City government in an age of austerity: discursive institutions and critique

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the construction and deployment of discursive institutions seeking to control the behaviour of actors, including reducing critique, with the intention of legitimising austerity programs. And they find that austerity governance is characterised by discursive austerity institutions based on market and bureaucratic values.

Abstract: Austerity is an increasingly important feature of urban society in Western countries, both as a site interwoven with the crisis tendencies of capitalism and as spaces mitigating austerity programmes instigated by nation states. Cities have therefore become key spaces in the mediation of ‘austerity urbanism’, but where such processes involve deliberation, making the production of consensus highly problematic. Such tendencies require far greater intellectual sensitivity towards the practices of agents as they seek to enact social control and coordination, as well as subordinate resistance and critique. ‘Pragmatist Sociology’ is utilised in this paper to examine the construction and deployment of discursive institutions seeking to control the behaviour of actors, including reducing critique, with the intention of legitimising austerity programmes. Such discursive institutions establish semantic links between the discursive aims of those seeking to control and the pragmatics of the everyday lives of those subject to such institutions. The paper seeks to examine, first, through a case study of an English city, how key decision-makers construct discursive institutions in the implementation of austerity and subordination of resistance and, second, the actual practices of resisting austerity. In conclusion, the paper finds that austerity governance is characterised by discursive austerity institutions based on market and bureaucratic values, where large-scale critique has been marginalised, resulting in minor forms of critique in the everyday, and compounded by constant efforts at the reconfirmation of discursive institutions.

Summary

INTRODUCTION

• Austerity has become a key feature of Western countries since the 2008 financial crisis, as manifest in the restructuring and reduction in the scope of the nation state (Streeck and Schafer, 2013) .
• These discursive institutions are socially constructed by particular actors and involve the utilisation of particular broader societal values.
• In response to Blanco et al's (2014) argument that many accounts fail to critically examine the urban state, the focus of the paper is on how the City Council is implementing austerity programmes.
• The analysis involves 25 semistructured open-ended interviews with senior and middle managers, and Councillors, as well as 15 such interviews with officers at lower tiers, all of which were undertaken in early 2015 as the 2016-17 budget was being consulted on.

Austerity and 'austerity urbanism'

• For Krugman (2013) and Blyth (2013) , austerity is an ideologically-based crisis discourse that seeks to legitimise a reduction in the state and impose fiscal constraints.
• While Peck (2012) and Warner and Clifton (2013) present heuristic frameworks in which to explore urban austerity, there is space in which to deploy a conceptual framework for further examining the 'why' and 'how' of the social practices and 'deliberative' landscapes where austerity occurs.
• They only describe these regimes, rather than conceptualising or empirically examining how such decisions are made through particular social practices.
• Such analysis is critical given Peck's (2013) belief in the variegated nature of neoliberalism and austerity (see Meegan et al, 2014) , which arises from the (historically configured) mediating actions of actors and contingencies of spatially-specific institutional arrangements and policy actions (see Lobao and Adua, 2011) .
• Critical to this is the theoretical exploration of the causal factors underpinning why and how the normalisation of particular austerity tendencies is constantly performed (e.g. deficit politics), and the role of broader social institutions in such processes.

Institutions, practices and actors

• Debate has continued on how neoliberal tendencies should be analysed, between those emphasising the macro and hybrid (e.g. Peck et al, 2013) and those concerned with contextual micro techniques and modalities (e.g. Ong, 2006) .
• This includes being able to examine and understand the deliberative situations and spaces in which normativity and conventions (as expressed in values) are produced, deployed and contested.
• In essence, Boltanski's (2011) approach proposes that there is an intrinsic connection between discursive institutions and institutions as norms and conventions, since the latter are constructed and constituted by the former.
• Boltanski's (2011) later work has sought to expand this tendency in late capitalism for quotidian critique to be suppressed through a 'complex/managerial' 'regimes of domination'.
• An integral element of this is quotidian 'tests' of institutions as actors reflect upon their relevance to their lived experience.

