is perhaps a harbinger of some of the more long-term impacts of austerity’s neoliberal prescriptions more broadly.

Administratively, the austerity-driven public recruitment embargo combined with a downsizing of the public sector has resulted in a 13 per cent reduction in staffing in local authorities across the country.  There have been significant attendant cuts to frontline services and supports.  According to one senior Council official interviewed for this research, Dublin City Council has suffered a 20-25 per cent cut to its overall budget and has gone from a personnel of 6,800 in 2010 to 5,000 today.  Other interviewees point to the ageing and somewhat fatigued workforce within the Council, suggesting there is little capacity or appetite for innovative governance within the city at this time of crisis.  Yet, somewhat paradoxically, many of the city’s institutions of collaborative governance – celebrated for their flexibility and innovativeness in the 1990s – have now been subsumed within the Council.  Notwithstanding these developments, there appears widespread agreement that the much touted opportunities for local government reform which formed part of the austerity package have been lost, and interviewees point to an ongoing torpidity and ineffectiveness within Dublin City Council.

Politically, a number of interviewees suggest that austerity has made a significant mark within the city due to the significant increase in the number of left wing ‘anti-austerity’ Councillors on the City Council following the last (2014) local elections.  While some interviewees see this as a positive development for the city, others bemoan the lack of experience of many of these new incumbents.  Others again point to their lack of power in any case as national political authorities continue to wield significant influence on the traditionally weak and powerless local council through both party allegiances and the central figure of the City Manager – a political appointee.  While the formal institutions of Council politics remain a focal point for interviewees and critics of austerity more broadly, interesting things are happening across a variety of more disparate sites within the city which point to a range of new political actors, new political alliances and new ways of doing politics.  Most noteworthy among these is the so-called ‘right to water’ movement – a national movement which is particularly active in coalescing around the newly introduced (2015) and much contested water charges.  Survey findings which show that over 50 per cent of those involved are first-time activists concerned with austerity more broadly rather than water charges per se, point to significant developments across the city’s broader public sphere.  And the fact that the water charges constituted the ‘red line issue’ in coalition negotiations between the two main political parties following the February 2016 elections attest to the political potency of this public sphere.

So what does all this mean for our overall research question – what happens to collaborative governance under austerity?  In Dublin our findings to date point to two things.  On the one hand, collaborative governance is continuing, albeit in a retrenched, rationalised and bureaucratised form which is now solely focused on coping with, surviving and managing the social fallout of austerity. The role for policy making and the flexibility and innovation associated with collaborative governance arrangements and configurations of the past is now gone and competition, rather than collaborative relationship-building and networking appears to be its overriding characteristic.  On the other, new sites of more radical, direct resistance are evident which, through many of the newly elected ‘anti-austerity’ City Councillors, are forming new alliances and coalitions.  Could we view these as new sites and forms of collaborative governance with new norms and practices, allowing for contestation and debate?  Or does this signal the demise of collaborative governance in Dublin?  Our next phase of research will focus on the two questions of a) if and how traditional collaborative governance actors and institutions interact with these new coalitions and interests and b) what the motivations, aspirations, plans and strategies of these new political actors and coalitions are.

Dr Niamh Gaynor is Lecturer in Development Studies and Dr Eamonn McConnon a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the School of Law and Government at Dublin City Univesrity

Workshop: Resistance and Alternatives to Austerity

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Adam Fishwick and Heather Connolly report back on a workshop they convened for CURA on Resistance and Alternatives to Austerity.

On 18th May CURA hosted our one day workshop on ‘Resistance and Alternatives to Austerity’ engaging with a range of distinctive – and innovative – strategies that have emerged in Europe and Latin America that are challenging the dominant turn to austerity. Papers delivered during the panel sessions were grouped around three key themes on workplace occupations, migrant workers’ protest, and alternative ‘grassroots’ mobilisation. The day ended with keynote presentations from Lisa McKenzie and Phoebe Moore that illustrated the sheer range of opposition that the workshop presenters touched upon – from working class neighbourhoods in the UK to the tensions over technology in the workplace.

