[PDF] Contesting Austerity eBook

Author : Anuscheh Farahat
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 50,9 MB
Release : 2021-07-01
Category : Law
ISBN : 1509942831

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This book addresses the different forms of austerity, contestation and resistance, in order to understand how they relate to one another and the impact they have on the democratic quality of public debates, the trust in public institutions and the legitimacy of law. Contestation of austerity includes not only traditional activism strategies such as human rights litigation and direct democracy instruments, but also new forms of collective action and collaborative resistance. Most importantly, many of the new anti-austerity initiatives also aim to renovate existing modes of democratic decision-making on the European, national, regional and local levels. The book focuses on different types of contesting austerity measures and the interaction between institutional and civil society actors. It will enhance understanding of how the various actors frame not only their goal but also the underlying social conflict to contest austerity and through which means they try to achieve political and legal changes. With 16 chapters written by contributors from Spain, Germany, Greece, Portugal and the UK, the book approaches 3 crucial areas of austerity policies: cuts in payment and pensions, labour law reform, and old and new poverty. In each field, the contributors analyse the processes of decision-making and contestation from 3 perspectives: institutions, democratic theory and societal responses.

Author : Julia Rone
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 172 pages
File Size : 33,81 MB
Release : 2020-11-25
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1000288943

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The book explores the diffusion of protest against austerity and free trade agreements in the wave of contention that shook the EU following the 2008 economic crisis. It discusses how protests against austerity and free trade agreements manifested a wider discontent with the constitutionalization of economic policy and the way economic decisions have been insulated from democratic debate. It also explores the differentiated politicization of these issues and the diffusion of protests across Western as well as Eastern Europe, which has often been neglected in studies of the post-crisis turmoil. Julia Rone emphasizes that far from being an automatic spontaneous process, protest diffusion is highly complex, and its success or failure can be impacted by the strategic agency and media practices of key political players involved such as bottom-up activists, as well as trade unions, political parties, NGOs, intellectuals and mainstream media. This is an important resource for media and communications students and scholars with an interest in activism, political economy, social movement studies and protest movements.

Author : Anuscheh Farahat
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 364 pages
File Size : 44,45 MB
Release : 2021-07-01
Category : Law
ISBN : 1509942823

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This book addresses the different forms of austerity, contestation and resistance, in order to understand how they relate to one another and the impact they have on the democratic quality of public debates, the trust in public institutions and the legitimacy of law. Contestation of austerity includes not only traditional activism strategies such as human rights litigation and direct democracy instruments, but also new forms of collective action and collaborative resistance. Most importantly, many of the new anti-austerity initiatives also aim to renovate existing modes of democratic decision-making on the European, national, regional and local levels. The book focuses on different types of contesting austerity measures and the interaction between institutional and civil society actors. It will enhance understanding of how the various actors frame not only their goal but also the underlying social conflict to contest austerity and through which means they try to achieve political and legal changes. With 16 chapters written by contributors from Spain, Germany, Greece, Portugal and the UK, the book approaches 3 crucial areas of austerity policies: cuts in payment and pensions, labour law reform, and old and new poverty. In each field, the contributors analyse the processes of decision-making and contestation from 3 perspectives: institutions, democratic theory and societal responses.

Author : Julia Rone
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 178 pages
File Size : 45,41 MB
Release : 2020-11-25
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1000288846

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The book explores the diffusion of protest against austerity and free trade agreements in the wave of contention that shook the EU following the 2008 economic crisis. It discusses how protests against austerity and free trade agreements manifested a wider discontent with the constitutionalization of economic policy and the way economic decisions have been insulated from democratic debate. It also explores the differentiated politicization of these issues and the diffusion of protests across Western as well as Eastern Europe, which has often been neglected in studies of the post-crisis turmoil. Julia Rone emphasizes that far from being an automatic spontaneous process, protest diffusion is highly complex, and its success or failure can be impacted by the strategic agency and media practices of key political players involved such as bottom-up activists, as well as trade unions, political parties, NGOs, intellectuals and mainstream media. This is an important resource for media and communications students and scholars with an interest in activism, political economy, social movement studies and protest movements.

Author : Donatella della Porta
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 187 pages
File Size : 49,68 MB
Release : 2017-04-21
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1509511490

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The ascendance of austerity policies and the protests they have generated have had a deep impact on the shape of contemporary politics. The stunning electoral successes of SYRIZA in Greece, Podemos in Spain and the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) in Italy, alongside the quest for a more radical left in countries such as the UK and the US, bear witness to a new wave of parties that draws inspiration and strength from social movements. The rise of movement parties challenges simplistic expectations of a growing separation between institutional and contentious politics and the decline of the left. Their return demands attention as a way of understanding both contemporary socio-political dynamics and the fundamentals of political parties and representation. Bridging social movement and party politics studies, within a broad concern with democratic theories, this volume presents new empirical evidence and conceptual insight into these topical socio-political phenomena, within a cross-national comparative perspective.

