Featuring the latest research by Brazilian-based scholars previously inaccessible to an English-speaking audience, this book is a timely, authoritative, multidisciplinary overview of social policies in Brazil during the Temer austerity and the Bolsonaro populist presidencies. The breadth of policies studied herein provides clues on the political agenda, preferences, and strategies during this tumultuous period in Brazil’s history. Divided into four parts, Part I is a conceptualization: it brings basic understanding of Brazilian social policies, explains the trajectory of the Brazil political landscape, including the growth of a populist right-wing movement, the economic crisis and the increase in poverty and inequality in Brazil prior, and the threat to democracy brought about by the disinformation ecosystem. Part II discusses social security, social assistance, conditional cash transfers, and healthcare. Part III analyzes the neoliberal strategies to social investment policies, specifically labor, family, and education. In Part IV, the authors turn their attention to non-conventional topics that are not typically included in research on welfare state retrenchment, including the environment and indigenous rights, and police violence and gun control. Social Policies in Times of Austerity and Populism is unhesitatingly recommended to all those who teach welfare state politics, comparative public policy, development studies, Brazilian politics, and right-wing politics.

The 2008 global economic crisis was unprecedented in living memory and its impact on economic and social life immense. Large-scale social policy interventions played a crucial role in helping to mediate the crisis, and yet the welfare state continues to come under attack. A new age of austerity, based more on politics than economics, is threatening to undermine the very foundations of the welfare state. However, as this important book illustrates, there is still room for optimism - resistance to the logic of austerity exists within organisations and governments, and among peoples, demonstrating how essential social policies remain to human progress. The second of a three-book series covering the post-2008 global economic crisis and the period of austerity, this volume draws together edited chapters from leading scholars engaged in the debate and will be equally suitable for academics and other researchers studying international and comparative social policy, as well as upper level undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Experts from around the world review the complex and rapidly changing politics and policies of austerity in this comprehensive collection of essays. The book details the many different means and expressions of austerity since the financial crisis of 2008, as well as backlashes and emerging political alternatives.

Recent years have seen an enormous increase in protests across the world in which citizens have challenged what they see as a deterioration of democratic institutions and the very civil, political and social rights that form the basis of democratic life. Beginning with Iceland in 2008, and then forcefully in Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, Greece and Portugal, or more recently in Peru, Brazil, Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Ukraine, people have taken to the streets against what they perceive as a rampant and dangerous corruption of democracy, with a distinct focus on inequality and suffering. This timely new book addresses the anti-austerity social movements of which these protests form part, mobilizing in the context of a crisis of neoliberalism. Donatella della Porta shows that, in order to understand their main facets in terms of social basis, strategy, and identity and organizational structures, we should look at the specific characteristics of the socioeconomic, cultural and political context in which they developed. The result is an important and insightful contribution to understanding a key issue of our times, which will be of interest to students and scholars of political and economic sociology, political science and social movement studies, as well as political activists.

The ascendance of austerity policies and the protests they have generated have had a deep impact on the shape of contemporary politics. The stunning electoral successes of SYRIZA in Greece, Podemos in Spain and the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) in Italy, alongside the quest for a more radical left in countries such as the UK and the US, bear witness to a new wave of parties that draws inspiration and strength from social movements. The rise of movement parties challenges simplistic expectations of a growing separation between institutional and contentious politics and the decline of the left. Their return demands attention as a way of understanding both contemporary socio-political dynamics and the fundamentals of political parties and representation. Bridging social movement and party politics studies, within a broad concern with democratic theories, this volume presents new empirical evidence and conceptual insight into these topical socio-political phenomena, within a cross-national comparative perspective.

We are living in a time of crisis which has cascaded through society. Financial crisis has led to an economic crisis of recession and unemployment; an ensuing fiscal crisis over government deficits and austerity has led to a political crisis which threatens to become a democratic crisis. Borne unevenly, the effects of the crisis are exacerbating class and gender inequalities. Rival interpretations – a focus on ‘austerity’ and reduction in welfare spending versus a focus on ‘financial crisis’ and democratic regulation of finance – are used to justify radically diverse policies for the distribution of resources and strategies for economic growth, and contested gender relations lie at the heart of these debates. The future consequences of the crisis depend upon whether there is a deepening of democratic institutions, including in the European Union. Sylvia Walby offers an alternative framework within which to theorize crisis, drawing on complexity science and situating this within the wider field of study of risk, disaster and catastrophe. In doing so, she offers a critique and revision of the social science needed to understand the crisis.

There is a consensus that right, and left-wing populism is on the rise on both sides of the Atlantic, from Donald Trump in the United States, to Spain’s leftist Podemos. These may utilize different kinds of populist mobilizations but the fact remains that elite and mass opinion is fuelling a populist backlash. In Populism and Passions, twelve scholars engage with discourse analysis, democratic theory, and post structural political thought to study the political logic of passion for contemporary populism. Together these interdisciplinary essays demonstrate what emotional engagement implies for the spheres of politics and the social, and how it governs and mobilizes individuals. The volume presents: Theoretical and empirical implications for political analysis; Chapters on the current rise of populism, both right and left-wing trends, their different ideological features, and their relationship with the logic of passion; Theoretical implications for the future study of populism and democratic legitimacy. A timely analysis of this political phenomena in contemporary Western democracies, Populism and Passions is ideal for students and scholars in political theory, comparative politics, social theory, critical theory, cultural studies, and global studies.

A comparative analysis of the nation-building projects in Turkey under both Ataturk and Erdogan, concentrating on the concept of the desired, undesired and tolerated citizen. This shows how resulting historical traumas, victimhood, insecurities, anxieties, and fears have had influenced both state and society throughout these different periods.

Are we living in an age of permanent austerity? In this insightful book, Bent Greve provides a comprehensive empirical analysis of welfare states since 2000, exploring the ways by which austerity can be measured and quantified. Through detailed comparative analysis between states, this book dissects the implementation of economic retrenchment, its extent and impact in Europe.

The Handbook presents a most updated and comprehensive exploration of social movement research. It not only maps, but also expands the field of social movement studies, taking stock of recent developments in cognate areas of studies, within and beyond sociology and political science. While structured around traditional social movement concepts, each section combines the mapping of the state of the art with attempts to broaden our knowledge of social movements beyond classic theoretical agendas, and to identify the contribution that social movement studies can give to other fields of knowledge.