Anti-austerity between militant materialism and real democracy: exploring pragmatic prefigurativism

ABSTRACT

The anti-austerity movement that emerged in the wake of the 2008 global economic crisis and 2010 Eurozone crisis, and which forms part of the ‘age of austerity’ that came after those crises, was underpinned by a set of ideas and practices that we refer to here as ‘pragmatic prefigurativism’. Whilst the anti-austerity movements typically rejected formal ideologies such as Marxism and anarchism, nevertheless pragmatic prefigurativism can be understood as a ‘left convergence’ of sorts. The paper explores the features of this pragmatic prefigurativism, comparing the anti-austerity movements in the UK and Spain. In particular, we note the role of unresponsive institutions of democracy in prompting the move towards pragmatic prefigurativism, the adoption of techniques of direct democracy and direct action as the means through which to express a voice and to refuse austerity, and the pragmatic nature of the subsequent (re)turn to political institutions when this became a possibility.     

Explaining Italian “exceptionalism” and its end: Minimum income from neglect to hyper-politicization

Traditionally at the margins of the political debate, minimum income protection has recently become a key issue in Italian politics. After decades of social and political “neglect” letting Italy the only European country (with Greece) still lacking an anti-poverty minimum income safety net in the 2010s, finally a national programme called Inclusion Income was introduced in 2018, then replaced by a more robustly financed scheme, the Citizenship Income in 2019. The introduction of these new programmes was the object of an intense political debate, which raises two main puzzles. Why a policy field characterized by the low political resources of would be beneficiaries and low incidence on the overall welfare budget has become so important in the political debate? How did it occur in Italy, where minimum income protection had been absent in political discourses for at least five decades after World War II? To answer these questions, this article first elaborates a novel theoretical framework which combines the main properties of socio-political demand and political supply in order to explain the scope and direction of minimum income reforms. Second, it provides an analytically oriented reconstruction of MIS policy trajectory in Italy in the three different phases: the phase of MIS “neglect” (1948–1992) characterized by inertia; the period of political “contentiousness” (1993–2012), marked by attempts of path departure followed by policy reversals; the more recent phase leading to the introduction and institutionalization of a MIS. Third, the article provides a theoretically framed interpretation of the overall MIS trajectory in Italy.     

Radical alternative conceptualizations of the classical welfare state? Contrasting the United Kingdom and the Netherlands with Norway

In many countries, new, broad, and normative “conceptions of society” gained prominence that represent fundamentally different discursive alternatives to the classical welfare state. We present two political projects that contain radical alternative conceptualizations of the classical welfare state, the “Big Society” in Britain and the “Participation Society” in the Netherlands, and contrast these with Norwegian developments, where no such a radical alternative conceptualization of the welfare state can be found. We show that the British and Dutch political projects were attempts to replace the welfare state, whereas there is no comparable big idea about a radical overhaul of the welfare state in Norway. Our analysis contributes to a better understanding of a fundamental shift in welfare state reform, namely a radical reconsidering of the ideational and normative foundation that defines and underpins what the welfare state is or should be.     

Community is not a Place but a Relationship<Superscript>1</Superscript>: Lessons for Organizational Development

The premise of this article is that organizations need to be “organized” differently if we want to re-invigorate the power of community in contemporary life. A central theme within the current reform movement toward restorative justice is the devolution of authority from formal governmental systems to community. In order to effectively socialize young people, communities and families must perform certain functions well. As more and more societal activities take place within organizations, we face the dilemma that the weakened communities create a demand for increasing involvement of public organizations in the life of the community. Yet modern organizations do not effectively perform functions unique to families and communities. Drawing on insights from a unique community-system partnership in restorative peacemaking circles, this paper argues we may need to reinvent our organizations so that they learn to behave as members of the community. ¹This apt phrase and fundamental insight about the meaning of community came from the seminal article by Paul McCold and Benjamin Wachtel (1998).     

两阶段供应链中三种定价方式研究

本文考虑渠道一体化对品牌建设的作用,在一个制造商和两个零售商的两阶段供应链系统中,其中确定性的市场需求与产品的市场零售价格有关,通过分析以下三种定价方式下的最优定价和库存策略下供应链成员和系统的收益,1)商品市场零售价格由零售商各自决定,两零售商和制造商之间存在着竞争活动;2)商品市场零售价格由制造商统一制定;3)市场零售价格、转让价格和系统库存水平按渠道协调的最优原则确定,确定了同一产品品牌内部的市场竞争、定价控制权及转让价格对渠道性能及品牌自身造成的影响,并由此提出了分散决策系统中的一种激励机制.     

Residential Building Codes,Affordability, and Health Protection: A Risk-Tradeoff Approach

Residential building codes intended to promote health and safety may produce unintended countervailing risks by adding to the cost of construction. Higher construction costs increase the price of new homes and may increase health and safety risks through income and stock effects. The income effect arises because households that purchase a new home have less income remaining for spending on other goods that contribute to health and safety. The stock effect arises because suppression of new-home construction leads to slower replacement of less safe housing units. These countervailing risks are not presently considered in code debates. We demonstrate the feasibility of estimating the approximate magnitude of countervailing risks by combining the income effect with three relatively well understood and significant home-health risks. We estimate that a code change that increases the nationwide cost of constructing and maintaining homes by $150 (0.1% of the average cost to build a single-family home) would induce offsetting risks yielding between 2 and 60 premature fatalities or, including morbidity effects, between 20 and 800 lost quality-adjusted life years (both discounted at 3%) each year the code provision remains in effect. To provide a net health benefit, the code change would need to reduce risk by at least this amount. Future research should refine these estimates, incorporate quantitative uncertainty analysis, and apply a full risk-tradeoff approach to real-world case studies of proposed code changes.     

中国特色军政关系的集中体现和必然要求——军事政治学视域中的军人核心价值观

对军政关系的研究是军事政治学的学术功能与核心议题。同时,也为我们观察和理解当代革命军人核心价值观打开了新视域,提供了新工具。解构当代革命军人核心价值观,可以认为,＂忠诚于党、热爱人民、报效国家、献身使命、崇尚荣誉＂的革命军人核心价值观是中国特色军政关系的明确反映和集中体现。践行当代革命军人核心价值观是维护中国特色军政关系的基本途径和必然要求。     

社会主义商品经济理论比较：顾准与卓炯

本文将我国已故著名经济学家顾准与卓炯的社会主义商品经济理论主要观点作了比较分析,通过分析指出了两位学者各自论点的异同和论证的科学程度,对于经济学说史研究和经济理论研究具有学术理论价值。     

论毛泽东早期民主教育思想

毛泽东早期民主教育思想是毛泽东教育思想体系中的一个重要组成部分,是理解和把握毛泽东思想体系核心内容的关键之一.为了理解毛泽东早期民主思想的发展脉络,把握毛泽东早期民主教育思想的实质,通过分析毛泽东早期民主教育思想的内涵和特点来阐述毛泽东早期民主教育思想,对于推动当代青少年的素质教育的发展和教育教学方法意义重大.