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Professor Jonathan Davies

Job: Professor of Critical Policy Studies

Faculty: Arts, Design and Humanities

School/department: School of Humanities and Performing Arts

Research group(s): Local Governance Research Unit

Address: The Gateway, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, LE1 9BH

T: +44 (0)116 257 7818

E: jsdavies@dmu.ac.uk

W: http://ssrn.com/author=1643345

 

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Personal profile

Jonathan S. Davies is founding Director of the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity and Professor of Critical Policy Studies. He worked at the University of Warwick from 2001-2011, previously completing his DPhil at the University of York.  His first monograph Partnerships and regimes: the politics of urban regeneration in the UK was published by Ashgate in 2001. His second, Challenging Governance Theory: from Networks to Hegemony was published by The Policy Press in September 2011. Jonathan publishes in leading journals including the Journal of Urban Affairs, the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Environment and Planning A, Urban Studies, Political Studies, Policy & Politics and Public Administration.  His research interests span critical issues in governance, urban studies and public policy. In addition to developments in governance theory, Jonathan is also working on a number of projects on crisis and austerity governance. Between 2015 and 2018 he held a major ESRC grant, leading an international consortium of researchers in a comparative study of austerity governance. 

Jonathan welcomes applications from prospective PhD students in these research areas.

Twitter accounts: @profjsdavies, @cura2015.