Author : Matthias Goldmann
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 48,9 MB
Release : 2020
Category :
ISBN :

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The dominant understanding of the role of human rights in the context of austerity induced by sovereign debt crises has shifted markedly over time. It reflects, and may have influenced, the genealogies of human rights law in the postwar era. Four different paradigms emerge. During the 1970s, the decade preceding the debt crisis of the 1980s, the idea of austerity as a response to debt crises was contested by the basic (human) needs approach and by the proposal of a New International Economic Order. Both strands of thought showed some affinity with human rights law, although not without ambiguity, understanding self-determination as a structural requirement for ESC rights enjoyment. Counterintuitively, though, the debt crisis beginning in the 1980s silenced, rather than provoked, any form of human rights-based critique. The IMF managed to shift the focus of the debate from human needs to human capital, in line with the emerging Washington Consensus. When the Iron Curtain fell, sovereign debt restructuring became more generous, but debtor states had to pay with ever more intrusive forms of austerity, including structural conditions such as respect for civil and political rights. This “governance paradigm” of human rights was countered by a transformative paradigm of human rights in which civil society articulated its critique of austerity. The IFIs avoided the issue of human rights, but reacted by adding “social” components to austerity that aligned with their focus on efficiency and growth and further entrenched sufficiency. The impact of austerity on the European periphery led to lots of human rights litigation, but a number of structural obstacles prevented its success. Instead, the crisis aftermath saw enormous progress in the political recognition of human rights as a relevant standard for austerity. This has given rise to a new political paradigm of human rights. While this genealogy shows the contingency of human rights discourse in relation to austerity, it reveals their potential for challenging economic expertise and empowering progressive views, provided human rights are used to politicize, not to depoliticize, distributive questions. The limits of human rights discourse are the limits of our imagination.

Author : Sylvia Walby
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 174 pages
File Size : 35,55 MB
Release : 2015-10-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 150950320X

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We are living in a time of crisis which has cascaded through society. Financial crisis has led to an economic crisis of recession and unemployment; an ensuing fiscal crisis over government deficits and austerity has led to a political crisis which threatens to become a democratic crisis. Borne unevenly, the effects of the crisis are exacerbating class and gender inequalities. Rival interpretations – a focus on ‘austerity’ and reduction in welfare spending versus a focus on ‘financial crisis’ and democratic regulation of finance – are used to justify radically diverse policies for the distribution of resources and strategies for economic growth, and contested gender relations lie at the heart of these debates. The future consequences of the crisis depend upon whether there is a deepening of democratic institutions, including in the European Union. Sylvia Walby offers an alternative framework within which to theorize crisis, drawing on complexity science and situating this within the wider field of study of risk, disaster and catastrophe. In doing so, she offers a critique and revision of the social science needed to understand the crisis.

Author : Beltrán Roca
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 203 pages
File Size : 27,58 MB
Release : 2017-11-22
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1315438070

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This book analyses social movements and radical political parties’ strategies in Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy from 2008 to today. Events in 2011 such as the Arab Spring and the indignados movement in Spain initiated a new cycle of social protest. This book explores how the economic crisis and policies of austerity have transformed and continue to transform social movements, trade unions and radical political parties in Southern Europe. The economic crisis has led to a rise in protest movements, which confront political institutions and conventional forms of democracy, and develop new spatial and organisational strategies. This book examines these cases, in addition to those groups who, contrastingly, have used institutional politics to achieve their aims, such as new political parties like Podemos in Spain or Movimento 5 Stelle in Italy. Analysing the extent to which there has been a change in approach when it comes to contesting neo-liberal capitalism, this book makes an important contribution to the study of social movements and radical politics. With a comparative perspective and an emphasis on studying the largely unexplored recent social and political dynamics in the European periphery, this book is essential reading for students, scholars and activists interested in social movements, radical politics and European politics more generally.

Author : Guderjan, Marius
Publisher : Bristol University Press
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 14,80 MB
Release : 2020-03-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 152920500X

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A distinctive and original analysis of how the politics of the UK and the lives of British citizens have evolved in the first decades of the twenty-first century, this book provides an interdisciplinary critical examination of the roots, motivations and interconnectedness of austerity politics, the Brexit vote and the rise of populist politics in the Britain. Bringing together case studies and perspectives from an array of international researchers across the social sciences, it dissects the ways that Britain has become increasingly contested with profound difference of geography, generation, gender, ‘race’ and class, and considers the emergence of a range of practices, institutions and politics that challenge the hegemony of austerity.

Author : Suzanne J. Konzelmann
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 148 pages
File Size : 21,25 MB
Release : 2019-10-14
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1509534881

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Austerity has been at the center of political controversy following the 2008 financial crisis, invoked by politicians and academics across the political spectrum as the answer to, or cause of, our post-crash economic malaise. However, despite being the cause of debate for more than three centuries, austerity remains a poorly understood concept. In this book, Suzanne J. Konzelmann aims to demystify austerity as an economic policy, a political idea, and a social phenomenon. Beginning with an analysis of political and socioeconomic history from the seventeenth century, she explains the economics of austerity in the context of the overall dynamics of state spending, tax, and debt. Using comparative case studies from around the world, ranging from the 1930s to post-2008, she then evaluates the outcomes of austerity in light of its stated objectives and analyzes the conditions under which it doesn’t – and occasionally does – work. This accessible introduction to austerity will be essential reading for students and scholars of political economy, economics, and politics, as well as all readers interested in current affairs.