The panels generated lively debate from participants and speakers (some of which was broadcast on social media via #CURAresistance) with debates centring on the viability of bottom-up forms of resistance, on the role of institutional actors and the state, and the possibilities for developing new subjectivities and forms of agency.

In the first panel, David Bailey and Saori Shibata presented findings from their research in ‘low-resistance’ societies of the UK and Japan and argued that only with what they termed ‘militant refusal’ were austerity measures successfully challenged and reversed. Lucia Pradella discussed the centrality of new migrants in resistance within and against the traditional trade unions in the logistics sector in Italy – highlighting the dynamism of new actors in a sector crucial to global capitalism. Nick Kiersey, finally, drawing on his research into anti-austerity protests in Ireland challenged us to think about the possibilities of developing a ‘left governmentality’ in the ‘slow exit’ from neoliberalism and austerity.

In the second panel, Heather Connolly returned to the theme of migrant workers within and against traditional trade unions in France, presenting her research on the Sans Papiers movement in France and the innovative models of resistance it adopted. Adam Fishwick argued that, despite the return of a bleak period of austerity in Argentina, resistance could still be found in what Ana Dinerstein has termed the ‘concrete utopias’ in the country. Focusing on the recuperated factories, he showed how they offered a distinct alternative beyond the constraints of state. To close the panels, Stuart Price presented some of his findings of a workplace occupation in Spain, discussing tensions between the closing of space for protest and the potential/limitations of new, seemingly spontaneous forms of resistance.

Lisa McKenzie – alongside Stuart Price – brought a powerful visual component to the day, combining images collected in the course of her fieldwork and everyday life in Nottingham and London with ethnographic narratives on working class life under austerity. Her keynote presentation demonstrated the lived realities of austerity from navigating unemployment, to homelessness, to the pervasive class stigmatisation that, in her words, ‘does the work of the policies of austerity’. Running through her talk was a sense of the need to think concretely about the impacts of austerity in order to confront it – to engage directly with the lived, everyday impacts of the assault on the most marginalised and stigmatised communities and individuals. Closing her presentation, two resonant images of young working class men on top of the roof of an elite private school in Nottingham during the 2011 riots and a homeless man under a new luxury development in London neatly captured this sentiment.

Phoebe Moore took us in a different, but related, direction with a vision of the new workplace and the role of technology in reinforcing the lived conditions of austerity, but also in potentially offering ways to confront and resist in uniquely innovative ways. In her presentation, the new techniques in the measurement and management of working life – from worn technologies to new monitoring and surveillance devices – were shown to be a central component of the micro-level practices overseeing workplaces across a range of sectors. But her work also highlighted the means by which this key component of the new discipline of austerity can be confronted. Technology – as much as it represents a mechanism of control in the workplace – was also shown to provide mechanisms for overcoming that control. From the everyday challenging of its use in the workplace, to re-purposing it in practice, to the development of more organised forms of resistance, the potential for subversion was clear.

Overall, the presentations and discussions throughout the day made clear that if austerity is to proceed, it will not continue unchallenged. Drawing on research and expertise in a variety of settings and contexts, the speakers and participants offered a clear sense that the precarious, impoverished futures proposed and practiced by advocates of austerity are not the only future available. Moving forward, the plan from this workshop is to develop a published collection of the papers that consolidates these themes of resistance to the increasingly pervasive practices of resistance, with the aim of continuing collaboration in to resisting austerity.

Dr. Adam Fishwick is Lecturer in Urban Studies and Public Policy and Dr. Heather Connolly Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management at De Montfort University, both are core members of CURA.

Austerity Urbanism – Scotland Style?

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In today’s post Annette Hastings discusses ‘austerity urbanism’ in the Scottish context.

