This book reflects on lasting effects of austerity in Britain in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought into sharp relief the consequences of a near-decade long programme of spending cuts and tax increases. Completed in 2023, it seeks to assess the consequences of the dynamic stratification processes that were set in motion and the governance reforms that may prove to be a permanent and fundamental form of austerity, serving to condition policy making also in better economic times. As such, it builds upon a body of research, to which I have contributed, that points towards the potential for austerity to rupture and fragment real and anticipated life courses. Yet it goes further in situating life course outcomes in relation to governance reforms that have reduced the capacity of the state to ameliorate the structural disadvantages that impede certain population groups from achieving upward social mobility. This book, then, situates research on the personal and familial effects of austerity (utilizing the idea of enduring as suffering) in relation to recent work that argues these outcomes must be seen in the light of austerity having created a more polarized social and spatial structure that will continue to configure opportunities for upward mobility long after the policy mechanisms that have led to increased social and geographical inequality are downgraded or withdrawn (the idea of enduring as lasting). At the same time, it seeks to demonstrate that transformations of state and governance under austerity have made it more difficult to contest growing territorial and social injustice by depoliticizing and de-democratizing political decision-making. While scholars have rightly focused on the detrimental impact austerity has on people's lives, the way in which austerity undermines democratic processes has been relatively neglected. This book therefore includes consideration of how austerity endures in the terms of how formal democratic processes have subsumed political goals to the fiscal frame and pushed social inequality and uneven development off the political agenda.

This book is intended to be an active intervention into contemporary debates about the impacts of austerity, which have been unevenly distributed between different groups and geographical areas.

Introduction

In this chapter, I forward an analysis of the institutional, social and spatiotemporal features of the austere state. Bringing work on state austerity arrangements into conversation with ideas about the role of actors working within and beyond the state to actively construct – as well as critique and contest – austerity as a discursive and material project, I develop a conceptual framework for the subsequent chapters of this book, in which I use specific sites and cases to attend to the different configurations (or ‘spatialities’ – following Keith and Pile [1993] who use this term to reference the idea that spatial and social relations are mutually constituted) of the austere state, as well as how geographical diversity inflects the experience of austerity and the relationship between austerity and inequality. Throughout the discussion, I refer to ‘the state’ not merely as an operational ensemble, but as a medium through which different social potencies act. Informed by Jessop (1990: 270), who asserts that ‘the power of the state is the power of the forces acting in and through the state’, my intention is to highlight the active construction of austerity through the action and inaction of different agents and forces (Peck, 2012; Bailey, 2015; Bailey et al, 2018). This approach importantly allows for a consideration of how the economic and political project of austerity is shaped by past state activity or inertia, and the historical basis of variation in local government capacity and financial resource.

Given the emergence of the state is a dynamic process involving actors that produce and perform institutions through particular spatial relations, in response to and in combination with the effects of previous state forms and policy interventions, a geographically and historically sensitive approach is required. In conjunction with this, an empirical focus on the UK serves to bring the multi-scalar composition and articulation of austerity into greater focus. With high national and regional inequities within the centralized union-state structure, as well as persistent spatial disparities in social and economic conditions between and within cities, the transfer of budgetary pressures down to lower spatial scales sees austerity unevenly impact places and people, with cuts in public expenditure concentrating hardship for those living in and around poverty (Hall, 2019a; see also Peck, 2015). At the same time, state restructuring and institutional dismantling generates legacies and ramifications that pattern future developments (Pike et al, 2018).

Introduction

This final chapter builds on the preceding discussion of the institutional and personal remnants of budgetary restraint, with the aim of considering austerity's ongoing importance in shaping society and (re)defining present and future policy. In particular, it details how the temporality of austerity reshapes ideas, expectations and the realm of possibilities for action. Notably, the Conservative Party's pre-financial crisis pledge to maintain spending parity with the then Labour government – a pledge that suggested an awareness of the need to balance neoliberal ideals with electoral pressures – was disregarded in the wake of the economic downturn, which provided a rationale for them to prioritize fiscal prudence upon assuming power. The austerity measures that followed, including reforms to public services, taxation and social security, were framed as necessary to cope with the negative outcomes of fluctuating economic conditions, including the costs associated with bailing out strategically important financial institutions (Pautz, 2018). Given this movement – and knowledge of the harmful consequences of the cuts and reforms which ensued that I have outlined in the preceding chapters of this book – it is pressing to consider the (continued) recourse to austerity measures by government officials, and more specifically why such measures have not proved ‘electorally dangerous’ (Lee et al, 2020: 165). The aim of this chapter then is to spotlight how important the construal of a policy problem is, or to put this differently, how the construction of austerity as a fiscal response to the crisis – a crisis that would pass should spending cuts and tax increases be implemented – serves to dampen attention to its implications for life courses and life chances beyond the defined period of retrenchment, which was initially envisioned to be around ten years (2010– 2019).

Interestingly, a recent Danish study describes how governments cutting back on welfare services or benefits can avoid electoral punishment by communicating any retrenchment and framing it to their own benefit (Elmelund-Præstekær et al, 2015; see Whiteley et al [2014] for a comparative UK perspective). This might involve claims about economic responsibility that imply reform is necessary or the questioning of the eligibility or ‘deservingness’ of those receiving the services or benefits being cut so that reductions in financial support and access to state provisions are perceived as fair, just or efficient (Whiteley et al, 2014).

Introduction

After more than a decade of austerity, it seems apt to reflect on a policy that is both everywhere and increasingly nowhere. The government drive to decrease public expenditure has fundamentally changed social and political life in Britain, and yet government claims that austerity has ‘done its job’ and is ending imply that by loosening the purse strings the damage caused to present and future life courses can quickly be reversed. Fundamentally, then, this book is motivated by pre-pandemic pronouncements of the beginning of the end of austerity in Britain. It asks, ‘what is austerity?’, and proceeds to interrogate the substance of the controversial political response to the financial crash of 2008, which sparked a period of economic recession in the UK and much of the world.

Although austerity only entered the public lexicon 14 years ago, this introductory chapter will outline how it is part of a longer-term strategy of neoliberal reform which impacts on many areas of the welfare state, especially that which is delivered through local government. Beginning in the late 1970s, there has been a prioritization of market relations, re-tasking the role of the state and individual responsibility in the UK, as well as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Beyond these neoliberal ‘heartlands’ (Jessop, 2016a), neoliberal policy adjustments have also occurred in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia as the notion that fiscal restraint can be a driver of economic development and prosperity has travelled to particular cities, regions and nation states (Peck and Tickell, 2002). Policies of privatization – first implemented in an effort to resolve the 1970s stagflation period of simultaneously high inflation and unemployment – have been rolled out, and there has been an expansion of the role of finance in the economy (not only financial institutions but also private capital investments) owing to a belief that ‘big’ government militates against economic growth (Whiteside, 2016).

As a response to the 2008– 2009 recession and double dip of 2011– 2012, austerity has renewed and redoubled these pre-existing neoliberal commitments. There have been further dramatic cuts to public services. Many state benefits have been capped if not reduced. Wage increases for many have been held below inflation so that real wages have declined.