Contesting austerity, de-centring the state: Anti-politics and the political horizon of the urban

Ross Beveridge and Philippe Koch
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Ross Beveridge: University of Glasgow, UK
Philippe Koch: Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), Switzerland

Environment and Planning C, 2021, vol. 39, issue 3, 451-468

Abstract: This article draws novel links between ‘anti-politics’, austerity and a political horizon centred on the urban. Research on anti-politics often invokes a binary understanding of a politics of and within the state and an anti-politics at a distance from or hostile towards the state. This article argues that in the context of austerity, this binary loses traction. Austerity has intensified the transformation towards networked forms of governance within which the state becomes a more hybrid entity of contradictory ideals and practices. Austerity not only calls into question the legitimacy of formal politics because of its devastating social outcomes, it also disaggregates the political authority of the state and opens up a particularly urban terrain of politics. We capture this development by examining the intersections between the local state and the urban field of politics. Looking across the struggles against austerity in Europe, and focusing in more detail on housing politics in Berlin, we assert that the urban is important not only as a setting (as typically argued) but also as the basis for a different rationality of political action in and against austerity. In the context of austerity struggles, state authority becomes ever more contingent and other, more urban, forms of politics advance. In sum, the article contributes to a spatial reading of (anti-)politics against austerity, points to the de-centring of the state in transformative political projects and emphasizes the analytical purchase of a distinctly urban perspective on contemporary politics in Europe.

Keywords: Austerity; anti-politics; urban; cities; social movements; the state; Berlin (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirc:v:39:y:2021:i:3:p:451-468

DOI: 10.1177/2399654419871299

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