It’s hard to counter the view that contemporary austerity is being realised to a large extent in and through what is happening in cities. Jamie Peck developed the ‘austerity urbanism’ thesis to explain the dimensions and significance of austerity in US cities. He argued – in a nutshell – that in the US some of the worst impacts of austerity were targeted on city governments and that, by targeting cities, austerity was effectively being targeted on the most vulnerable. Recent research suggests that the thesis developed for the US, holds for England. It confirms that the unprecedented cuts to local government budgets have impacted most heavily on poor cities. It also suggests that despite the intention of many city governments to shelter the poor and marginalised from the worst effects of austerity cuts, that cuts were beginning to harm the services relied on these groups – such as housing, social care, social work and advice services. The work also showed that it was poorer people and places that suffered more when cuts were made to the ‘universal’ services used by the broader population such as libraries, leisure centres and street cleansing.

But does austerity urbanism hold in Scotland? To the same degree? In the same kind of ways? Anti-austerity rhetoric and a sense of resistance is palpable in Scotland. It comes from politicians, from urban managers, from the mainstream media and from citizens and civil society. But does this lead to a distinctive austerity urbanism – Scotland style?  Some differences do stand out.

The Scottish Government has had less of a tendency than its Westminster counterpart to try to protect some public services while sacrificing others to the worst of austerity cuts. So whereas in England, local government has been subjected to much higher rates of cut than some other services such as Health, giving flesh to the austerity urbanism thesis, in Scotland cuts have been shared more equally across public services. While Scottish councils have experienced  big reductions in what they have to spend on key services – an 11% real terms reduction between 2011 and 2015  (which equates to about £100 per head of population) –  this is not as severe a picture as in England, where the reduction was on average about twice as big. However, this sense of protection in Scottish local government relative to England has now come to an end, with a much more severe local government settlement in place for the current financial year – with Glasgow City Council, for example,  facing a real terms cut of over £63million, and Edinburgh and other urban councils implementing cuts of £30million and more.

The targeting of poor cities for grant cuts has not been as stark in Scotland as in England either. Poorer councils have lost a little bit more than better off ones and, like England, there is a post-industrial and urban skew to cuts, but in Scotland these patterns are more to do with population loss than the policy design. It is important to note though that historically in Scotland, the deprivation premium built into the local government finance system to compensate more disadvantaged councils for higher levels of need was historically less generous in Scotland than in England. That situation has been reversed since the onset of austerity.

But despite these differences, it is also clear is that austerity in Scotland has been harsher than it needed to be. Since 1999, the Scottish Parliament has had the power to vary the rate of income tax by 3p in the pound – a power which has never been used despite the anti-austerity rhetoric of successive Scottish Governments. Moreover, a new Scottish Rate of Income Tax has been in place since April 2016, giving the Scottish Parliament even more capacity to vary levels of income tax. In early 2016, the SNP Government proposed (and had agreed) a Budget in which a clear commitment not to vary income tax levels was made, a position maintained in their Party’s manifesto in the recent May 2016 Scottish Parliamentary elections.  And the ‘winners’ of these elections, the SNP alongside a resurgent Scottish Conservative Party, stood alone amongst mainstream parties during the election campaign in that they did not argue for increased personal tax rates to ‘pay for public services’ . This would suggest that it is not only in Scottish polity that the desire to counter austerity agendas with increased taxation is controversial, but that this agenda is also controversial with the Scottish public.

So yes, we can perhaps detect some ‘Scottish style’ aspects of austerity urbanism, but the extent to which these differences are durable and more than rhetorical is debatable.

Annette Hastings is Professor of Urban Studies at the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow

Governing Austerity in Athens

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In today’s post our colleagues Ioannis Chorianopoulos and Naya Tselepi report the findings from the exploratory research in Athens, 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, and led by Prof. Jonathan Davies.

