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Over the past century, crises have enabled the construction of Australian foreign policy orders, or sets of ideas that reduce uncertainty and stabilise interests. However, such ideas have also engendered misplaced certainty and renewed crisis. Developing a constructivist framework, I stress the ways in which ideas can over time impede the use of information and fuel instability and crises. In a staged model, I trace the construction of ties with "great and powerful friends", their conversion in ways that fuel misplaced certainty, and the construction of crises which advance change. Empirically, I then trace the construction of an early Imperial order, misplaced certainty in UK‐backed austerity and appeasement, and crises in the Great Depression and fall of Singapore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is a growing interest in citizen-led initiatives, there is still no consensus on how to situate them, especially in relation to state institutions. On the one hand, citizen-led initiatives are seen as being co-opted by formal institutions in a context of austerity. On the other hand, these initiatives are often presented as "spaces of resistance" to neoliberalism, or as political acts of reclaiming the city. Mapping and tracing urban gardening and dumpster diving from their grassroots emergence to their inclusion in the institutional world through a two-level analysis, we show that individuals and loosely organized collectives involved in such initiatives are embedded in complex relationships with local institutions and third sector organizations that do, in turn, structure their practice and its consequences. The two-level analysis we propose follows this process: it is through interactions and relationships with other "practitioners" and with their social and institutional environment that these urban social practices gradually institutionalize. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study how welfare states regimes influence the effect of episodes of fiscal consolidations on the four main components of the welfare state: social investment, pensions, healthcare and labour market insurance. Welfare state regimes are associated with distinct social policy legacies that feedback into political competition by shaping the size and influence of different coalitions of constituents. Using data from 1980 to 2014 in 16 OECD countries, we find that labour market insurance is more vulnerable to consolidations in Liberal regimes, while social investments are more resistant to consolidations in Nordic regimes. In the Continental regime, which overlaps with Social Health Insurance systems, healthcare is more resistant to consolidations. Finally, pensions are more resistant to consolidations in the Southern regime. These findings contribute to the study of the comparative political economy of welfare state retrenchment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intersectional politics has been widely associated with progressive Millennial activists. Accordingly, most social movement research focuses on progressive movements that adopt intersectionality as a guiding framework for organisation and mobilisation, mainly feminist, reproductive justice, LGBTQ and other movements spearheaded by university-educated Millennials. In contrast to most studies, we conduct a qualitative digital ethnography of Las Kellys, a Spanish grassroots movement with no explicit intersectional approach, but located at the intersection of the labour and feminist movements, and consisting of middle-aged, working-class (immigrant) women with no university background who fit their activism into their spare time. Our findings suggest that (1) Las Kellys deploys intersectional practices and disputes despite lacking an explicit intersectional approach, and (2) the development of intersectional practices and disputes in Las Kellys is the result of inter-movement diffusion processes from the anti-austerity protest cycle and the current wave of feminist protest. Moreover, we argue that the case of Las Kellys is part of a larger diffusion of intersectionality across contemporary Spanish activism as an outcome of the anti-austerity and feminist protest cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, economic policies in Europe and elsewhere, have been based on the theoretical and practical ideas embedded in the Maastricht Treaty: public debt and deficit must be reduced, even if this implies severe austerity. The main goal of this policy, growth with a decrease in public debt, did not work. Although the Maastricht Treaty framework received a wide consensus in the academic world as well in European politics, a few brave scholars stood up since the beginning to show its fallacies. In this article, we will discuss the critiques that Pasinetti made to the set-up of the EU economic policy, then we will connect the fate of public and private debt and finally we will explain why continuing with austerity will condemn Europe to anemic growth and political irrelevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many high‐debt countries are adopting tax austerity, whereby governments raise the tax rate as their debt levels rise with the hope to dispel future solvency crises. This paper investigates the impact of tax austerity on government debt solvency. A solvency crisis occurs once adverse shocks push the debt above its effective debt limit, the maximum level of debt that the government can repay. I show that the position of the effective debt limit depends on tax austerity. I find that high‐debt countries like Italy that undergo tax austerity could lower their effective debt limit and induce a solvency crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The twinning model has been used to develop a wide array of political, economic and cultural relationships that connect communities and institutions in the United Kingdom with counterparts overseas. However, where local governments were once among the most ardent promoters of twinning, years of austerity coupled with changing processes of financial rationalisation, have led many councils to question the value of these relationships. Today, fewer British local authorities are taking up new twinnings and some have even been involved in a process of quiet 'untwinning'. This paper takes pause to examine what might be lost with this set of changes—it asks: just what is of value of twinning? Taking a cue from ongoing debates in the field of cultural policy studies, it advocates for a broadening and deepening of the operational concept of 'public value' to better account for the manifold ways that twinning can deliver pro-social benefits to British communities and their partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in allotments is growing across the country, yet relatively little is known about them. Who are the current plot‐holders; what do they grow and the volumes of crops harvested; what are the wider health and social benefits gained from being a plot‐holder; how are allotments responding to an era of local government austerity?To explore these issues, we undertook a survey of allotment tenants and site secretaries across Birmingham's 113 sites in the most substantial study of plot‐holders undertaken in recent years. This article highlights the key findings and the potential implications for policy makers, local councillors and national politicians. It also indicates the need for similar studies elsewhere in the country to confirm or modify the picture suggested from this initial study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how charities have survived, and sometimes thrived, in the face of crisis has given rise to an increased interest in the resilience of these organizations. Research on dealing with uncertainty and crisis situations notes the ability to adapt as a critical resilience component (Siders, 2019). However, resilience and adaptive capacity in the charity sector are under‐researched areas. This paper contributes to filling this gap by investigating two midsized Scottish charitable organizations that have weathered two significant crises: austerity as a result of the financial crisis of 2008 and the COVID‐19 pandemic. The study findings enhance resilience research by shedding light on the processes, actions and collaborations that facilitate resilience, and the importance of adaptive capacity in response to crisis. Two distinct approaches to resilience were identified: (1) a strategic approach to resilience, where the charity thrived in the face of crisis and demonstrated high levels of adaptive capacity, and (2) a pragmatic approach, where resilience equated to survival, adaptive capacity was low and, as a result, growth was limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores water politics, neoliberal austerity measures, and racial capitalism in contemporary Detroit. I detail how a city campaign of mass residential water shutoffs, begun in 2014 and effecting tens of thousands of Detroit households, has served as a weapon against poor communities of color to produce economic outcomes favorable to corporate creditors and political elites. I argue that an analysis of water politics in contemporary Detroit allows for a more nuanced understanding of how neoliberal urbanism produces its own distinctive structures of racial and gendered oppression—not class domination alone. Drawing on fieldwork with city activists and other residents impacted by water terminations, this article analyzes how capitalism has relied on race to validate myriad expressions of violence, capital accumulation, and dispossession. I submit that water is a resource whose provision and denial provides a lens through which to ascertain who is and is not regarded as fully human in the context of the neoliberalization of racial capitalism. This piece also details innovative ways in which water rights activists and other Detroit residents have resisted authoritarian water policies and crafted survival strategies to persevere in the face of abiding threats to their health and human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline of the power of organised labour, which is a central feature of neoliberalism, was compounded during the 'age of austerity'. Yet, the potentially disruptive agency of workers remains. This article presents a qualitative process-tracing exercise for over 150 prominent episodes of worker-led dissent in the period 2010–2019 in the UK, the results of which are also made available in a website accompanying the article: ' Contesting the UK's neoliberal model of capitalism: worker-led dissent (2010–2019). The article identifies seven configurations of causal conditions that proved sufficient for workers to successfully pursue their stated aims during this period. While 'standard' national disputes led by mainstream trade unions were on the whole not sufficient to achieve success during this period, nevertheless a number of alternative combinations of conditions did prove to be sufficient, especially locally-focused campaigns, those undertaken by grassroots 'indie' unions and those in the transport sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rising levels of hardship since the introduction of austerity have rendered essential items unaffordable for many on low incomes with young children. Baby Banks—organisations freely providing essential items and equipment to those with, or expecting, a baby or young infant—have grown. These organisations have received little academic attention and much of what is known about them comes from news media coverage. News media plays a critical role in raising public awareness, shaping public attitudes, and influencing policy formation. Drawing on 384 news articles, this paper explores the scale and nature of news article coverage of Baby Banks between 2009 and 2022 using sentiment analysis and topic modelling. Through employing these approaches, our research adds quantitative evidence to extant work on news media coverage under austerity. Our results show that the number of articles written about Baby Banks has grown since 2009, with peaks in coverage during the COVID‐19 pandemic in 2020, potentially reflecting the growing need for these organisations. While sentiment towards Baby Banks within news articles has predominantly been positive, since 2019 there has been a rise in negative coverage due to an increase in articles critical of the growing number of people requiring Baby Banks. Alongside discussions of political changes driving rising hardship, prominent underpinning narratives in articles have included charitable appeals for donations, praise for community work, the royal family, and mothers. By focusing on the sentiment and key discussions around Baby Banks, our research extends understandings of media coverage under austerity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community organizing can play a critical role as a grassroots form of democratic activism which challenges austerity politics sweeping the globe. What is required is not only a democratization of the state through counter-hegemonic political victories, but in the US as well as the UK politicized social movements and grassroots community organizing tied to progressive and radical praxis. The Community Organisers Programme (COP) in England, which trained and hired more than 500 community organizers between 2011 and 2015, can serve as a contradictory example of manipulating the austerity state to include funding community