AUSTERITY IN THE CITY: A PLACE-BASED INVESTIGATION

• The A critical task for senior politicians and managers has been to justify austerity measures to the broader council and local population.
• "We had the debates about whether the authors should all resign, refuse to do it, increase rates and refuse to hold a referendum, also known as As one councillor argues.
• Following government agendas of cutting bureaucracy and requiring public servants to be focused on 'managing' (like a business) rather than administering services (see Newman and Clarke, 2009) , there has not just been a redefinition of 'service users' to 'customers of services' through 'business language', but also the focusing of resources on the most in need ('needs led assessment').
• This requires efforts and resources at identifying such citizens (i.e. the most as risk), whilst rationalising support to other social groups that do not fall into this category ([ANONYMISED], 2014a).

Strategy formation and austerity institutions

• Market values are also imbricated with bureaucratic values in the Council's corporate strategy process where there is a particular managerial approach.
• Firstly, there is a commitment to more open consultation around strategy development, but only through certain instruments, such as the '100:100 consultation'.
• As one senior manager argues: "There are a group of employees that are resistant to change and don't care about the corporate plan… the authors need employees to embrace that [corporate priorities] and talk that language" (senior management interview).
• Indeed, this represents congruence to state restructuring through (disparate and uneven) new public management practices since the late 1970s, characterised by organisational centralisation and hierarchies through the primacy of a managerial culture, with managers the only agents deemed worthy to undertake managerial tasks (Pollit and Bouckaert, 2011; Diefenbach, 2009) .
• This was considered to, first, require senior management defining the main issues facing the Council, and from there it would go to consultation with service heads and the further development of these thematic priorities.

Bureaucratic values, market values and austerity institutions

• Following the arguments of Graeber (2015) , it is clear that market values have permeated the formation of austerity institutions, but these are intricately connected with bureaucratic values and daily organisational practices, along with bureaucratic efficiency being discursively framed as a key strategic aim.
• The construction of austerity institutions is interwoven with significant management and officer turnover following the restructuring of the Council.
• Another senior manager suggests that: "I have a group of positive staff that have 'can do' behaviours, they are buzzing about change" (senior management interview).
• Following Overmans and Timm-Arnold (2016) , this concern with more entrepreneurial officers is an important 'organisational change' mechanism, designed to reorient the long term culture of the organisation as part of its broader retrenchment under a regime of austerity.

Contestation, acquiescence and austerity

• In the present context the authors see a distinct lack of large scale, overt resistance to austerity measures and institutions at the Council, but this is a complex and uneven organisational landscape.
• This was compounded by opposition political parties emphasising the financial management failures of the Council as the cause of job losses, rather than austerity: "The council will say it's because of the cuts from government and I don't dispute this but the council has not handled its finances well" ([Anonymised Politician], quoted in [Anonymised newspaper], 2016).
• Day to day critique and circumvention of austerity policies does occur, as workers disrupt the semantic security of austerity institutions (see Williams et al, 2014) .
• For senior managers, reconfirmation of austerity involves conveying discourses of openness and inclusiveness through consultation.
• This is considered to have "mitigated potential overt resistance… people felt, they might not have agreed with it, I know what's coming and why" (senior management interview).

CONCLUSION

• Following the suggestion for 'place-based investigations' by Peck et al (2013) , the case study analysis in this paper has found that 'devolved risk' for implementing austerity to city governments has led to senior managers and councillors formulating discursive institutions.
• These actors have been able to construct semantic security through institutions, based on market and bureaucratic values, which seek to guide the daily practices of officers.
• Senior More broadly, the analysis demonstrates the need to critically engage austerity urbanism models, including their tendency to downplay the intricacies and heterogeneous social practices and actors constituting and performing 'austerity regimes' (Donald et al, 2014) .
• The case study illustrates the ability of actors to develop quite powerful discursive institutions (as experienced by actors), and how these incorporate and utilise particular broader values.
• Consideration should therefore be placed on how neoliberal and austerity practices are constantly and unevenly performed through forms of legitimacy, which relate to much broader values, and that are relationally connected between different geographies (see Barnett, 2014) .

