24th IPSA World Congress of Political Science, July 23-28, 2016, Istanbul, Turkey
Discussions of austerity measures in Southern Europe have usually been framed in terms of their economic impact: inequality, unemployment (particularly among the young), lower wages. Beyond the perceived failure of the neoliberal recipe to take these countries (and Europe at large) out of the crisis, however, there is growing dissent among civil society groups to the measures taken by governments. This resistance needs to be addressed as a direct effect of austerity policies and properly analyzed for what it really represents: a process of grassroots repoliticization and re-democratization. In fact, in these countries a new social, political and economic paradigm is emerging, one that rejects both the main basis of capitalism (individualism and consumption) and the Keynesian foundations of post-war Europe. Where state has failed, citizens have reclaimed their lives and gained a new sense of empowerment. We have been witnessing a multiplication of solidarity economy experiments, citizen assemblies, occupations and the like. Despite their magnitude, these transformations have hardly been addressed. This panel seeks to shed light on these issues. How are people resisting austerity? What are the strategies developed to cope with declining life standards? Are there parallels among these countries (or with Latin American countries)? What can we learn from these experiments? We welcome contributions from various fields of knowledge and, in particular, comparative approaches.
Convenor & Chair: Isabel David, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal
Co-Chair: Dimitris Tsarouhas, Bilkent University, Turkey)
Deadline for Paper proposals: October 7, 2015