organizing. Without connection to political victories and effective grassroots organizing, the COP remained, like the most prevalent types of training in the US in and outside of social work, a moderated form of democratization and an extension of the neoliberal austerity state, intentionally or not. The voices heard here working in the field demanded a more politicized form of training. This contribution emphasizes voices from the field regarding three aspects: the limited and problematic training content in the COP, the moderated community organizing education which fit with contemporary trends in community organizing in the US, and the surprising political sophistication of those interviewed who understood the highly critical need of more effective training to help address our extraordinary contemporary challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has highlighted the connection between commoning processes and the creation of new infrastructures of care in the areas of Southern Europe which were most affected by austerity policies and by the connected crisis of social reproduction. The objective of this paper is to shed new light on the caring practices organised through and within urban commons by using the theoretical lenses provided by Subaltern Studies, which also explored processes of collective self-organisation, the development of solidarity ties and reclamation of social welfare. The main theoretical reference is provided by the work of Partha Chatterjee on 'The politics of the governed'. The discussion is conducted through the analysis of the caring practices organised within the Scugnizzo Liberato, one of the urban commons of the city of Naples, located in Southern Italy, investigated through a prolonged process of co-research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes Francisco Dornelles' term at the Ministry of Finance in 1985. In addition to filling the existing gap in historiography, it reconstructs the thinking and economic actions of Dornelles and Tancredo Neves. Both were conservatives, endorsing a "monetarist" diagnosis of the Brazilian crisis. This conservatism translated into a relative continuation of the austerity policy implemented by Delfim Netto. It is argued that Dornelles' departure from the Ministry of Finance marks an important turning point in Brazil's economic history. FGV-RJ and the "delfinist" faction of FEA-USP lose their hegemony over economic policy, creating space for other schools, such as Unicamp and PUC-Rio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK's asylum and social welfare systems have both been transformed by major organisational changes, funding cuts, and privatisations through a decade of austerity. With this, asylum‐seeker accommodation and the impacts of welfare reform have become increasingly concentrated in already‐impoverished, peripheral urban areas such as Rochdale, Greater Manchester. Despite these parallels, scholarship and commentary in the UK has tended to consider welfare and border regimes in relative isolation. Based on ethnographic work conducted in two charity drop‐centres in the town, this article addresses this gap by exploring how the UK's converging politics and geographies of asylum and welfare governance shape everyday negotiations of deservingness and social in/exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst there are many advocates of the notion that a fluid school-neighborhood relationship can improve education, there are gaps in the conceptual and empirical study of school and community governance models. This article analyses how two schools and social actors in two disadvantaged neighborhoods relate, collaborate, and organize to encourage school success for all students. The results make visible the origin and organizational dynamics of the school-community alliances in each community. Partnerships, based on a bottom-linked governance system at the school and community level, are a strategic approach for working together in developing a citizenry that can address both present and future challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article delves into the paradoxical nature of post-2008 fiscal policies, where there is a simultaneous emphasis on valuing public investment on the one hand, and maintaining austerity on the other. It sheds light on this paradox through the concept of "Investor State," which refers to contemporary states' ambition to redefine their role in the economy by no longer limiting themselves to a regulatory role but rather seeking an active role as "investor." We argue that this redefinition of the state's role is of piece with the elevation of investment as a new standard for legitimizing state actions. On the flipside, by making investment the main criteria of public policy legitimacy, it simultaneously delegitimizes spending that is not deemed an investment. Because the adopted economic definition of investment is limited to traditional "productive investment" related to industrial policy, other policy sectors—that is the majority of state intervention—are subject to spending cuts. Thus the Investor State suggests an evolution of the fiscal order that Streeck described as the "consolidation state": the primary goal is no longer to reduce public debt and deficits. But the neoliberal objective to reduce the "size" of the public sector in the economy absolutely remains. Drawing on the case of France, the article shows how the right-wing government started placing investment at the core of its fiscal policy after 2008. The article then highlights the continuation of this dual fiscal policy discourse to date despite changes in government leadership and the pandemic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article concentrates on the funding of green transition policies implemented in France during the 2010s. Instead of examining the emerging European Investor State through its "new" public investment policies, such as loans, equity, investment banks, and funds, this article examines the transformations of "older" public investment policies, specifically investment subsidies. We contend that the European Investor State is currently marked by a paradox: while public resources for investment, particularly for green transition investments, are increasing, the means to distribute these resources are diminishing. Austerity measures and new public management policies are undermining territorial administrations, thereby limiting their ability to accurately identify and support beneficiaries. This bureaucratic weakness within the European Investor State significantly affects the effective distribution of subsidies, because they tend to be increasingly concentrated among larger communities and companies, as well as a broad spectrum