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Since 2010, Dutch local authorities (LGs) have been coping with fiscal stress and austerity. Restoring fiscal balance is difficult for Dutch LGs as they have very limited abilities to increase the level of local income. Fundamental choices regarding policy priorities and public services are required to reduce fiscal deficits. An in-depth case study of four carefully selected LGs revealed three typical financial shocks in the Netherlands: the reduction of national transfers to LGs, the decentralisation of national tasks to LGs without corresponding budgets and the declined value of municipal assets (construction land). The perceived vulnerability for financial shocks is relatively high in Dutch LGs due to their undiversified and uncertain revenue sources. This chapter illustrates that while the anticipatory capacity initially was low, many efforts have been made since 2010 improving risk management and medium-term financial planning. Dutch LGs have typically deployed short-term and long-term responses to cope with austerity. Regarding the short-term, two types of responses were commonly used to balance the budget: cutting costs and postponing investments. Long-term responses were deployed to realign actual operational outputs with strategically desired outputs. Sticking to strategic plans was not easy as financial shocks evolved quickly. An important long-term response in the Netherlands was the ‘transition of the role of government in society’, moving from a proactive self-organising type of government towards a more passive, coordinating type of government. No evidence was found for radical changes of the financial system.

This paper adopts a photo-essay approach in examining the Austerity Project within the Republic of Ireland, and considers the intersection between consumer culture and the austerity visuals we experience daily.

A visual, photo-essay method is adopted. Visual images taken in urban and rural parts of Ireland – under the key themes of ghost housing estates, failed commercial property developments, failed business, and art representations are explored.

The visual representations and subsequent consumption activities of the authors illustrate how austerity has become a complex act of production and consumption, and the authors consider how these various representations play a role in creating austerity as a state of mind amongst consumers, and the subsequent impact this has on consumption practices, consumer experiences, ideals and identities.

This paper adopts an under-represented research methodology (a photo-essay) to explore the Austerity Project and its intersections with consumer culture.

Since at least the 1970s, the American research university system has experienced episodic periods of austerity, frequently accompanied by expressions of concern about the threats that these conditions pose to U.S. scientific and technological leadership. In general, austerity has been tied to fluctuations in Federal Government funding of academic research and macroeconomic fluctuations that have shrunk state government budget revenues. Even amidst these episodes, the system has continued to expand and decentralize. The issue at present is whether this historic resiliency, of being a marvelous invalid, will overcome adverse contemporary trends in Federal and state government funding, as well as political trends that eat away at the societal bonds between universities and their broader publics. The paper juxtaposes examinations of the organizational and political influences that have given rise to the American research university system, trends in research revenues and research costs, and contemporary efforts by universities to balance the two. It singles out the secular decline in state government’s support of public universities as the principal reason why this period of contraction is different from those of the past. Rather though then these trends portending a market shakeout, as some at times have predicted, the projection here is that the academic research system will continue to be characterized by excess capacity and recurrent downward pressures on research costs. Because the adverse impacts are concentrated in the public university sector, they may also spill over into political threats to the current system of awarding academic research grants primarily via competitive, merit review arrangements.

This chapter explores the notion of the European Social Model (ESM) and examines the EU-level social policy reforms that have taken place since the 1950s. ESM is taken to be distinct from but intimately related to the web and patchwork of rules explored in this volume. After sketching out the development of ESM since the 1950s, up to and including its near-death experience in the context of the Great Recession and the EU's turn to austerity, the chapter considers the social and political consequences of the EU's lurch to austerity as well as the consequences this might have for the web and patchwork of rules. The chapter ultimately reflects on whether another ESM might be possible in the context of the EU's response to the economic and social consequences following the onset of COVID-19, particularly in the context of the EU's Next Generation EU programme whereby the EU provides financial assistance directly to the regions worst affected by the pandemic.

Labor unions play a key role in combating inequality. Recent research focuses on unions' ability to shape “moral economies” that make greater inequality socially inappropriate. But this research largely hypothesizes moral economy pathways for combating inequality, rather than showing them in action. Through a case study of the 2018 teachers' strike wave, we identify mechanisms that allow unions to shape moral economies. Based on analysis of in-depth interviews with key strike leaders, social media discussion groups, and contemporaneous media coverage, we find that the interaction of sustained mass disruption and worker–organizer intervention were the key mechanisms that allowed the teachers and their unions to reshape moral economies. Externally, the strikes created a social and political crisis to which political elites had to respond, while tying the teachers' struggles to broader community issues, galvanizing public support for the strikes. As disruptions escalated, the teachers' experience of collective action created a positive feedback effect, reshaping workers' understanding of what they wanted, what they deserved, and what they could win. The 2018 teachers' strike is analytically useful because it managed to reshape norms and expectations around educational and economic inequality rapidly, on a large scale.

The North/South divide is an image frequently used to depict the territorial structure and the economic dynamism of England, and thus to describe the social and economic geography of the country. This image distinguishes a post-industrial North, which still faces economic and social difficulties, from a tertiary, rich and powerful South. It separates a central space (the South) from a periphery (the North). However, the recent economic changes in Britain question the relevance of this image, which is perhaps too simplistic to describe accurately the economic and social geography and the spatial disparities in the country.

Since the Thatcher years, this debate on the North/South divide has been constantly renewed, regardless of the political colour of the majority at Westminster, and the local and regional policy of the government in power has been systematically criticised. On the one hand, this reflects the persistence of territorial and social disparities in the United Kingdom and more specifically in England. On the other hand, this shows that the North/South divide is not just a geoeconomic question, but it also includes identity, societal and geopolitical issues.

Based on a geographical, critical geopolitical and cartographic approach, the aim of this chapter is to question the relevance and the significance of the North/South divide in 2017, after the impact of the 2008 Great Recession, as the United Kingdom is on its way to Brexit and when its unity is being challenged by Scottish nationalism. How can territorial disparities be described, evaluated and measured in England? How are they perceived by citizens and political leaders? This chapter will also study the policies proposed to close this gap and to meet the aspirations of peripheral regions.