Local authorities in Greece have limited collaborative governance experience, despite persisting national authority attempts towards this direction during the last three decades (Chorianopoulos, 2012).  A legacy of authoritarian administration for the most part of the twentieth century and clientelistic politics since return to democracy (1974), arrested the development of local relational dynamics, shaping instead a centralized governance mode heavily dependent on the national level.  More recently, formal collaborative responsibilities in EU Structural Funds were met by local authorities halfheartedly.  Regulations were followed to the letter in order to avoid penalties but collaboration was largely symbolic, consisting of roundtables in which local socio-economic groups and organisations were consulted to provide their informed consent to municipal proposals.  Examples of more dynamic collaborative stances did surface, but they were treated in the literature as contextually defined responses, challenging a centralized type of administration.  It is in this frame that the City of Athens was approached in an attempt to explore the traits of collaboration, this time in austerian conditions.

Meanwhile, the latest local authority Act (2010) attempted to infuse a collaborative logic to local affairs by obliging municipalities to set up new participatory platforms, and by widening their degree of discretion to launch partnership schemes with local businesses and civil society groups.  Our initial “access point” to the research field was the “Deliberation Committee”, a mandatory collaborative governance initiative foreseen in the local authority Act.  Concurrently, we also investigated municipal mobilization in other policy areas, as it was becoming known that the City Hall is actively initiating collaborative schemes.   As preliminary research suggests, mandatory schemes followed the pre-austerity route of rubber stamping City Hall plans.  The volume and the traits of collaborative schemes launched by the municipality on its own initiative, however, defied expectations.  The gravity of the sovereign debt crisis and the impact of concomitant austerity measures on municipal finances and local socio-economic realities were key to this development.

Austerity and social need

Contractionary fiscal policy preoccupations shifted the attention of the national authorities to the local level, seen as a tier capable of absorbing a share of cuts to public spending.  Faced with reduced central government grants and real falls in tax revenues, the municipality was forced to reduce its budget by over 20 per cent since the onset of austerity (see Figure 1).

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Figure 1: City of Athens: Overall Budget by Fiscal Year (2010-2016). Source: (City of Athens, 2016)

Meanwhile, the share of Athenians whose equivalent disposable income fell below the poverty threshold has more than doubled, reaching 26,1 per cent, while a further 8,1 per cent of the population experienced severe material deprivation.  Consequently, the latest census results registered a 16,9 per cent decrease of the city’s total population, amounting to a decline of 133.336 people due to falling birth rates and almost no net immigration.  The steep rise in municipal unemployment and poverty figures, and the clearly defined population decline trend, suggests that it is in the city that “austerity bites” (Peck, 2012).

Collaborative shift

The City of Athens responded to austerity-stemming impasses via the launch of collaborative governance initiatives.  Prominent examples of such schemes include, amongst others:

  • Rethink and Reactivate, a physical intervention project in the city centre, organized and funded by the Onassis Public Benefit Foundation.
  • INNOVATHENS, a public-private consortium that supports start-ups in the tech sector, engaging six associations of IT firms and co-funded Samsung.
  • Resilience, an attempt to define and address the key challenges the city is facing, guided by 100RC – a Rockefeller urban network.
  • synAthina, a new municipal unit facilitating community groups to implement and communicate their activities, funded by “Bloomberg Philanthropies”.
  • Solidarity Hub, a social assistance centre for 8000 registered people that face severe poverty problems. The scheme is funded by EEA grants, obliging City Hall to collaborate with NGOs.

The repositioning of the local governance centre of gravity towards collaborative grounds underscores a profound departure from the pre-austerity stance of centralized administration and limited policy-making interaction with the market and civil society.  Currently, almost all municipal policy areas engage sponsors, donors and partner groups, including community groups and activists.  In the social policy field, in particular, the City of Athens endorsed an overtly “enabling” role, facilitating NGOs to pursuit funding opportunities on its behalf.  As a result, social policy goals for the 2015-2019 period were fashioned on an ad hoc basis and appear in the respective blueprint underscored by the “subject to funding availability” annotation (City of Athens, 2015: 5).