Figures

Table 1: Population and Deprivation in the case study

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Fuller, Crispian 2017. City government in an age of austerity: discursive institutions and critique.
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1
City government in an age of austerity: discursive
institutions and critique
Dr Crispian Fuller
School of Geography and Planning
Cardiff University
King Edward VII Avenue
Cardiff
CF10 3WA
FullerC2@cardiff.ac.uk

2
ABSTRACT
Austerity is an increasingly important feature of urban society and in western countries, both
as a site interwoven with the crisis tendencies of capitalism and as spaces mitigating austerity
programmes instigated by nation states. Cities have therefore become key spaces in the
mediation of ‘austerity urbanism’, but where such processes involve deliberation, making the
production of consensus highly problematic. Such tendencies require far greater intellectual
sensitivity towards the practices of agents as they seek to enact social control and coordination,
as well as subordinate resistance and critique. ‘Pragmatist Sociology’ is utilised in this paper
to examine the construction and deployment of discursive institutions seeking to control the
behaviour of actors, including reducing critique, with the intention of legitimising austerity
programmes. Such discursive institutions establish semantic links between the discursive aims
of those seeking to control, and the pragmatics of the everyday lives of those subject to such
institutions. The paper seeks to examine, through a case study of an English city, how key
decision-makers construct discursive institutions in the implementation of austerity and
subordination of resistance and, second, the actual practices of resisting austerity. In
conclusion, the paper finds that austerity governance is characterised by discursive austerity
institutions based on market and bureaucratic values, where large scale critique has been
marginalised, resulting in minor forms of critique in the everyday, and compounded by constant
efforts at the reconfirmation of discursive institutions.
Austerity Urban Governance Discursive Institutions Critique

3
INTRODUCTION
Austerity has become a key feature of Western countries since the 2008 financial crisis, as
manifest in the restructuring and reduction in the scope of the nation state (Streeck and Schafer,
2013). The actual detail of how austerity is strategically and operationally implemented and
managed is very much a devolved process to urban spaces and state agencies (Clarke and
Cochrane, 2013; Hastings et al, 2015). For Peck (2012) these conditions are leading to ‘a new
operational matrix for urban politics’ within ‘austerity urbanism’. Correspondingly, Peck et al
(2013) advocate the critical role of pursing ‘place-based investigations’ of urban spaces
through the examination of ideologies, institutions, practices and power relations (1096). Such
a perspective must recognise that cities are emergent and relational spaces, constituted by
topologically assembled heterogeneous actors, practices and objects which work through
differing socio-spatial relations (Massey, 2005). With such convoluted socio-spatial relations
there is negotiation around service priorities and forms of implementation, and the constant
need to produce agreement amongst disparate stakeholders (Fuller, 2014).
This paper seeks to conceptualise and examine through a ‘place-based investigation’ of an
anonymised case study city in England, the discursive institutions of austerity and resulting
resistance. This builds largely on Peak et al’s (2013) belief that neoliberalism in the pre-2008
financial crisis form does not exist, rather it is the case that ‘all-too-familiar neoliberal
discourses and policy formulations is connected to a more deeply rooted and creatively
destructive process of diachronic transformation’, encompassing constant and wide-ranging
institutional change, which that is transforming urban areas and their governance (1092). To
take such an approach seriously, this paper examines three main questions: firstly, what efforts
through hegemony-seeking discursive institutions are being deployed by key decision-makers

4
in the implementation of austerity programmes and displacement of resistance? Secondly, to
what extent has austerity been resisted and distorted? Third, how has resistance been prevented
by key decision-makers?
These discursive institutions are socially constructed by particular actors and involve the
utilisation of particular broader societal values. The paper utilises conceptions of values based
on French pragmatist sociology, where they are defined as socially produced conceptions of
worth based on particular understandings of ‘common good’ (see Boltanski and Thevenot,
2006). They are deployed by actors in deliberative episodes to critique or justify an
argumentative logic, but where actors can call upon various values in different situations
(Fuller, 2014). In conclusion, the paper argues that the governance of austerity involves
discursive austerity institutions based on market and bureaucratic values, in which large scale
critique has been marginalised but everyday critique and circumvention of austerity is evident,
leading to constant efforts at their reconfirmation.
In the next section the paper examines austerity and austerity urbanism, before outlining a
pragmatist sociology conceptual framework for analysing the processes of critique and
justification, which is then used to examine the case study city. The city is illustrative of urban
areas struggling with high rates of deprivation, and relatively large budget cuts to the city
council in the context of strong levels of public service usage. As such, it is not unique in itself,
but corresponds to a set of tendencies being experienced in cities struggling in an austerity
landscape.
In response to Blanco et al’s (2014) argument that many accounts fail to critically examine the
urban state, the focus of the paper is on how the City Council is implementing austerity