of private intermediaries. Consequently, the European Investor State appears multifaceted and occasionally contradictory, lacking long-term continuity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the concept of "left behind places" and the need for policies to address regional inequalities and promote economic growth. It discusses the challenges faced by these places and the impact of global shocks like the financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. The article examines the policies implemented in the UK, the USA, and the European Union to reduce regional disparities, highlighting varying degrees of success and the need for more comprehensive approaches. It emphasizes the importance of place-based policies, economic security, reduced inequality, and a democracy that works for everyone. The article concludes by discussing the need for customized policy interventions that consider local needs and focus on social and environmental aspects of regional decline. [Extracted from the article]

This paper revisits the conventional but unproven wisdom that voters penalize governments for adopting fiscal austerity in a sample of advanced economies. We consider the composition of the austerity package and the economic manifesto of the implementing government, and find that austerity packages consisting mostly of tax hikes have a significant electoral cost, which is larger for government parties that campaigned on a free‐market manifesto. Conversely, expenditure‐based austerity is costlier for government parties that did not run on a small‐government platform, but may be beneficial for those that did. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a strong resonance between events of the inter-war years and today. These include a questioning of laissez-faire capitalism and austerity, and the rise of so-called 'populist' parties on both the left and right. Clara Mattei's (2022) The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism thus makes an interesting contribution, by locating the key argument of her book in the febrile period of European history between the wars. According to Mattei, the First World War disrupted the pre-war capitalist system to such an extent that it created a crisis of capitalism, itself. As a result, following the end of hostilities, there was a conscious effort to restore the pre-war 'capital order' by means of a technocratic 'austerity strategy', and this was strongly linked to the rise of fascism. We argue that the inter-relationship between capitalism, austerity, and fascism during the 1920s and 1930s was rather more complex, and that to make sense of this, it is necessary to broaden the focus beyond Italy and Great Britain and the international financial conferences at Brussels (1920) and Genoa (1922). Otherwise, we risk misunderstanding and mis-diagnosing our own times, as those inter-war politicians, financiers, and economists discovered to their cost. We therefore also include Germany and the USA and base our analysis on the events of the entire inter-war period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic raises the question of austerity's problematic social toll for health in the south of Europe. Has EU economic governance constrained health spending? If so, have these spending levels led to inequalities, which in turn shaped responses to the pandemic? EU economic governance is often dismissed as ineffective because of its poor track record of compliance. Yet austerity is blamed for negative health outcomes. This article shows that the EU fiscal rule is a determinant of health because it affects fiscal policies of European countries. First, the analysis of EU member states during 1995–2018 shows that austerity policies affect health spending and health inequalities. Euro-area countries under the EU Excessive Deficit Procedure significantly consolidated their health spending. The contractionary effect was concentrated in southern countries, contributing to rising health inequalities across the core and periphery. Finally, the analysis shows the pandemic implications of health inequalities, as periphery countries with a track record of high consolidation display more stringent (and costly) COVID-19 response models. This analysis contributes to understanding the supranational determinants of health in the EU, showing the pervasive spillover effects of the fiscal framework on national health policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Countries in the Global South are currently facing momentous economic and social challenges, including major debt service problems. As in previous periods of global financial instability, a growing number of countries have turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for financial assistance. The organization has a long track-record of advocating for extensive fiscal consolidation—commonly known as ‘austerity’—for its borrowers. However, in recent years, the IMF has announced major initiatives for ensuring that its loans support social spending, thus aiding countries in meeting their development targets and the Sustainable Development Goals. To assess this track record, we collected spending data on 21 loans signed in the 2020–2022 period, including from all their periodic reviews up to August 2023. Results We find that austerity measures remain a core part of the organization’s mandated policies for its borrowers: 15 of the 21 countries studied here experience a decrease in fiscal space over the course of their IMF programs. Against this fiscal backdrop, social spending floors have failed to live up to their promise. There is no streamlined definition of these floors, thus rendering their application haphazard and inconsistent. But even on their own terms, these floors lack ambition: they often do not foresee trajectories of meaningful social spending increases over time, and, when they do, many of these gains are eaten up by soaring inflation. In addition, a third of social spending floors are not implemented—a much lower implementation rate from that for austerity conditions, which the IMF prioritizes. In several instances, where floors are implemented, they are not meaningfully exceeded, thus—in practice—acting as social spending ceilings. Conclusions The IMF’s lending programs are still heavily focused on austerity, and its strategy on social spending has not represented the sea-change that the organization advertised. At best, social spending floors act as damage control for the painful budget cuts: they are instruments of social amelioration, underpinned by principles of targeted assistance for highly disadvantaged groups. Alternative approaches rooted in principles of universalism can be employed to build up durable and resilient social protection systems.

