Contesting Austerity: A Socio-Legal Inquiry Anuscheh Farahat; Xabier Arzoz (editors) by Anuscheh Farahat; Xabier Arzoz (editors) 9781509942817, 9781509942848, 1509942815, 150994284X instant download after payment.

This book addresses the different forms of austerity, contestation and resistance, in order to understand how they relate to one another and the impact they have on the democratic quality of public debates, the trust in public institutions and the legitimacy of law.
Contestation of austerity includes not only traditional activism strategies such as human rights litigation and direct democracy instruments, but also new forms of collective action and collaborative resistance. Most importantly, many of the new anti-austerity initiatives also aim to renovate existing modes of democratic decision-making on the European, national, regional and local levels. The book focuses on different types of measures to contest austerity and the interaction between institutional and civil society actors.
With 17 chapters written by contributors from Spain, Germany, Greece, Portugal and the UK, the book approaches three crucial areas of austerity policies: cuts in payment and pensions, labour law reform, and old and new poverty. In each field, the contributors analyse the processes of decision-making and contestation from three perspectives: institutions, democratic theory and societal responses.