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Food bags awaiting claimant citizens in the “solidarity hub”.

Informal collaborative vehicles and adversarial stances

Our next goal in this attempt to approach the changing matrices of  Athenian urban politics, will be to map and investigate key examples from the variety of grassroots collaborative initiatives that have sprung up in the city during the last years.  Cases in point include the large number of complementary currency systems and time banks, social pharmacies, medical centers, soup kitchens and farmers’ markets, all organized at neighborhood level by spontaneously formed solidarity groups.  It is the perceptions of austerity and collaboration of activists participating in this movement that we aim to explore.  Their degree of engagement in the corresponding municipal programmes, and their views on the collaborative example pursuit by the City will also be examined.  Municipality respondents reflected eloquently on this issue:

“I mean, you have the top down kind of consultation that most countries like the UK have gotten really good at doing.  So they know how to talk and they also have a strong civil society. Which we didn’t have. But then […] what you have here is bottom up collaboration.  You know what I mean? In a network kind of way. …this is the new organizing pattern. Right? … but there is no conversation with the top.  And the question is; does there need to be conversation with the top?” (Athens-UP2-F).

Dr Ioannis Chorianopoulos is Associate Professor and Naya Tselepi a PhD candidate at the Department of Geography at the University of the Aegean.

Barcelona: Crisis Austerity and Socio-Political Change

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This post summarizes the main findings of the case study of Barcelona from the collaborative governance under austerity project, sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of its Urban Transformations Network, and led by Prof. Jonathan Davies. The case study was led by Ismael Blanco with help from Helena Cruz and Yunailis Salazar (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona).

The case of Barcelona is particularly interesting in the context of a study that interrogates transformations in the forms of relationship between the local state and civil society during crises. The interest of this case study lies, on one hand, in the strength of the participatory and collaborative tradition of Barcelona, which dates back to the early years of democracy (1980s). In this sense, it is interesting to analyse the extent to which this tradition constrains and conditions the possibilities of institutional change in the politics of urban governance, neutralising the effects of a crisis that has been particularly severe. On the other hand, Barcelona has become particularly important  since the local elections of May 2015, which led to the formation of a new radical-left government led by the Mayor Ada Colau, former leader of the social movement against housing evictions in Spain. In this context, Barcelona illustrates the strength of social mobilisation against austerity in Spain and the strategy of a significant part of this movement to occupy the institutional arena, generating profound changes in local and national politics. Our future research will be particularly concerned with how far a radical government can alter the power relations between the public, the private and the community sectors, enlarging the opportunities for citizens’ direct participation and overcoming the injustices of austerity.

The impacts of the crisis in the city of Barcelona have been intense in terms of unemployment, poverty and foreclosures. Such impacts have been distributed unevenly between different groups and urban areas, creating a more polarized social and spatial structure. The socio-spatial inequalities in the city have grown significantly since the outbreak of the crisis, reversing a sustained trend of inequality reduction since the 1980s. The intensity of the socio-spatial crisis stands in stark contrast with the good health of municipal public finances. The last municipal budgets of 2015, for example, closed with a surplus of 100 million euros – the textbook neoliberal budgeting strategy.  As part of the national austerity drive, Spain has witnessed as strong tendency for the  re-centralization of political power with serious consequences for both local (and regional) autonomy – for example deficit budgeting was prohibited in 2011.  However, the institutional capacity of the City Council of Barcelona remains relatively high thanks to the strength of municipal finances and the special powers conceded by the Municipal Charter of 1999. Such Charter, for example, allows the City Council of Barcelona to intervene in policy fields like housing, education and health through public consortia composed of the regional and the local government.