This article reviews the impacts of the UK Conservative Party’s government policies on ‘open access youth work’ since 2010, giving particular attention to the period since 2018 and to impacts in England. After clarifying the practice’s distinctive features, it outlines the ‘austerity’ demolition of its local provision and—amid continuing wider financial pressures—changes in the role and contributions of the voluntary youth sector. It lists a range of ‘gesture’ funds for financing responses to young people’s needs and interests as the government has defined them and uses the Youth Investment Fund (YIF) as a case study of how this money has been made available and allocated. Initiatives taken by the Department of Digital, Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) are then examined: its Youth Review, National Youth Guarantee, review of the statutory guidance to local authorities, and support for ‘youth volunteering’. Two key developments are then considered that, by early 2024, were diverting and inhibiting an even partial sustained reinstatement of the lost open access youth work facilities. One, at the policy level, is the redefinition of ‘youth work’ by governments and by some within the youth work sector itself as a wide range of out-of-school practices with young people; the other, at the point of delivery, is the on-going difficulties in recruiting youth workers, especially those with direct practice experience. Finally, two possible tentative suggestions for some reinstatement of open access youth work provisions are then discussed.

This text explores the history and development of feminist movements in Argentina. It highlights the solidarity and mutual support among different groups of women, such as the piqueteras (women involved in protests and blockades) and the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. The text also discusses the emergence of the Ni Una Menos movement, which aims to combat violence against women, and the fight for the legalization of abortion. It emphasizes the diverse and inclusive nature of these movements, which have brought together feminists, travesti and trans groups, and movements for sexual diversity. The text concludes by acknowledging the ongoing struggle for women's rights in the face of new political challenges. [Extracted from the article]

The consequences of periods of austerity, generally connected with economic crises, are not only reflected in the financial performance of local governments but also in the range in which they can face shocks. Monitoring the vulnerability and resilience associated with these shocks and the subsequent impacts on the financial situation of Slovak municipalities points to financial resilience, the ability to be proactive or, on the contrary, to be passive as a reaction to evolving environmental conditions. The paper examines the ability of 2,923 Slovak municipalities in the period 2005 - 2022, according to their size categories, to respond to periods of austerity in the economic reality of the Slovak Republic: The Global Financial Crisis from 2009 and the recent ongoing economic crisis arising from the crisis COVID-19, the subsequent military crisis in Ukraine, and the related energy crisis (multi-crisis). The resilience and vulnerability of Slovak municipalities, considering the size categories, are measured by employing a primary dispersion measure as the standard deviation of six financial indicators mirroring the local government's performance in the form of indexes linked to 2005. The results confirm the vulnerability of Slovak local governments in considered eras of austerity with relevant recovery periods, demonstrating a considerable degree of resilience. Besides, we reveal other structural breaks in the monitored period, which influenced the economic circumstances of Slovak municipalities, too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Senegal has long relied on local communities to expand health services and improve health outcomes for citizens and is internationally lauded for its effectiveness in promoting good health and facilitating local trust. Here we examine how community health care emerges in Keur Toma, a rural Wolof town in the Senegal River Valley that relies on a global network of labor migrants to fuel its remittance‐based economy. Largely through its hometown association and the migrant men abroad who fund it, Keur Toma has built and sustained the local health infrastructure and staffing essential to achieving health care accessibility, providing consistent investment and critical stop‐gap funding when government assistance falters. Following Robbins's call for investigating "an anthropology of the good," we highlight the deeply rooted sense of care and obligation to kin and community that fosters the translocal ties that make Keur Toma's health care possible in the state's absence. We highlight what Ngom calls "sanctified suffering"—which valorizes personal fortitude and the ability to endure hardships for family and community, shaped by traditions of solidarity, mutual aid, and Islamic morality—and its role in migrants' hometown commitments to building stronger communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first academic paper to consider the role that parliamentarians play in access to justice. Under austerity, England and Wales has seen cuts to legal aid and local authority budgets that have impacted the ability of people to get help for legal problems in social welfare law from the advice sector. Members of the UK Parliament and Members of the Senedd Cymru are increasingly being called upon by their constituents to fill the resultant gap in advice. This paper draws on interviews with parliamentarians that draw out the nature of the role they are now playing in access to justice across three key areas of civil justice: welfare benefits; housing; and immigration. The growth of parliamentarians as figures in access to justice has thus far been largely neglected but is crucial to grasp, as the implications for the future of access to justice are massive. The paper calls for more research to better understand the phenomenon but urges caution that elected representatives should not be considered as an adequate substitute for a properly functioning, adequately funded advice sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just as every nation in the world has its own characteristic features, so