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Journal ArticleDOI

Pushing austerity: state failure, municipal bankruptcy and the crises of fiscal federalism in the USA

01 Mar 2014-Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society (Oxford University Press)-Vol. 7, Iss: 1, pp 17-44
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the means by which the Wall Street crisis of 2008 has been translated into a state crisis, especially for the state at the subnational and urban scales.
Abstract: By way of a critical exploration of austerity politics in the USA, the paper examines the means by which the Wall Street crisis of 2008 has been translated into a state crisis, especially for the state at the subnational and urban scales. It examines the strategies, rationales and tactics adopted by advocates of austerity measures, which amount to a sustained effort to socialize, rescale and ‘dump’ the costs of the economic crisis. These manoeuvres are transforming the operating environment for state and local government in the USA, and they are remaking the terrains of urban politics at the same time.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

1,828 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Gray and Barford as mentioned in this paper argue that it has actively reshaped the relationship between central and local government, shrinking the capacity of the local state, increasing inequality between local governments, and exacerbating territorial injustice.
Abstract: Drawing on spatial analysis of local authority budgets, Mia Gray and Anna Barford highlight the uneven impacts of UK austerity. They argue that it has actively reshaped the relationship between central and local government, shrinking the capacity of the local state, increasing inequality between local governments, and exacerbating territorial injustice.

215 citations


Cites background from "Pushing austerity: state failure, m..."

  • ...Peck (2014) also highlights how the political and ideological attack on the state long predated the global financial crisis in planned and coordinated attempts by conservative policy makers and non-governmental think tanks to replicate successful legislative limits to the local state....

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  • ...Reducing public debt went hand-in-hand with shrinking the state (Blyth 2013; Streeck, 2014; Boyer 2012; Peck 2014; Featherstone et al. 2012)....

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  • ...However, despite these challenges to the efficacy of austerity, the austerians’ conclusions and policy recommendations reinforced the ideological bent of many conservative policy makers who argued that reducing public debt was only “common sense” and would function to increase growth and prosperity (Konzelmann et al., 2016; Peck, 2014; Featherstone et al., 2012)....

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  • ...…austerians’ conclusions and policy recommendations reinforced the ideological bent of many conservative policy makers who argued that reducing public debt was only “common sense” and would function to increase growth and prosperity (Konzelmann et al., 2016; Peck, 2014; Featherstone et al., 2012)....

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  • ...Political economy scholars have long focused on the importance of the city as the nexus of the collective consumption of public services (Castells, 1977) and contemporary austerity has again brought the urban scale into sharp focus (Peck, 2014; Davidson and Ward, 2018; Donald et al., 2014)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
01 Sep 2014-Geoforum
TL;DR: In 2014, approximately 100,000 vacant lots lie "vacant" in Detroit after decades of industrial decline, white flight, and poverty, and according to the Detroit Future City plan, traditional public services (water, street lights, transportation, garbage pickup) and the "grey infrastructures" that deliver them will be reduced and eventually withdrawn from these zones as discussed by the authors.

205 citations


Cites background from "Pushing austerity: state failure, m..."

  • ...They nullify the power of elected officials and assume control of not just city finances but all city affairs, meaning they can break union contracts, privatize public land and resources, and outsource the management of public services (Peck, 2012, 2013)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider how the financial crisis originated in the urban and became part of a broader state crisis with consequences for cities and explore political implications that include the undermining of democratic processes and the rise of new "austerity" regimes.
Abstract: The city is a significant level of geography at which to examine the economic, political and social implications of austerity. We consider how the financial crisis originated in the urban and became part of a broader state crisis with consequences for cities. We then explore political implications that include the undermining of democratic processes and the rise of new ‘austerity’ regimes. We also consider implications for key social groups. Arguments are illustrated with evidence from North American and European cities. Finally, we explain how scholars have theorised the situation, which in turn sets the stage for policy and political solutions to the present crisis.

164 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore contemporary transformations in metropolitan governance in the wake of the entrepreneurial turns of the 1980s and subsequent waves of neoliberalization and financialisation, a case is outlined here for a "conjunctural" approach to urban analysis.
Abstract: As the first installment of a two-part article exploring contemporary transformations in metropolitan governance in the wake of the entrepreneurial turns of the 1980s and subsequent waves of neoliberalisation and financialisation, a case is outlined here for a ‘conjunctural’ approach to urban analysis. This can be considered to be complementary to, but at the same time distinct from, some of the concurrent approaches to comparative urbanism, in that it explicitly problematises the relative positioning of cities in the context of uneven development and multiscalar relations, as well as the dialogic connections between case studies, midlevel concepts and revisable theory claims. Taking as its point of departure the current financial and political crisis in Atlantic City, the New Jersey casino capital, the article historicises the concept of the entrepreneurial city, placing this in the context, successively, of the evolving ‘commonsense’ of neoliberal governance, the emergence of austerity urbanism and the ...

133 citations


Cites background from "Pushing austerity: state failure, m..."

  • ...…governance and financialised urban rule in the United States (see Davidson and Ward, 2014, forthcoming; Kirkpatrick and Smith, 2011; Lake, 2015; Peck, 2012, 2014b; Peck and Whiteside, 2016; Tabb, 2014; Weber, 2010), in this case taking as a point of departure a connection traced from one…...

