scholarly journals Is fiscal austerity really self‐defeating?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Piergallini
Keyword(s):  
Fiscal Austerity

Measuring academic research performance through audit at the expense of trust: Exploring the 21st Century University

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Holligan ◽  
Ibrahim Sirkeci
Keyword(s):  
Research Performance ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Reputation Management ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Budget Cuts ◽  
University Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
Audit Culture ◽  
Management Quality ◽  
Fiscal Austerity

British universities are experiencing a climate of fiscal austerity including severe budget cuts coupled with intensifying competition for markets have seen the emergence of audit culture which afflicts the public sector in general. This entails the risk to the integrity of university culture disappearing. This paper seeks to explore the interconnections between developing trends in universities which cause processes likely to undermine the objectivity and independence of research. We question that universities’ alignment with the capitalist business sector and the dominant market economy culture. Despite arguably positive aspects, there is a danger that universities may be dominated by hegemonic sectional interest rather than narratives of openness and democratically oriented critique. We also argue that audit culture embedded in reputation management, quality control and ranking hierarchies may necessarily promote deception while diminishing a collegiate culture of trust and pursuit of truth which is replaced by destructive impersonal accountability procedures. Such transitions inevitably contain insidious implications for the nature of the academy and undermine the values of academic-intellectual life.

The Uses of Affordable Social Investment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anton Hemerijck
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
First Century ◽  
Paradigm Change ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Welfare Capitalism ◽  
Methodological Innovation ◽  
Policy Paradigm ◽  
Fiscal Austerity ◽  
Second Use

The final chapter concludes with five contemporary ‘uses’ of social investment, in full recognition of limits underscored by critics. The first ‘use’ of social investment therefore concerns its ‘paradigmatic’ bearings. To what extent does social investment represent a distinct policy paradigm for twenty-first-century welfare capitalism? A second ‘use’ relates to paradigm change, in the sense of theoretical progress inspiring interdisciplinary methodological innovation, in particular with respect to the empirical assessment of well-being ‘returns’ on social investment. The third more practical ‘use’ covers the identification of virtuous social investment policy mixes of ‘stocks’, ‘flows’, and ‘buffers’. The fourth ‘use’ is geographically confined to the European conundrum of overcoming the fiscal austerity to make way for social investment reform, as means to reignite socioeconomic convergence, at least for the Eurozone. The more general final use of social investment bears on the ‘politics of social investment’ in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

The neoliberal governance of heroin and opioid users in Philadelphia city

2021 ◽  
pp. 174165902199119
Author(s):  
Philip R Kavanaugh ◽  
Jennifer L Schally
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Harm Reduction ◽  
Drug Users ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Media Portrayals ◽  
Neoliberal Governance ◽  
Public Nuisance ◽  
Fiscal Austerity ◽  
Opioid Users ◽  
Governmental Response

Drawing on 147 news accounts and five policy documents on the heroin and opioid crisis in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania published between 2016 and 2018, our analysis highlights how media portrayals of opioid users as both tragic victims and public nuisance prompted a schizoid governmental response that draws on rhetorics of treatment and harm reduction to legitimate more punitive interventions. By describing how the state’s quasi-medical responsibilization strategy devolved to fold criminalization into its broader response, we argue the effort to wage a kinder/gentler war on overdose invests in familiar tropes of a recalcitrant drug user class that is a threat to public health. In doing so we provide a basis to critique how drug users are governed in this time of fiscal austerity, resource hoarding, and perpetual, continually evolving drug crises.

scholarly journals Reciprocity in the Co-Production of Public Services: The Role of Volunteering through Community Time Exchange?

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gemma Burgess ◽  
Daniel Durrant
Keyword(s):  
Social Enterprise ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Eu Accession ◽  
Community Currency ◽  
Accession Countries ◽  
Fiscal Austerity ◽  
Ongoing Programme ◽  
Eu Accession Countries

Time Credits are a form of community currency based upon the reciprocal exchange of time and represent an interpretation of ‘time banking’ by a UK social enterprise, Spice. This article sets out the contribution made by research on Time Credits to the theory and practice of co-production in public services. Time Credits are intended to improve wellbeing through volunteering and ultimately increase economic participation. There is a focus on communities exhibiting high levels of deprivation within a small Cambridgeshire town (Wisbech, UK) which is geographically isolated and characterised by low-skilled, agri-food based employment opportunities that attracted high levels of inward migration from the A8 EU accession countries. In separating the rhetoric from the reality of co-production, the research aims to shed some light upon the extent to which such initiatives can realistically engender a shift towards a more reciprocal economy in the context of an ongoing programme of fiscal austerity.

scholarly journals Fiscal fault, financial fix? Capital Markets Union and the quest for macroeconomic stabilization in the Euro Area

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Braun ◽  
Marina Hübner
Keyword(s):  
Capital Markets ◽  
Governance Structure ◽  
Macroeconomic Stabilization ◽  
European Monetary ◽  
Macroeconomic Conditions ◽  
Structural Capacity ◽  
Capital Markets Union ◽  
Fiscal Austerity ◽  
The Business Cycle ◽  
The Impact

This article seeks to situate and explain the European Union’s push for a Capital Markets Union – and thus for a more market-based financial system – in the broader context of macroeconomic governance in politically fractured polities. The current governance structure of the European Monetary Union severely limits the capacity of both national and supranational actors to provide a core public good: macroeconomic stabilization. While member states have institutionalized fiscal austerity and abandoned other macroeconomic levers, the European polity lacks the fiscal resources necessary to achieve stable macroeconomic conditions – smoothing the business cycle, ensuring growth and job creation and mitigating the impact of output shocks on consumption. Capital Markets Union, we argue, is the attempt of European policymakers to devise a financial fix to this structural capacity gap. Using its regulatory powers, the Commission, supported by the European Central Bank (ECB), seeks to harness private financial markets and instruments to provide the public policy good of macroeconomic stabilization. We trace how technocrats, think tanks, and financial-sector lobbyists, through the strategic use of knowledge and expertise, established securitization and market-based finance as solutions to the European Monetary Union’s governance problems.

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