By Sacha Hasan
The word austerity was defined by Merriam-Webster as
a condition of enforced or extreme economy. Since 2010, austerity became the
key word to describe the post-crisis times and to index the ongoing notions of
stern economic measurements, as the meaning exceeded its classical association
with self-discipline, thrift and scarcity to further describe the distinctively
neoliberal changing matrixes that are often referred to as ‘these economic
times’ (Peck, 2012).
Austerity budgeting in the public sector is promoted
by neoliberal script as a ‘common sense’ and a ‘necessity’ to respond to the
market conditions and failures (Peck, 2012; Fanelli and Paulson, 2010). In this, the
state maintains a cult-like privileging
of individual economic liberties and personal responsibility, rolling
privatisation as fiscal necessities, shifting from the universal, public
provision of social services to market provision with attached user fees,
lowering of taxation between jurisdictions, and tax-shifting from businesses to
consumers and from property owners to the users of city services (Peck, 2012; Fanelli
and Paulson, 2010; Harvey, 2005).In
other words, austerity contributes to press for "yet smaller small-state
settlements at the urban scale" where the most vulnerable social groups are
affected (Peck, 2012, p. 626), and this is the terrain of neoliberal urbanism,
which is defined by Fanelli and Paulson (2010, p. 4)as:
"... a range of uneven urban processes taking
place simultaneously in the communities where we live and work. This includes
the privatization, restructuring, or elimination of public goods and municipal
services; the shifting of the cost of maintenance of public resources onto the
working class; the increasing precariousness of work; the devolution of
responsibilities onto local governments without matching fiscal supports; the
scaling of regulatory capacities upwards to regional or international
institutions (characterized by little transparency, accountability, or public
consultation); the reining in of the power of municipal unions and community
groups; the scaling back of social entitlement programs; and expansion of
so-called 'public-private partnerships' that shift some of the responsibility
for urban governance to corporations".
Changing governance and downloading responsibilities
have always been the key results of neoliberal government, as it sees
governance to be a potential threat to individual rights and constitutional
liberties, and democracy to be a luxury and hardly guarantees political
stability (Hackworth, 2007; Harvey, 2005; 2012; Peck, 2011; 2012).
Alternatively, neoliberals prefer governance by experts and elites, where
issues are governed by executive order and judicial decisions rather than
democratic and parliamentary decision-making (Harvey, 2005). These are seen to
help create and promote a business climate and stable political system.
However, practice has shown that neoliberal measures have biases especially at
the time of crises. These arise in particular out of "the treatment of
labour and the environment as mere commodities" (Harvey, 2005, p. 70). With
more focus during times of conflict, like the current fiscal crisis, the
typical neoliberal state sides with a good business climate at the expense of
collective rights of labour and the capacity of the environment to (re)generate
itself. Furthermore, the neoliberal state favours "the integrity of the
financial system and the solvency of financial institutions over the well-being
of population or environmental qualities" (Harvey, 2005, p. 70-71). When
doing this, the neoliberal state aims to restore class power, by limiting state
action and focussing on privatisation (‘rolling-back’ of the state) and
individual power. However, once again there is a contradiction between theory
and practise, as the neoliberal state, especially at the time of conflict, has
showed great intervention to create institutional reforms for the benefit of
the economic recovery of the elite, through accumulation by dispossession (see Harvey,
2005).Therefore, it is accepted to say that fiscal cutback is a recurrent
condition of neoliberal government, despite its proven frequent episodes of
over-reach, failure and crisis (see Peck et al.,
2010; McBride and Whiteside, 2011).
Reflecting on this and when examining the effects of
austerity, since the contemporary crisis began in 2008, and reaching its peak
in 2010 when David Cameron came to power, the state, local government, and
cities in particular are exposed to the full force of extreme economy. However,
the applied austerity measures are not a mere rerun of the 1980s fiscal cutbacks,
but a selective consolidation and intensification of their underlying logics
and contradictions, resulting in cumulative political, social, institutional
and fiscal effects. Thus, more than being a temporary fiscal fasting, austerity
economy has led to the cumulative incapacitation of the state; this is driving the
current urban crisis (Peck, 2012). This is due to the deeper resulting patterns
of structural imbalances between cities governments' revenuesand their ongoing
commitments to public services and workforce which are greatly renegotiated, as
the preferred targets of austerity programmes are the poor, minorities and
marginalised populations, public-sector unions and bureaucratised infrastructures
(Peck 2012).