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  • ...…hardly of mere coincidence or rational convergence on best practices, but an outcome of the recursive and patterned interplay of local strategic choices forged under conditions that few cities would have chosen, circumstances framed by the ‘dull compulsion’ of competitive exposure (Peck, 2014a)....

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  • ...From the outset, state politics were clearly making a significant difference – whether in the form of fights picked with the public-sector unions in Wisconsin, moves to drive through structural changes to pension entitlements and revenue-sharing arrangements in California, the extension and toughening of emergencymanagement powers in Michigan or the continued working out of the long-run effects of TABOR (taxpayers bill of rights) amendments in Colorado, not to mention the evolving relays between the state capitals – while at the urban scale there were marked differences in both the manifestations and the management of austerity between cities like Chicago, San Jose, New York, Colorado Springs, Detroit, Stockton, San Diego, Benton Harbor and Sandy Springs (see Peck, 2012, 2014b)....

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  • ...In the case of urban entrepreneurialism, conditions of ‘surface vigour’ are still very much in evidence (Harvey, 1989; Peck, 2014a), the ongoing accentuation of which is apparently necessary for legitimation purposes....

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  • ...…grip of ‘fiscal federalism’ (the regulatory doctrine that has it that jurisdictions should operate within their own means, minimising intergovernmental transfers) has normalised conditions of devolved budgetary discipline and lean administration, unevenly realised of course (Peck, 2014b)....

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References
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Book
01 Jan 1962
TL;DR: In the classic bestseller, Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman presents his view of the proper role of competitive capitalism as both a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In the classic bestseller, Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman presents his view of the proper role of competitive capitalism--the organization of economic activity through private enterprise operating in a free market--as both a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom. Beginning with a discussion of principles of a liberal society, Friedman applies them to such constantly pressing problems as monetary policy, discrimination, education, income distribution, welfare, and poverty. "Milton Friedman is one of the nation's outstanding economists, distinguished for remarkable analytical powers and technical virtuosity. He is unfailingly enlightening, independent, courageous, penetrating, and above all, stimulating."-Henry Hazlitt, Newsweek "It is a rare professor who greatly alters the thinking of his professional colleagues. It's an even rarer one who helps transform the world. Friedman has done both."-Stephen Chapman, Chicago Tribune

7,026 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the United Kingdom, both Scot- land and Wales have opted under the Blair government for their own regional parliaments and in Italy the movement toward decentralization has gone so far as to encompass a serious proposal for the separation of the nation into two in-dependent countries as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: vogue. Both in the industrialized and in the developing world, nations are turning to devolution to improve the per- formance of their public sectors. In the United States, the central government has turned back significant portions of federal authority to the states for a wide range of major programs, including wel- fare, Medicaid, legal services, housing, and job training. The hope is that state and local governments, being closer to the people, will be more responsive to the particular preferences of their con- stituencies and will be able to find new and better ways to provide these ser- vices. In the United Kingdom, both Scot- land and Wales have opted under the Blair government for their own regional parliaments. And in Italy the movement toward decentralization has gone so far as to encompass a serious proposal for the separation of the nation into two in- dependent countries. In the developing world, we likewise see widespread inter- est in fiscal decentralization with the ob- jective of breaking the grip of central planning that, in the view of many, has failed to bring these nations onto a path of self-sustaining growth. But the proper goal of restructuring the public sector cannot simply be de- centralization. The public sector in nearly all countries consists of several different levels. The basic issue is one of aligning responsibilities and fiscal in- struments with the proper levels of gov- ernment. As Alexis de Toqueville ob- served more than a centuty ago, "The federal system was created with the in- tention of combining the different ad- vantages which result from the magni- tude and the littleness of nations" (1980, v. I, p. 163). But to realize these "dif- ferent advantages," we need to under- stand which functions and instruments are best centralized and which are best placed in the sphere of decentralized levels of government. This is the sub- ject matter of fiscal federalism. As a subfield of public finance, fiscal feder- alism addresses the vertical structure of the public sector. It explores, both in normative and positive terms, the roles of the different levels of government and the ways in which they relate to one another through such instruments as intergovernmental grants.2

3,054 citations

Journal ArticleDOI

1,828 citations

Book
01 Jan 2010
TL;DR: In this article, the Chicago School was used to relocate Neoliberalism and found the Chicago school 4. Between Gotham and the Gulf 5. Creative Liberties 6. Decoding Obamanomics
Abstract: 1. Relocating Neoliberalism 2. Rebooting Freedom 3. Finding the Chicago School 4. Between Gotham and the Gulf 5. Creative Liberties 6. Decoding Obamanomics

1,039 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
18 Dec 2012-City
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors locate these developments in the context of mutating processes of neoliberal urbanism, commenting on some of its social and spatial consequences, and argue that these conditions are defining a new operational matrix for urban politics.
Abstract: Austerity budgeting in the public sector, selectively targeting the social state, is a long-established trait of neoliberal governance, but it has been enforced with renewed systemic intensity in the period since the Wall Street crash of 2008. The paper develops the argument that these conditions are defining a new operational matrix for urban politics. Examining some of the leading and bleeding edges of austerity's ‘extreme economy’ in the USA, the paper seeks to locate these developments in the context of mutating processes of neoliberal urbanism, commenting on some of its social and spatial consequences.

690 citations