In analysing the role of collaborative governance in addressing the socioeconomic crisis, we must recall that participation and public-private and public-community collaboration have had a very important role in Barcelona since the 1980s. Collaborative governance in Barcelona precedes the “collaborative moment” observed in different parts of the world during the economic boom of the 1990s and early 2000s. Apart from various forms of public-private partnership such as joint ventures, structures of participation and public-community collaboration in Barcelona have been gradually built up, first under the 1986 Rules of Functioning of Districts and Citizen Participation and later under the Rules of Citizen Participation of 2003. It has contributed to developing a strong culture of inter-sectoral collaboration and a wide range of formal rules and institutions consolidated by the passage of time and the interests and habits they have generated.

Institutional path dependency in the field of collaborative governance in Barcelona is strong, as could be observed during the only period of conservative government the city has known in recent times (2011-2015). While the new government tended to be very critical of the participation model established under the leadership of the Socialist Party of Catalonia, changes in the formal architecture of participation in the city were minimal. Informal changes were more subtle, encompassing strategies such as residualisation of existing mechanisms, institutional layering  by creating mechanisms that overlap pre-existing ones , and the adoption of a  narrative influenced by neoliberalism around notions such as open government, social co-responsibility and social innovation. Some of our respondents thought that under this government there was a deep, though subtle, weakening of participation and incremental social welfare privatisation.

The 2011-2015 mandate coincided with a period of resurgence of social movements and alternative social practices in the city (and across Spain) stimulated by the outbreak of the 15M indignados movement. The 15M movement emerged spontaneously in different cities in the spring of 2011, although its origins were linked to the activity of previous movements like Real Democracy Now!, Youth Without Future, and the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages. The 15M also overlapped with a set of sectoral mobilisations (Mareas) fighting austerity in areas such as education, health and culture. The anti-austerity movement has retained great vitality in Spain, and polls indicate strong growth in the levels of interest and political participation among citizens. The de-centralized and urbanized structure of the 15M amid the growing disaffection of citizens with political and dominant economic institutions has favoured the emergence of a multitude of alternative social practices such as time banks, agro-ecological consumption cooperatives, ethical banking and urban gardens. Such practices – which experienced a strong growth since 2011 – have been particularly strong in Barcelona, ​​connecting with the cooperative and self-management traditions that existed in the city throughout the twentieth century.  A key lesson from our study is that the national anti-austerity movement is an urban movement, built in cities and neighbourhoods and rooted in longstanding urban traditions of organising and cooperation.

Barcelona en Comú – previously called Guanyem Barcelona – is an electoral alliance born in 2014 out of the confluence of anti-austerity social movements, alternative social practices, left-wing parties (such as ICV and United Left) and emerging political forces (like Podemos and Equo). The formation of this coalition stimulated a multitude of alternative candidacies at the May 2015 elections in Spain. The so-called “change candidacies” took office in 4 of the 5 largest cities in Spain (Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Zaragoza and Valencia) – as well as in many other small and middle-size cities with regional importance such as La Coruna in Galicia and Cadiz in Andalusia. The case of Barcelona is especially significant, as the new Mayor Ada Colau is not only the first woman to govern this city, but had a significant political role as the leader of the main organization of the anti-housing evictions movement in Spain (La PAH).

Our exploratory research shows that the new government has a strong commitment to radical change in the model of participation and collaboration between the public, private and community sectors in the city. One of the key ideas that it intends to promote is a form of co-production linked to the ‘commons’ (that inspires the name of Barcelona en Comú) and social innovation. Under Colau, the meaning of “social innovation” has shifted from entrepreneurship and takes a more radical meaning, linked to the ambition of transforming power relationships through community action. The notion of co-production involves, according to some respondents, taking a step beyond citizen participation towards generating more horizontal relationships between public institutions and citizens, increasing citizen empowerment and enabling citizens to take over the management of goods and services.

It is still too early to assess the accomplishments and limitations of the new government, though the evidence collected in this exploratory phase points to a significant continuity in the formal structures of participation after one year – perhaps due to institutional path dependency (by which we mean the constraining influence of past decisions, practices and actions) and the minority position of the new government, which faces significant challenges in getting its agenda and financial proposals approved by the City Council.