In the US, the majority of cities were bites for
austerityare now evident ,they begun to fashion their own fiscal arrangements of
reductions in staffing and service levels under the circumstances of falling
revenues and structural deficits. While ordinary austerity is encouraging city
governments to cut budgets and attempt innovative models of sourcing and
privatisation (Peck, 2012).
Nonetheless, it is argued that austerity has failed,
as it contributed to worsen and lengthen the crises rather than solve it (Fanelli and Paulson,
2010; Peck 2012). In relation to the
geographical context of the proposed research, austerity budgeting showed no
signs of success in Europe (Peck, 2012), as growth has slowed (e.g. the UK) or
failed all together (e.g. Greece and Spain), protests have been provoked along
with opposing movements on both the right and the left, and the hopes for
pro-austerity government succession have collapsed (Peck, 2012).Furthermore,
this 'severe economy' does not seem to be a passing moment, but a proposed
institutional system designed for years to come (Pew Charitable Trust, 2012),because
the resulting signs show that cities are expected to fall into line in the age
of austerity (Edsall, 2012; Featherstone, et al., 2012).
However, the rationale of austerity starting to take
effect since 2008 is defining a new terrain to neoliberalism. This is because
it is being examined under distinctive historical and geographical conditions,
in the context of already neoliberalised models of local state power and urban
politics (Peck, 2012). Therefore, the proposed research suggests the importance
to critically examine the features of the emerging ongoing institutional landscapes
systemised by the current neoliberal government, as rather than a target, the
crisis could be seen to serve as an excuse for
neoliberal governments to achieve two key goals: "the subjection of
all workers to strict market discipline, and the political disorganization of
the Left" (Fanelli
and Paulson, 2010 drawing from Evans,
2009; Rosenfeld, 2009; Alboand Rosenfeld, 2009). This agrees with Krugman's argument (2012, p. A27) which points out
that, "the austerity derive... isn't really about debt and deficits at
all; it's about using deficit panic as an excuse to dismantle social
programmes... economic recovery was never the point; the drive for austerity
[is] about using the crisis, not solving it".
Therefore, the impacts of austerity extreme economy
has started to take an urban dimension, highlighting certain features that can
define austerity economy as an emergent form of neoliberal urbanism, which is austerity urbanism (Peck, 2012).This is
because the cumulative effects of austerity extreme end are immediately
revealed in the downsizing of public sector workforces, resulting in "back-office
and front-line cuts in fields like education, healthcare and welfare [, ]and
this will likely be spatially concentrated and socially regressive, compounding
the effects of service withdrawals themselves" (Peck, 2012, p. 648). Furthermore,
austerity urbanism has started to reach more deeply into ‘hard to reform’ fields
(e.g. the welfare state, comprising grant-dependent institutions engaged in
service-delivery roles in the community, non-profit and faith-based sectors)
(Peck, 2012). This is in addition to the massive privatisation of the public
sector (including land and property sites, user fees and service management). This
will result in infrastructure development to become more highly dependent on
public-private partnership, favouring projects that promise attractive returns.
This is while leaving the public-sector developments to face intensifying
management and financing difficulties, shifting responsibilities to local city
governments that are expected to be 'creative' as to solve the mismatches and
imbalances between the local capacities and what is expected from them, leading
to hollow urban development policy-making initiatives in order to fill the
resulting credibility vacuum (Peck, 2012). For local city governments to absorb
these institutional shortcomings and their unaffordable costs, they tend to 'offload
themselves'; reductions in social- service delivery and the adoption of
fee-based systems will especially affect low-income populations, women and minority
groups (Peck, 2012).
These features altogether have gone beyond being of immediate
neoliberal characteristics (similar to those of the 1980s), but becoming an
indirect drive of ongoing organisational transformation named austerity
urbanism. This form of urban politics is defined by Peck (2012, p. 651),
"... to be understood as a particular mutation
of neoliberal urbanism, unevenly realized and still no more than emergent in
some respects, it is also important to acknowledge that the systemic imposition
of fiscal discipline hardly represents a ‘new’ departure in the context of the
shape-shifting, nonlinear dynamics of neoliberalisation. [...] however, this
does not define a sustainable course. Beyond its internal contradictions,
austerity urbanism has already become a site of struggle in its own right,
though it remains to be seen whether the latest wave of occupations, pro- tests
and resistance efforts will mutate into a politics of transformation".
However, it is important to note that the concept is very contested,
as despite a number of emergent features of the concept can be highlighted,
these greatly vary from one context to another in terms of severity and effect (Peck, 2012). Thus, having and end abstract definition can be unrealistic, and
is not the purpose. The aim here is rather to develop an understanding of the concept and its relation to the examined context.
