The Universal Credit fiasco shows that we need a new model of Ministerial accountability

Professor Martin Smith (University of York) and Professor Dave Richards (University of Manchester) discuss political accountability in the UK in a post that originally appeared on the Democratic Audit blog.

The Work and Pensions Secretary, Ian Duncan Smith, campaigning in his Woodford constituency (Credit: Gareth Davies, CC by 2.0)

The current imbroglio surrounding the Universal Credit scheme appears to be another example of what Crewe and King have recently identified as a long line of policy blunders in the UK.  The accusations being levelled at Iain Duncan Smith and his department are serious.  They illustrate both problems of implementation and reoccurring questions surrounding accountability.  

Gender, Neoliberalism, and Financial Crisis Postgraduate Conference at the University of York

Sydney Calkin recently organized and hosted an international postgraduate conference on feminist politics and the financial crisis.

The politics of austerity and crisis are deeply gendered and open up a wide range of feminist debates around neoliberalism, resistance, and gender justice.  The Gender, Neoliberalism, and Financial Crisis Postgraduate Conference, which took place at the University of York on 27 September 2013, sought to map the multiple impacts of financial crisis, austerity, and neoliberalism on women and to articulate an alternative feminist agenda. It brought together researchers from around the world working on feminist political economy, sociology, development studies, economics, and related disciplines to present their findings and development networks for future research collaboration.

In their opening keynote address, Diane Elson and Ruth Pearson delivered two closely linked papers that first considered the impact of the financial crisis and austerity policies on women and then moved to suggest alternative, gender just economic arrangements. While they encouraged feminist researchers to continue to document the deficiencies and obstacles embedded in neoliberal gender regimes, they also challenged feminists to move beyond critique to articulating alternative anti-neoliberal economic discourses and policies. In the closing keynote address, Sylvia Walby echoed this sentiment, demonstrating the importance of articulating a gender growth model, using feminism as a counter hegemonic project to critique and dismantle the current neoliberal gender regime. To this end, she proposed a social democratic gender regime with high levels of female wage labour and political representation, substantial public expenditure on welfare and state provision of health, education, and care services. A recording of Diane Elson and Ruth Pearson’s opening keynote address is available for download and streaming here: https://soundcloud.com/genderconfyork/elson-and-pearson-keynote

Panels throughout the day presented a diverse range of perspectives on gendered neoliberalism and austerity, both demonstrating the impact of the financial crisis and advocating alternative approaches to the current political and economic gender regimes. From a feminist institutionalist perspective, several researchers presented findings on gender equality policy in governmental and financial institutions, from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, to the European Union and Macedonian government. Others examined the impact of austerity on the third sector and feminist organizations in particular. Both groups of researchers, those concerned with government and civil society, articulated a trenchant critique of neoliberalization of government policy and the impact of austerity on funding, policy, and discourse. In particular, they challenged the dominance of reductive efficiency-based gender policy, evident in the popular ‘business case’ for gender equality narratives which render equality a function of economic growth strategies and marginalize transformative approaches. Particularly invisible in discourses of crisis and austerity is the role of social reproduction and its value; another strand of researchers challenged the marginality of social reproduction from dominant political discourses and sought, through a variety of methodological approaches, to demonstrate the value and impact of social reproduction.

The postgraduate work presented here reflects the continuing significance of some enduring feminist debates and also opens up new directions for feminist research. Given the range of disciplinary backgrounds, methodological approaches, and subject matter, the conference contributions demonstrated the diversity of feminist research and articulated a coherent and compelling narrative of feminist analysis on the financial crisis and resistance to the politics of austerity. The conference succeeded in bringing together postgraduates from around the world to establish research connections with each other and to meet leading researchers in the field; I hope it will generate enduring research networks and facilitate future collaboration among young feminist scholars. This conference was funded in part by the Politics Department (alongside the York Annual Fund, Political Studies Association, and York Graduate Students’ Association). It would not have been possible without the support of Lisa Webster, Caroline Carfrae, and Carole Spary, so many thanks to them for their support.