During the next phase, we will focus on analysing changes in the relationships between local political institutions and civil society in four key areas: the formal structures of consultation and participation (like neighbourhood councils); spaces of deliberative democracy (like the participative process for the elaboration of the Municipal Action Plan); community management practices (such as community management of public urban plots and disused buildings); and policy co-production (covering both pre-existing and emerging practices). A key question is whether the new government is able to undertake radical institutional change, despite barriers such as “path dependency”, institutional resistance, corporate and neoliberal opposition and the lack of a formal majority in the council.

Dr Ismael Blanco is Lecturer at the Department of Political Science and Public Law and Research Fellow at the Institute of Government and Public Policy (IGOP) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB)

 

Workshop on Labour and Development: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue

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Date and Venue: Wednesday 1st June, 9.30-5pm, Hugh Aston building, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Conveners: Dr Adam Fishwick and Dr Anita Hammer

Crisis of contemporary capitalism has put labour, development, class struggles and the state at the centre of analysis both in the Global North and the South. This research workshop brings together scholars across a wide range of academic disciplines, including Anthropology, International Political Economy, Industrial Relations, Labour/Economic Geography and Development Studies, and geographical interests including Latin America to South and South-East Asia to Africa.

Our aim is to explore the question: how can we engage across academic disciplines on existing methodological and theoretical limitations in understanding the role of labour in development?

The four interrelated themes around which the sessions and roundtable are organised include:

  • Conceptualising forms of resistance
  • Situating labour and the state
  • Social reproduction and the household
  • Informal economies and precarity

This workshop is a starting point for the establishment of a wider academic network for understanding labour and development with a plan to host a second workshop at the University of Sussex in January 2017.

For more information please contact Dr Adam Fishwick at adam.fishwick@dmu.ac.uk

Book Review: What a Waste – Outsourcing and how it Goes Wrong

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In this book review, CURAs Dr. Heather Connolly shares her thoughts on the recent book by Researchers at Manchester Capitalism “What a Waste”. This blog was originally published on the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute’s website.

With increasing numbers of failures and fiascos of outsourced contracts hitting the headlines, the question ‘when will governments ever learn?’ springs readily to mind.  A hard-hitting new book, by researchers at CRESC/Manchester Capitalism, entitled What a Waste: Outsourcing and how it goes wrong have criticised the ‘disastrous’ practice of UK government outsourcing, but argue that the failures and fiascos are effectively pre-designed.  The authors state that ‘there is an overall logic to the process which costs citizens because outsourcing is what happens at the intersection between the political convenience of the (central state) and the opportunism of outsourcing companies and investors’. Outsourcing allows the shift of blame to private sector providers, and government abdicates responsibility for providing underfunded services and ‘toxic activities’ (border control, for example) in favour of private firms with poor management control.

‘The franchise state which exists to award and monitor contracts at the same time strips itself of institutional resources and intelligence previously used to deliver goods and services.  As outsourcing proceeds, the (central and local) state is increasingly disabled in that it no longer has the capability to deliver public services.’

This situation means that giant contractors and the state become bound together in a form of co-dependence and when it goes wrong the blame can easily be laid on outsourcing contractors or the individual public servants who wrote the contract, rather than the government.  Contracts typically cover mundane activities which too often allow profit taking at the expense of the tax payer and the workforce by outsourcers who do not make capital investment or take market risk.