do the Turks, who have a very old and old and rooted history. One of these features of the Turks is austerity. Turks, who lived a nomadic life for a long time, had to make some sacrifices in their lives to fight against the harsh conditions of nature as a requirement of their lifestyle. Thus, those sacrifices became a part of their lives and when they adopted the settled life, they continued these traits. This feature of the Turks did not escape the attention of many travelers who visited the Turks at different times. In addition, some historians and writers of the period also touched on this subject. This study, which is based on the austerity of the Turks, was prepared based on the works of many travelers who visited the Turks, historians of the period and important Turkologists who have important studies on Turkish history and culture. The purpose of this study is to present in a comprehensive manner the austerity nature of the Turks, which is an important value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rural–urban poverty gap exists in most countries around the world, and this paper employs a novel approach to explain this difference, using logistic regression to examine the effects of rural–urban residence type, individual socio-economic and demographic characteristics, and changes in government policies on the likelihood of being poor in England. Unusually, rural areas in England have lower poverty rates than urban areas, so the direction of the typical rural–urban poverty gap is reversed, but the method employed here would be applicable in either direction. We disaggregate micro-data from the Understanding Society Survey (USS) into three residence types (predominantly rural; significantly rural and predominantly urban), and combine these USS data with information on changes in councils' spending power, in service spending and in per capita income lost from cuts to welfare benefits since 2010. The results demonstrate that rural residence provides a buffer against poverty in England, a so-called 'rural advantage effect', but this is reduced or becomes non-significant after controlling for individual socio-economic and demographic characteristics and changes in government policies. Furthermore, working-age poverty has increased more rapidly in rural areas than urban between 2010 and 2018. Our analysis also reveals how national policies have differential spatial impacts on local populations according to their diverse characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of the European parliament (EP) in providing ideational alternatives to austerity in the context of the Eurozone crisis and the COVID-19 crisis. Despite the EP's limited formal role in EU economic governance, it is a key site for democratic debate and contestation. Analyzing EP debates about austerity allows us to understand the possibilities and limitations for ideational change at the EU level from the perspective of supranational party politics. Through a longitudinal analysis (2012–2021) of EP resolutions on the European Commission's Annual Growth Surveys, the article asks how ideational battles around austerity have unfolded between the EP's political groups and what factors have shaped the EP's positions. Theoretically, the article draws on the literature on ideational political economy and discoursive institutionalism. The article argues that instead of providing alternatives, the EP and its Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs have contributed to the ideational hold of austerity due to the weakness of the alternatives of the center-left and their compatibility with austerity. Party-political and institutional factors, such as broad left/right compromises and a strict division of labor between the EP's committees, further constrain ideational change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two years after the COVID-19 pandemic, the Greek economy seems to have overcome the turmoil of the pandemic crisis as well as that of the following energy crisis. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to assume that the Greek economy has returned to a sound state, since this was not really the case even before the pandemic. Furthermore, the anemic growth rates of the pre-pandemic period were followed by an equally weak average growth rate (including the impact of the pandemic), as some of the significant fundamental weaknesses of the Greek economy, which had accumulated over time and constituted the real origin of the Greek crisis, have not been properly addressed yet. This paper attempts a complete mapping of the current state of the Greek economy, offering an insight into the external and internal determinants affecting it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses how economic inequality was framed by UK news media during the pandemic and, drawing from framing theory, considers the implications of the coverage for news audiences. To do so, it uses a data set of 167 articles from the following UK news publications: The Guardian, The Telegraph, the Financial Times and The Sun. There are differences between the publications in terms of salience, tone and there is a wide range of causes and solutions attributed to inequality with no consensus emerging. The coverage is framed mainly by state sources, and there is very little discussion of the finance sector and corporations as causes and solutions to tackle inequality. There are some positive trends emerging, as sustainable finance, climate change and gender equality are highlighted alongside some alternative solutions, indicating a move away from historical trends in news coverage that demonize poverty and focus simply on the individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the impacts of the UK Conservative Party's government policies on 'open access youth work' since 2010, giving particular attention to the period since 2018 and to impacts in England. After clarifying the practice's distinctive features, it outlines the 'austerity' demolition of its local provision and—amid continuing wider financial pressures—changes in the role and contributions of the voluntary youth sector. It lists a range of 'gesture' funds for financing responses to young people's needs and interests as the government has defined them and uses the Youth Investment Fund (YIF) as a case study of how this money has been made available and allocated. Initiatives taken