Download or read book Politics in the Age of Austerity written by Wolfgang Streeck and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-05-09 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world of increasing austerity measures, democratic politics comes under pressure. With the need to consolidate budgets and to accommodate financial markets, the responsiveness of governments to voters declines. However, democracy depends on choice. Citizens must be able to influence the course of government through elections and if a change in government cannot translate into different policies, democracy is incapacitated. Many mature democracies are approaching this situation as they confront fiscal crisis. For almost three decades, OECD countries have - in fits and starts - run deficits and accumulated debt. As a result, an ever smaller part of government revenue is available today for discretionary spending and social investment and whichever party comes into office will find its hands tied by past decisions. The current financial and fiscal crisis has exacerbated the long-term shrinking government discretion; projects for political change have lost credibility. Many citizens are aware of this situation: they turn away from party politics and stay at home on Election Day. With contributions from leading scholars in the forefront of sociology, politics and economics, this timely book will be of great interest to students and scholars throughout the social sciences as well as general readers.

Download or read book The Age of Austerity written by Thomas Byrne Edsall and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2012-01-10 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of our most prescient political observers provides a sobering account of how pitched battles over scarce resources will increasingly define American politics in the coming years—and how we might avoid, or at least mitigate, the damage from these ideological and economic battles. In a matter of just three years, a bitter struggle over limited resources has enveloped political discourse at every level in the United States. Fights between haves and have-nots over health care, unemployment benefits, funding for mortgage write-downs, economic stimulus legislation—and, at the local level, over cuts in police protection, garbage collection, and in the number of teachers—have dominated the debate. Elected officials are being forced to make zero-sum choices—or worse, choices with no winners. Resource competition between Democrats and Republicans has left each side determined to protect what it has at the expense of the other. The major issues of the next few years—long-term deficit reduction; entitlement reform, notably of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; major cuts in defense spending; and difficulty in financing a continuation of American international involvement—suggest that your-gain-is-my-loss politics will inevitably intensify.

Download or read book Contentious Episodes in the Age of Austerity written by Abel Bojar and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-11 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides researchers with a novel methodological tool to study interactions between governments, challengers, and third-party actors.

Download or read book Street Politics in the Age of Austerity written by Marcos Ancelovici and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection is designed to offer a comparative analysis of street-level protest movements, setting them in international, socio-economic, and cross-cultural perspective in order to help us understand why movements emerge, what they do, how they spread, and how they fit into both local and worldwide historical contexts.

Download or read book Composition in the Age of Austerity written by Nancy Welch and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the face of the gradual saturation of US public education by the logics of neoliberalism, educators often find themselves at a loss to respond, let alone resist. Through state defunding and many other “reforms” fueled by austerity politics, a majority of educators are becoming casual labor in US universities while those who hang onto secure employment are pressed to act as self-supporting entrepreneurs or do more with less. Focusing on the discipline of writing studies, this collection addresses the sense of crisis that many educators experience in this age of austerity. The chapters in this book chronicle how neoliberal political economy shapes writing assessments, curricula, teacher agency, program administration, and funding distribution. Contributors also focus on how neoliberal political economy dictates the direction of scholarship, because the economic and political agenda shaping the terms of work, the methods of delivery, and the ways of valuing and assessing writing also shape the primary concerns and directions of scholarship. Composition in the Age of Austerity offers critical accounts of how the restructuring of higher education is shaping the daily realities of composition programs. The book documents the effects and implications of the current restructuring, examines how cherished rhetorical ideals actually leave the field unprepared to respond effectively to defunding and corporatizing trends, and establishes points of departure for collective response.

Download or read book Schooling in the Age of Austerity written by A. Means and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-02-12 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a case study in a Chicago public school, Means demonstrates that, despite the fragmentation of human security in low-income and racially segregated public schools, there exist positive social relations, knowledge, and desire for change that can be built upon to promote more secure and equitable democratic futures for young people.

Download or read book Sport Policy and Politics in an Era of Austerity written by Dan Parnell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-27 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Austerity is perhaps the major challenge of our times, given the speed at which it arrived and the consequences of its impact upon society. The global financial crash and economic downturn was the catalyst for change and, against a backdrop of advice from experts adverse to Keynesian economics, the ideology of austerity grew and became the dominant thinking to steer economies out of recession. This comprehensive volume draws upon both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies to provide a varied and contextually rich insight into sport, policy, and politics in an era of austerity. The authors cover a wide range of issues in a variety of organisational contexts and geographies, including sports participation across different socio-demographic groups; the impact of austerity on the provision of community sports; disability sport; public management of sport facilities; the performance of public sport facilities with respect to access, finance, utilisation, and customer satisfaction; the potential impact of austerity on sport for development; elite sport; and social inclusion and poverty. This book makes a significant contribution to the current academic debate, while raising important considerations for policymakers and managers. It was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics.