In the last few months there have been a number of failures and fiascos in public sector outsourcing contracts.  In December 2015 a £160m contract between Cornwall County Council and corporate giant BT was scrapped following a High Court ruling.  The 10-year deal, signed in March 2013, was for BT to run IT, human resources and other services for the council. BT tried to fight the Council’s decision to end the contract after only two years but a ruling was made against them stating BT did not provide ‘the service it had promised to the standard it had promised’.  Again in December 2015 an £800million older people’s care contract in Cambridgeshire ended after just eight months because it was ‘no longer financially sustainable’.  These are some of the more ‘mundane’ failures that tend to slip under the radar, not to mention some of the more controversial outsourcing fiascos such as the recent G4S ‘red doors’ for refugees in Middlesbrough or the Clearsprings ‘coloured bands’ for asylum seekers in Cardiff.

What a Waste points out that there have been various experiments around outsourcing in local councils, notably in Birmingham and Barnet.  Barnet was labelled ‘easyCouncil’ by critics that complained services resembled low-cost, no frills airlines such as easyJet.  Other councils, such as Essex, Southampton City, Suffolk and Staffordshire have also taken up the outsourcing model.  However, as they allude to in the book, Northampton County Council (NCC) is taking the process a step further by transferring 3,850 of its 4,000 employees to 4 new dividend-paying service providers which would deliver all the council’s services, including social care for the elderly.  The Chief Executive is pushing through with plans to begin outsourcing the services in a move which he says will make a £148m saving by 2020, though some fear the plan is a step towards privatisation.  Under EU Procurement Law these contracts will have to go out to tender after 3 years, so fears of effective privatisation are well-founded.

The ‘commission-only’ model being adopted by NCC is likely to be increasingly replicated in Conservative-controlled shires and urban areas.  The fact that there is no real reflection as to how these activities will function under this ‘next generation’ council model is evidence to support many of the arguments in What a Waste.

‘The democratic tragedy of the franchise state is that today’s mainstream politicians are not protesting (or even examining) the outcomes of outsourcing but are planning to grant ever more local monopolies from which organised money can take profits (in many cases without the capital investment or revenue risk which legitimate capitalist profit)’.

In a context of austerity, TINA (There Is No Alternative) is brought to the fore in discussions around the need for cuts to local services, and therefore resistance feels muted.  The authors argue that there is an urgent need for resistance around outsourcing as it is spreading though to sectors which should remain under some form of state control:

‘the failure of politicians and policy makers to protest outsourcing has become an urgent matter because the state has outsourced or is now outsourcing services which are part of what we call the ‘foundational economy’ in health, adult care, welfare and security.  Many of these services are or will be used by most families or individuals because the foundational economy is the basis of material security and the infrastructure of civilised life for the whole population’.

The authors of What a Waste argue that government outsourcing should be curbed by politically agreed prohibitions on outsourcing which is not in the public interest.  In an interview for the book one of the authors, Professor Karel Williams, put forward three principles for public sector outsourcing: firstly, no large scale outsourcing in local government where officers and members do not have the expertise to negotiate contracts; secondly, no outsourcing of ‘politically toxic’ services like border controls because government should take responsibility for what it does; and thirdly, no total outsourcing of any important service like provision of care homes because the public sector needs its own expertise.  It seems unlikely that the current government will take heed of any of these principles.

What this book does not offer is a comprehensive strategy for resistance and the ways in which organised groups against outsourcing can fight the plans.  Past experience shows that even where campaigns have had wide levels of support and have made small gains, they have not been sufficient to block major outsourcing plans from going ahead.  A strategy of resistance needs a co-ordinated approach involving multiple groups which means drawing on the different sources of power both in and outside workplaces, organising in the community and through media campaigning and political lobbying.  Two key challenges for building resistance are first, the willingness to act, particularly among local government workers, where a culture of fear may be developed around whose job is ‘at risk’ as a result of outsourcing.  Second, with such campaigns comes the question about the alternatives to outsourcing.  Labour branded its approach to running Lambeth as the ‘John Lewis’ council operating on the basis of mutual and co-operative values. Is this the ‘least worst’ alternative that could be fought for at a local level?

Dr Heather Connolly is Senior Lecturer at the Leicester Business School at DMU, and a core member of the CURA team.