by the Department of Digital, Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) are then examined: its Youth Review, National Youth Guarantee, review of the statutory guidance to local authorities, and support for 'youth volunteering'. Two key developments are then considered that, by early 2024, were diverting and inhibiting an even partial sustained reinstatement of the lost open access youth work facilities. One, at the policy level, is the redefinition of 'youth work' by governments and by some within the youth work sector itself as a wide range of out-of-school practices with young people; the other, at the point of delivery, is the on-going difficulties in recruiting youth workers, especially those with direct practice experience. Finally, two possible tentative suggestions for some reinstatement of open access youth work provisions are then discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accounting information systems (AIS) are primarily designed to convert financial data into usable financial and management information. Their effectiveness or success, which shows the extent to which the requirements of their users are satisfied, is an essential factor in decision making. Previous research has found that user satisfaction is a particularly widely utilized and indicative measure of information system (IS) success. In this setting, the success or failure of an AIS is a crucial issue for all companies since a particular IS cannot be appropriate for everyone, especially in the case of accounting software that has to satisfy the requirements of its users. Furthermore, given the hotel industry's information-intensive and competitive character, the AIS user satisfaction of hotel financial and accounting executives can be vital to their performance and the hotel's operational efficiency. The aim of this research is to investigate a number of factors that influence AIS user satisfaction in the post-implementation period in the case of the Greek hotel industry. The findings of our empirical study show that system quality, information quality, system use, service quality, firm's size, years of system use, information technology integration, and organic structure have a positive effect on user satisfaction with AIS. On the contrary, statistical analysis shows that users' level of education is negatively correlated with AIS user satisfaction. Finally, the current research findings contribute theoretically to the IS and accounting literature, and they also shine a light on the managerial implications for IS developers, hotel managers, and financial executives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, debt-based solutions have been implemented as part of austerity policies to distribute public goods by the use of market forces, resulting in an increase in public and private indebtedness. This paper considers the terms of such solutions by developing the conceptual lens of market studies to rethink 'debt' and 'the market' as analytical categories that often reproduce the conditions of their conceptual boundaries. In so doing, it demonstrates how paying attention to particularities reveals the normative, economic and political circumstances that determine debt-based solutions. These do not simply sit peripheral to the market, but come to define debt obligations as part of market relations. In this respect, the paper takes an approach that accounts for obligation as an entanglement of debtors in market relations. The study builds on Michel Callon's rendition of 'problematization' to explore the implementation of the 2010 higher education fee loan regime in England, a result of austerity governance. A novel application of 'markets for collective concern' and 'accountability devices' is thus used to argue that understanding the ways debt-based solutions entangle market participants in the obligation to repay that reproduces the conditions of the intervention's conceptual boundaries, requires a market studies approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the main idea of the governments of David Cameron after 2010, the Big Society intended to place civil society at the heart of the Conservative agenda while also serving as a rhetorical tool to distance the 'modern' Conservative party from the Thatcherite legacy. In comparing Margaret Thatcher's view on citizenship to the one upheld by David Cameron, this article argues that despite many similarities, Cameron broke with Thatcher in the way he reinterpreted the nature of the state, as well as how he planned to remake civil society and to inspire 'active citizenship'. Unlike Thatcher, who believed that a dynamic civil society would spontaneously flourish once the state was reduced, Cameron believed that society could be rebuilt only through the work of the state. From this perspective, it is possible to reassess the academic debate about the Big Society and to regard it not as a means of justifying a smaller state at a time of economic austerity, but rather as an initiative which failed at least in part because of austerity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given high long-term interest rates, most industrial countries have to either cut spending or increase taxes to contain government debt. As an immediate fiscal consolidation would cause economic and political harm, adjustment must be steady and slow, based on a credible plan. This implies that government debt levels have to increase before falling. This is not good, but not catastrophic, as advanced economies can sustain a higher debt ratio, so long as it is not exploding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both the Saint Michael Parish of Cluj-Napoca and the entire Diocese of Alba Iulia have been concerned for times with the issue of the loan taken out from the Netherlands. This issue was interpreted in diverse ways, it was divulged by both the Hungarian and Romanian press, and it also launched a public discussion. Yet, its exact background and focal point were unknown. In this study, I endeavour to present both the background and the protagonists and the final resolution of this delicate issue by exploring the contemporary documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Countries in the Global South are currently facing momentous economic and social challenges, including major debt service problems. As in previous periods of global financial instability, a growing number