Thi s v e r sio n is b ei n g m a d e a v ail a bl e in a c c o r d a n c e wit h p u blis h e r p olici e s.S e e h t t p://o r c a . cf. a c. u k/ p olici e s. h t ml fo r u s a g e p olici e s. Co py ri g h t a n d m o r al ri g h t s fo r p u blic a tio n s m a d e a v ail a bl e in ORCA a r e r e t ai n e d by t h e c o py ri g h t h ol d e r s .
The paper considers what it means to contest austerity and what political contestation of austerity says about how austerity as a political process should be conceived. It does so through separating a narrow view of austerity as fiscal consolidation from actually existing austerity as a broader political economic process ongoing in different ways in different countries. Through a case study of crisis, austerity and contestation as it relates to housing in Spain, the paper argues that to contest actually existing austerity it is necessary to contest both the wealth and power of the actors that have gained from austerity, not least finance capital. Through bank bailouts and the creation of a bad bank, the reforms demanded by the troika have opened up Spanish housing to direct wealth extraction by global finance capital whilst half a million households have been evicted and hundreds of thousands live with insurmountable debt. The Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH, Platform for the Mortgage-Affected) has contested austerity in Spanish housing by contesting finance capital through civil disobedience whilst campaigning for anti-austerity reforms to housing and mortgage legislation, aiming to limit how housing can be a sphere of wealth extraction for finance capital.
ARTICLE HISTORY
This article introduces the special issue ‘Transformational change through Public Policy’. After introducing the idea of transformational societal change, it asks how public policy scholarship can contribute to fostering it; the research questions we need to do so; what actors we need to study; who our audiences are; and how we need to expand our theories and methods. In our conclusion, we draw five lessons from the special issue articles. Transformational change (1) often results from many instances of policy changes over extended periods of time; (2) involves social movements that reconceptualise problems and possibilities; and (3) requires policy changes across sectors and levels of society, from local communities to national or global communities. As a field, Public Policy will (4) never offer detailed instructions to create transformational change in all circumstances, but (5) must involve scholars taking on different roles, from engaged scholarship to theory development that each provide unique contributions.
Disruptive protest has become increasingly studied and promoted across the social sciences, not least in relation to climate protests. This paper asks what the rationale and effects of disruptive protest are. It argues that disruptive protest carries a prefigurative legitimacy, envisaging a more democratic and just society while aiming for broader appeal and legitimacy rendered by liberal discourses. The paper takes a political theory perspective through both the literature on civil disobedience and the anarchist literature on direct action. It then explores how the key attributes of these literatures render legitimacy to the practices and discourses of two social movements that have made widespread use of disruptive protest in recent years: the Spanish anti-eviction movement Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) and the mainly British climate change movement Extinction Rebellion (XR).
This Special Issue makes a statement about the study of policy and politics, where it has been, how it is done, what it is, and where it is going. When addressing the question ‘who gets to speak for our discipline?’ we respond emphatically – many people, from many places, working in many ways. It comprises scholarship that has rarely been combined to explore some cardinal challenges about our scholarship: (1) How do we conceive of policy and political studies? (2) To what extent should our science be ‘normative’ or ‘objective’ or ‘positive’? (3) Who are our audiences, and how do we engage them? (4) Whose knowledge matters, and how does it accumulate? (5) How should we advance the study of policy and politics? We conclude charging the field to consider different ways of thinking about what we can discover and construct in the world and how we can conduct our science.
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