Download or read book The Age of Austerity written by Thomas J. Schoenbaum and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This provocative look at the global financial crisis argues that the United States, the European Union and Japan have intentionally and unwittingly adopted wrong-headed economic policies in a futile attempt to deal with sovereign debt resulting from the global financial crisis. It offers persuasive evidence of how the politics of austerity fail to encourage economic recovery, and proposes instead a number of alternative ideas and solutions. The book begins with a detailed breakdown of the financial crisis and the government response in the United States, with particular focus on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The author then puts forth a basic three-part plan calling for (1) fundamental tax and entitlement reform; (2) massive economic stimulus in the form of public and private investment to modernize the countryÍs aging infrastructures; and (3) mortgage relief to revitalize the nationÍs housing markets. The book concludes with specific policy proposals designed to achieve these goals and return the US economy to a state of full employment and robust economic growth. This timely and insightful volume will appeal to students and scholars of economics, public policy and finance, as well as anyone with an interest in the recent economic history of the United States.

Download or read book Debtors Prison written by Robert Kuttner and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of our foremost economic thinkers challenges a cherished tenet of today’s financial orthodoxy: that spending less, refusing to forgive debt, and shrinking government—“austerity”—is the solution to a persisting economic crisis like ours or Europe’s, now in its fifth year. Since the collapse of September 2008, the conversation about economic recovery has centered on the question of debt: whether we have too much of it, whose debt to forgive, and how to cut the deficit. These questions dominated the sound bites of the 2012 U.S. presidential election, the fiscal-cliff debates, and the perverse policies of the European Union. Robert Kuttner makes the most powerful argument to date that these are the wrong questions and that austerity is the wrong answer. Blending economics with historical contrasts of effective debt relief and punitive debt enforcement, he makes clear that universal belt-tightening, as a prescription for recession, defies economic logic. And while the public debt gets most of the attention, it is private debts that crashed the economy and are sandbagging the recovery—mortgages, student loans, consumer borrowing to make up for lagging wages, speculative shortfalls incurred by banks. As Kuttner observes, corporations get to use bankruptcy to walk away from debts. Homeowners and small nations don’t. Thus, we need more public borrowing and investment to revive a depressed economy, and more forgiveness and reform of the overhang of past debts. In making his case, Kuttner uncovers the double standards in the politics of debt, from Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe’s campaign for debt forgiveness in the seventeenth century to the two world wars and Bretton Woods. Just as debtors’ prisons once prevented individuals from surmounting their debts and resuming productive life, austerity measures shackle, rather than restore, economic growth—as the weight of past debt crushes the economy’s future potential. Above all, Kuttner shows how austerity serves only the interest of creditors—the very bankers and financial elites whose actions precipitated the collapse. Lucid, authoritative, provocative—a book that will shape the economic conversation and the search for new solutions.

Download or read book The Radical Left in Europe in the Age of Austerity written by Babak Amini and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-14 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The complex trajectory of Europe after the 2008 global financial crisis, has led to the catastrophic failure of deep austerity measures that swept across the Union, and is reflected in the rise of some radical left parties such as SYRIZA as well as an unfortunate rise in far right and nationalist parties and movements. This collection brings together a group of European scholars and activists from various European countries to discuss the recent economic, political, and electoral changes in respective countries, and the current status and future plans of radical left parties and movements. This book fills a significant gap within the current literature in the English-speaking world on post-2008 Europe, featuring a nation-based European wide survey of the current activities and plans of radical Left parties and movements in relation to the mounting social, political, and economic problems in Europe. This book contributes to the discussion by presenting a realistic depiction of the existing radical Left forces in Europe. This title was previously published as a special issue of Socialism and Democracy.

