Abstract
ABSTRACTAusterity has been delivered in the UK without durably effective resistance. Read through a dialogue between urban regime theory and Gramsci’s theory of the integral state, the article considers how austerity was normalized and made governable in the city of Leicester. It shows how Leicester navigated waves of crisis, restructuring, and austerity, positioning itself as a multicultural city of entrepreneurs. The article explores historical influences on the development of the local state, inscribed in the politics of austerity governance today. From a regime-theoretical standpoint, it shows how the local state accrued the governing resources to deliver austerity while disorganizing and containing resistance. Imbued with legacies of past struggles, this process of organized disorganization produced a functional hegemony articulated in the multiple subjectivities of “austerian realism.” The article elaborates six dimensions of Gramscian regime analysis to inform further research.
Highlights
According to Peck (2017), the study of hegemony is about the “ongoingconstruction of . . . ‘normal reality’ or commonsense” and, “the ‘governance of normalisation’ itself” (p. 15)
The analysis reveals that austerity governance has delivered a functional hegemony through a form of regime politics anchored in “austerian realism.”
A functional hegemony The entrepreneurial city inspired by foundational mythologies of multiculturalism Ensemble of coalitions sustained through coercion and consent: the local state in its inclusive sense articulated through austerian realism Durable low-level resistance, muted by cultural, spatial, class, and territorial modes of containment
Summary
According to Peck (2017), the study of hegemony is about the “ongoing (re)construction of . . . ‘normal reality’ or commonsense” and, “the ‘governance of normalisation’ itself” (p. 15). The Gramscian and regime approaches converge at the point of studying how different combinations of actors mobilize a variety of material and ideational resources to produce more or less durable governing arrangements at urban scales. From this perspective, both lend themselves to taxonomical innovation and comparison. Stone’s intellectual journey led him to reflect that he had focused too much on the state–business nexus and (unlike Gramsci) neglected the resources of civil society He reformulated the core principles of regime analysis in broader terms (Stone, 2015): The guiding tenet in inner-core regime analysis (its “iron law”) is that for any governing arrangement to sustain itself, resources must be commensurate with the agenda being pursued. In simple terms, focusing on the constructive dimensions of local state power, in circumstances bequeathed by historical struggle, enhances our knowledge about the contours of urban hegemony and its limits in the age of austerity
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