The Rise of the Golden Dawn

Dr Sofia Vasilopoulou has recently co-authored two different blogs (links below to the full posts):

The rise of the Golden Dawn is not a natural consequence of the economic crisis, but a reflection of wider problems in Greek society

and 

The Rise of Golden Dawn Casts a Shadow Over Greek Politics

Transformative Justice in Tunisia and Egypt

Professor Paul Gready has been awarded a three year ESRC research grant proposal on Transformative Justice in Tunisia and Egypt.

The Arab world was shaken in 2011 by a series of popular movements, collectively known as the 'Arab spring(s)', that have challenged long established authoritarian regimes. What will be the medium and long term impacts of these uprisings? Who is driving (and contesting) change, and what kind of change is being sought? This study addresses these issues in the context of the contested transitions in Tunisia and Egypt.

The research is based on the following premise: for these uprisings to deliver on their potential will require transformative change that emphasises local agency and resources, the prioritization of process rather than pre-conceived outcomes, and the challenging of unequal power relationships and structures of exclusion. Such change is here termed transformative justice. The overarching research question is: How is transformative change defined and delivered in the context of political transition (in Tunisia and Egypt), and which actors, institutions and structures drive and contest such change? The research will look at changing attitudes over time (conducting two sets of interviews, one year apart) and document a range of voices and perspectives (urban/rural, supporters/opponents of the revolutions).

The research includes a strong capacity building element - training local researchers - and the grant will also fund two PhD scholarships at the Centre for Applied Human Rights.

A dangerous game: Israel, Syria and US air strikes

In a piece for www.theconversation.com, Jacob Eriksson reflects on what a possible US strike on Syria might mean for Israel, and the problem of unspecified goals. Despite multiple threats being made against the Jewish state, the risk of unwanted conflict escalation makes such a retaliatory attack unlikely. Caution should, however, guide any American response.

Book Review: Party patronage and party government in European democracies

The eurozone debt crisis and subsequent economic reforms introduced across Europe have helped to expose endemic levels of corruption and party patronage in countries such as Greece. Party patronage and party government in European democracies uses more than 600 expert interviews to explore the nature of party patronage across fifteen European democracies. For Sofia Vasilopoulou, one of this timely book’s main strengths is in its investigation of patronage as an organisational resource for parties that are facing falling grass root support.  She finds that while the book does not explore the reasons behind cross-country variation in the scale and depth of patronage, it does open up a number of potentially fruitful areas for future research.

Read the full piece on the LSE blog.

Audra Mitchell secures funding for project 'Posthuman Security'

Audra Mitchell has been awarded a series of grants to support her new research and collaborative projects on the subject of ‘Posthuman Security’. 

"This project starts from the premise that harm does not happen to humans alone, but rather to complex ‘worlds’ composed of heterogeneous kinds of beings. From this perspective, it asks how, and in what way, these worlds and their nonhuman constituents can be subjects of ‘security’. In particular, it explores the kinds of ethical orientations humans should adopt towards nonhumans – including what protection they are owed, and how we can respond ethically to the threats they raise. This issue already poses significant challenges in international affairs. For instance, robots or ‘drones’ are involved in killing combatants and in humanitarian work such as mine-clearing; ecosystems such as forests can shelter refugees or combatant groups; historical and religious buildings are protected under international law; and climate change is contributing to conflict and refugee flows. New research within posthumanist philosophy, and ‘new materialist’ discourses in particular, suggests that attention to nonhumans can help to explain the sources of contemporary security threats. Yet ethics has not caught up, and important questions have yet to be answered. In particular, to what extent do we owe nonhumans protection? and, if we do owe them protection, then how should we respond to the threats they raise? For more information, please see Audra’s previous post on this blog.

To support this work, Audra has received an Early Career Fellowship from the Independent Social Research Foundation (£46892) which will allow her to pursue the project in 2014-15. She has also received a visiting fellowship for research collaboration at the University of Queensland Department of Political Science and International Studies ($5000 AUD). In spring 2014, she will take up this fellowship in order to develop the theoretical framework and empirical applications of the project in collaboration with Professor Roland Bleiker and other members of POLSIS. Finally, she has received a grant from University of York’s Research Priming Fund (£4657) to hold an international workshop which will explore the potential for collaborative research on this subject in and outside of the academic community".