Download or read book Globalization and Austerity Politics in Latin America written by Stephen B. Kaplan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-28 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an age of financial globalization, are markets and democracy compatible? For developing countries, the dramatic internationalization of financial markets over the last two decades deepens tensions between politics and markets. Notwithstanding the rise of left-leaning governments in regions like Latin America, macroeconomic policies often have a neoliberal appearance. When is austerity imposed externally and when is it a domestic political choice? By combining statistical tests with extensive field research across Latin America, this book examines the effect of financial globalization on economic policymaking. Kaplan argues that a country's structural composition of international borrowing and its individual technocratic understanding of past economic crises combine to produce dramatically different outcomes in national policy choices. Incorporating these factors into an electoral politics framework, the book then challenges the conventional wisdom that political business cycles are prevalent in newly democratizing regions. This book is accessible to a broad audience and scholars with an interest in the political economy of finance, development and democracy, and Latin American politics.

Download or read book Resistance in the Age of Austerity written by Owen Worth and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-04-11 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In November 1999 the first protests associated with the 'anti-globalisation movement' took place in Seattle, and came to be seen as the starting point for globalised resistance to neoliberal capitalism. Despite initial optimism, the following years have seen little progress in formulating a coherent alternative to neoliberalism, a failure that has become particularly poignant in the aftermath of the recent credit crisis. Now, the neoliberal mandate that appeared to be in 'crisis' in just 2008 has reinvented itself through the guise of a new 'era of austerity'. In this timely book, Worth assesses the growing diversity of resistance to neoliberalism - progressive, nationalist and religious - and argues that, troublingly, the more reactionary alternatives to globalisation currently provide just as coherent a base for building opposition as those associated with the traditional 'left-wing' anti-globalisation movements. From the shortcomings of the Occupy movement to the rise of Radical Islam, the re-emergence of the far-right in Western Europe to the startling impact of the Tea Party in the US - Worth shows that while a progressive alternative is possible, it cannot be taken for granted.

Download or read book Policing in an Age of Austerity written by Michael Brogden and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the current context of financial retrenchment on public-sector budgets, public policing in England and Wales today faces the prospect of dramatic change. While the question of role and function has been the bedrock of classical sociological theorizing on police, this book grounds such theorising in explicating how British policing has arisen through a schismatic process, why it is in a present mess, and what it should be doing in the future The central themes of this critical text are An analysis of the congeries of roles and functions that our public police in England and Wales currently undertake and how they got there An examination of the effect of arbitrary reduction in police services, including a reading of policing politics in an age of austerity A comparative critique of the British Brand of Policing The development of a normative manifesto for the future of British Policing. This book will be essential for reading for students, researchers and academics alike in criminology, police studies and public and social policy.

Download or read book Social Policy in Times of Austerity written by Farnsworth, Kevin and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The effects of the 2008 financial crisis were ameliorated by large-scale social policy interventions, which both helped limit the depth and duration of the crisis and softened its worst effects on citizens. Yet in the wake of the crisis, those very same social policies and the welfare state they support have come under attack. There is, however, reason to be optimistic, argue the contributors to Social Policy in Times of Austerity. Bringing together leading scholars engaged in the debate over austerity and the future of the welfare state, the book traces the strong currents of resistance to austerity that continue to thrive within organizations, governments, and the citizenry at large.

Download or read book The Austerity State written by Stephen McBride and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This volume focuses on the state's role in managing the fall-out from the global economic and financial crisis since 2008. For a brief moment, roughly from 2008-2010, governments and central banks appeared to borrow from Keynes to save the global economy. The contributors, however, take the view that to see those stimulus measures as "Keynesian" is a misinterpretation. Rather, neoliberalism demonstrated considerable resiliency despite its responsibility for the deep and prolonged crisis. The "austerian" analysis of the crisis is--historical, ignores its deeper roots, and rests upon a triumph of discourse involving blame-shifting from the under-regulated private sector to public or sovereign debt--for which the public authorities are responsible."--

Download or read book Grievances and Public Protests written by Martín Portos and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-08-20 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sheds light on the role that grievances play for mobilisation dynamics in a context of material deprivation. Why do people protest? To what extent do grievances account for the varying size of protest events over time? Covering different levels of analysis, the author argues that effects of socioeconomic aspects (both objective-material deprivation and subjective-attitudinal grievances) are mediated by political attitudes, especially political dissatisfaction. He develops a framework to account for the dynamics, trajectory and timing of the cycle of contention that unfolded in Spain in the shadow of the Great Recession, contributing not only to the field of social movement studies but to our broader understanding of European politics, political sociology, political economy and economic sociology.

Download or read book Social Policies in an Age of Austerity written by John Karl Scholz and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2015-06-29 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social Policies in an Age of Austerity is the first major publication on the topic, with a particular interest in the United States and the Republic of Korea. The authors of the ten chapters in this book review recent developments in social policies in