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What have the authors contributed in "City government in an age of austerity: discursive institutions and critique" ?

In this paper, the authors examine how the City Council is implementing austerity programs and how resistance has been prevented by key decision-makers. 

Q2. How have senior actors been able to displace resistance?

Senior actors have been able to displace potential resistance by reconfirming discursive austerity institutions, linking the semantic with the daily practices of the organisation. 

Q3. What has been the Council’s approach to re-designing services?

Where possible the Council has sought to reconfigure services to be more commercially viable, involving the reduction in subsidies for leisure centres and arts venues, their re-branding, and the Council allocating funding to refurbish a concert venue. 

Q4. Why have long term managers been framed as leaving?

”There has also been recent management turnover, with long term managers framed as leaving because of their disdain for austerity. 

Q5. What is the focus on in the recent creation of multi agency support teams?

The focus on ‘efficiency’ and outcomes is also evident in the recent creation of eight ‘Multi Agency Support Teams’ in child protection and behaviour, discursively framed as representing the need for the “efficient use of what are limited amount of resources for social care” (senior management interview) ([ANONYMISED], 2013b). 

Q6. How much is being cut from the ‘base’ budget?

For instance, in the financial year 2016/17 there will be a £3.75m reduction in spending for children and young people services, whilst a further £19.7m is being cut from ‘base’ budgets across various council services ([ANONYMISED], 2016). 

Q7. What is the main point of the case study?

The case study illustrates the ability of actors to develop quite powerful discursive institutions (as experienced by actors), and how these incorporate and utilise particular broader values. 

Q8. What is the effect of the discursive framing of the need for a definitive and?

The effect has been the discursive framing of the need for conclusive and concise practical action as a mechanism for conveying a managed ‘reality’ in a ‘world’ of complexity, as emphasised in a recent public budget consultation: ‘because of the Government grant cuts, the Council has to cut spending now – and why it has to be decisive’ ([ANONYMISED], 2014b: 7). 

Q9. What is the main argument of the councillors and managers?

Senior councillors and managers argue that there is a pragmatic response to nation-state imposed austerity, but enforced with the perceived threat of sanctions. 

Q10. Why did many officers and national opposition party politicians not use these values in critiques?

For many officers and national opposition party politicians these values had not been deployed in critiques, largely because of the ability of nationally constructed discourses on a debt crisis, and overextended state, to construct ‘reality’. 

Q11. What is the focus of the paper?

In response to Blanco et al’s (2014) argument that many accounts fail to critically examine the urban state, the focus of the paper is on how the City Council is implementing austerityprogrammes. 

Q12. What is the meaning of Boltanski’s (2011) approach?

In essence, Boltanski’s (2011) approach proposes that there is an intrinsic connection between discursive institutions and institutions as norms and conventions, since the latter are constructed and constituted by the former. 

Q13. What is the key to ensuring agreement?

These efforts at openness and inclusivity convey important attempts at semantic security, thus ensuring agreement, rather than resistance. 

Q14. What is the main difference between institutionalist and non-authoritarian perspectives?

These institutionalist perspectives tend to equate institutions with authority, based on legitimacy, where there is a problematic differentiation between formal and informal institutions, rather than as social constructs relying upon performativity, emergent forms of knowledge and non-authoritarian forms of power (DuGay and Morgan, 2013). 

Q15. What is the need for a thematic approach?

The solution has been framed as the need for a thematic rather than directorate-based approach, based on holistic measures that can mediate the restructuring of services and address complex societal issues.