of countries have turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for financial assistance. The organization has a long track-record of advocating for extensive fiscal consolidation—commonly known as 'austerity'—for its borrowers. However, in recent years, the IMF has announced major initiatives for ensuring that its loans support social spending, thus aiding countries in meeting their development targets and the Sustainable Development Goals. To assess this track record, we collected spending data on 21 loans signed in the 2020–2022 period, including from all their periodic reviews up to August 2023. Results: We find that austerity measures remain a core part of the organization's mandated policies for its borrowers: 15 of the 21 countries studied here experience a decrease in fiscal space over the course of their IMF programs. Against this fiscal backdrop, social spending floors have failed to live up to their promise. There is no streamlined definition of these floors, thus rendering their application haphazard and inconsistent. But even on their own terms, these floors lack ambition: they often do not foresee trajectories of meaningful social spending increases over time, and, when they do, many of these gains are eaten up by soaring inflation. In addition, a third of social spending floors are not implemented—a much lower implementation rate from that for austerity conditions, which the IMF prioritizes. In several instances, where floors are implemented, they are not meaningfully exceeded, thus—in practice—acting as social spending ceilings. Conclusions: The IMF's lending programs are still heavily focused on austerity, and its strategy on social spending has not represented the sea-change that the organization advertised. At best, social spending floors act as damage control for the painful budget cuts: they are instruments of social amelioration, underpinned by principles of targeted assistance for highly disadvantaged groups. Alternative approaches rooted in principles of universalism can be employed to build up durable and resilient social protection systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that as a consequence of austerity, police in England and Wales have taken over important roles in welfare and social policy institutions. This renders those institutions more coercive, punitive and exclusionary, and normalises a police worldview in those institutions. This process of what I call austerity-driven policification can be observed specifically well in the increasing numbers of police officers integrated into schools most affected by austerity. Such 'transinstitutional policing' in Britain is triggered by contradictory post-global financial crisis austerity measures, but reliant upon a long, racialised history of authoritarian neoliberalisation. Cuts to public spending in the 2010s reduced state institutions' capacities to provide for vulnerable people, who were further criminalised and whose rights to support and solidarity were further delegitimised by a radicalisation of the framing of welfare recipients as undeserving, social housing estates as drug-infested gang territories, and schools in deprived areas, and Black pupils in particular, as dangerous. Police, while subjected to austerity measures also, functioned as an institution of last resort, supplementing and replacing incapacitated state institutions, while also being presented as an appropriate institution to address problems increasingly understood to be of a criminal rather than educational nature. This article suggests that austerity-driven policification is an intensification of longer-term trends toward a larger role for police in the neoliberal era. It shows the racial and authoritarian nature of neoliberalisation, and its messy realisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on an exploration of social workers' perspectives on the social policy and agency processes that shape their experiences of working in child protection services. A qualitative constructivist grounded theory methodology was employed, and 17 qualified social workers and managers were recruited. Social workers described working within an oppressive system, balancing unrealistic demands placed on them, and struggling to restore balance and hope. They shared how this filtered into the work they do with families and the role that relationality and peer support has in surviving the work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the deepest and longest recession that the United Kingdom has experienced since the 1930s, the consequences of Brexit and now COVID too, this article examines the origins, sustenance and puncturing of the growth dynamic it enjoyed since the early 1990s. It identifies what is termed the 'Anglo-liberal growth model' and its social policy corollary, 'asset-based welfare', considering the symbiotic yet increasingly tense and dynamic interdependence of the two. It argues that although both are compromised by the compound shocks of the crisis, Brexit and COVID, they have in fact become more not less intertwined and interdependent in these more troubled times. It considers the implications for the long-term sustainability of this fractious coupling and the wider consequences for UK economic performance and social welfare in the years ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses concepts from Lacanian discourse analysis to examine the rise and fall of Liz Truss, and to draw conclusions about the nature and resilience of neoliberalism. I begin by outlining Lacan's theory of the four discourses in relation to neoliberalism, distinguishing a 'neoliberal master discourse' comprising soaring rhetoric about freedom and prosperity, from a 'neoliberal university discourse' grounded in economic science. I argue Liz Truss represented an unusually pure form of the neoliberal master discourse, prioritising notions of freedom and prosperity over the more pragmatic focus on austerity and market discipline. However, when Truss' discourse failed it led not to the repudiation of neoliberalism, but rather to the return of a neoliberal university discourse of austerity developed by Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt. I conclude that the relationship between the neoliberal master and university discourses is crucial to understanding the ongoing discursive resilience of neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]