Research group affiliations

Centre for Urban Research on Austerity - http://cura.our.dmu.ac.uk

Publications and outputs

  • Crisis Management in English Local Government: The Limits of Resilience
    dc.title: Crisis Management in English Local Government: The Limits of Resilience dc.contributor.author: Arrieta, Tania; Davies, Jonathan S. dc.description.abstract: Research on local government in the UK during the era of austerity has shown that the decisions taken by local councils to cope with financial stresses were often narrated through the discourse of ‘resilience’, referencing their capacity to innovate and transform services, while protecting service provision in core areas. This emphasis on ‘resilience’ focused on the deployment of strategies to overcome funding challenges. However, this earlier research did not question the longer-term risks, trade-offs and negative social implications associated with such decisions, and how, even in circumstances where these practices provided some ‘breathing space’, in the longer-term they risked adding even more strain to the system as a whole. This article fills an important research gap by considering four resilience strategies of two local authorities in England: Leicester and Nottingham. These four strategies are: savings, reserves, collaboration and investment. Applying a meso-level perspective and exploring resilience through the lens of crisis management, it asks in what ways and for whom resilience generates positive, zero and negative-sum outcomes. This research enhances our understanding of the resilience concept by reflecting on its limitations and the risks it poses for local government. It also reveals that, while the concept of ‘resilience’ has been much criticised for normalising crises and generally operating as part of a de-politicising vocabulary, research is lacking on how the practices of resilience produce positive, zero or negative-sum outcomes. dc.description: The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.
  • Beyond the consolations of professionalism: resisting alienation at the neoliberal university
    dc.title: Beyond the consolations of professionalism: resisting alienation at the neoliberal university dc.contributor.author: Davies, Jonathan S.; Standring, Adam dc.description.abstract: The British university system is in a deep crisis, born of a two-pronged assault. The crisis is born firstly from decades of neoliberal marketisation and the rise of a remote and authoritarian executive elite presiding over a downwardly mobile and culturally deprivileged academic profession. We call this process neoliberal managerialism. It is born secondly from the ideological and political assault on universities, currently led by the Tories, reflecting the resurgence of anti-intellectualism since the millennium. The paper argues that although these currents embody ostensibly conflicting values, they combine and reinforce each other. We illustrate this argument by discussing lacunae in the decolonisation of British universities, notably the colonial ideologies and practices inscribed in neoliberal university governance and management. The final section reflects on how to resist and overcome the crises engulfing UK higher education. Framed by reflections on the positionalities of the authors, it argues that no consolations can be found in old-style academic professionalism, which historically was no less regressive than neoliberal managerialism and often complicit in its rollout. We conclude that academics could instead embrace the ineluctable dynamics of de-professionalisation and work towards an authentic and solidaristic public intellectuality. dc.description: Free access article
  • Gramscian Considerations on the Contentious Politics of Austere Neoliberalism: Critical Junctures after the Global Economic Crisis
    dc.title: Gramscian Considerations on the Contentious Politics of Austere Neoliberalism: Critical Junctures after the Global Economic Crisis dc.contributor.author: Davies, Jonathan S. dc.description.abstract: In dialogue with Della Porta’s work on protests as critical junctures and drawing on the comparative analysis of four case studies in Europe (Barcelona and Dublin) and North America (Baltimore and Montréal), the paper develops a neo-Gramscian perspective on the impact and legacies of urban resistance to austere neoliberalism after the Global Economic Crisis (GEC) of 2008–9. Framed by the postulated ‘interregnum’ in the hegemony of neoliberalism, it argues that the conjunctural politics of the period are defined by a continuing conflict between passive revolutionary subsumption and generative anti-systemic politics, which plays out in acute form in the international urban arena. The paper accordingly contributes to the journal’s work on the relationship between protests and social structures, situating urban movements in multi-scalar socioeconomic, political and cultural contexts and developing reflections on the conjunctural significance of anti-systemic struggles. dc.description: open access article Collaborative Governance Under Austerity: An Eight Case Comparative Study
  • Urban governance in the age of austerity: Crises of neoliberal hegemony in comparative perspective
    dc.title: Urban governance in the age of austerity: Crises of neoliberal hegemony in comparative perspective dc.contributor.author: Davies, Jonathan S. dc.description.abstract: Drawing from neo-Gramscian theory, the paper explores how urban austerity governance mediates crises of neoliberal hegemony. Focusing on the decade after the Global Economic Crisis of 2008–2009, it compares four European cities disclosing five intersecting characteristics of urban political economy that contributed to sustaining and disrupting austere neoliberalism. Austere neoliberalism was sustained through three characteristics: economic rationalism, state revanchism and weak counter-hegemony, but undermined by both weakening hegemony and the combustibility and generativity of urban struggles. Hence, although state revanchism is a prominent feature of urban politics, and novel counter-hegemonic forms are elusive, struggles for equality and solidarity remain contagious, tenacious and vibrant. Urban governance is a crucial arena for studying the interregnum, signposting multiple ways in which neoliberalism survives, mutates and dies. dc.description: open access article
  • Understanding the crisis of New Municipalism in Spain: The struggle for urban regime power in A Coruña and Santiago de Compostela
    dc.title: Understanding the crisis of New Municipalism in Spain: The struggle for urban regime power in A Coruña and Santiago de Compostela dc.contributor.author: Bua, Adrian; Davies, Jonathan S. dc.description.abstract: New municipalism in Spain arose from a major political wave, now in a period of crisis and electoral retreat. This paper applies a regime-theoretic framework to analyse new municipalist governance in two smaller city cases: A Coruña and Santiago de Compostela. It argues that whilst new municipalist electoral victories inaugurated a crisis for established regimes, the crucial weakness was that they did not consolidate new urban regimes. Municipalists faced severe governability challenges linked to the enduring power of older urban regimes. The paper suggests that this is explained by problems in establishing regime incumbency, the consolidation of the necessary governing capacity by a resource coalition to deliver its agenda and succeed politically. Although established regimes were weakened enough to lose elections, they maintained considerable capacity to constrain the municipalist project and shape urban governance, a significant degree of incumbency. This ultimately enabled them to recover office in 2019. We argue that a critical regime-theoretical perspective assists in understanding the wider crisis of Spanish municipalism and the multi-scalar struggle for hegemony as it plays out in the local state arena. dc.description: The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.
  • New Developments in Urban Governance: Rethinking Collaboration in the Age of Austerity
    dc.title: New Developments in Urban Governance: Rethinking Collaboration in the Age of Austerity dc.contributor.author: Davies, Jonathan S.; blanco, Ismael; Bua, Adrian; Chorianopoulos, Ioannis; Cortina-Oriol, Merce; Feandeiro, Andres; Gaynor, Niamh; Gleeson, Brendan; Griggs, Steven; Hamel, Pierre; Henderson, Hayley; Howarth, David; Keil, Roger; Madeleine, Pill; Salazar, Yunailis; Sullivan, Helen dc.description.abstract: The 2008-2009 Global Economic Crisis (GEC) created an opportunity, eagerly seized by many national governments and international organisations, to impose a prolonged, and widespread period of austerity. Austerity is widely recognised to have done enormous damage to social, cultural, political and economic infrastructures in cities and larger urban areas across much of the globe. As the GEC was also the first such crisis in what is widely considered “the urban age”, (COVID-19 merely the latest and worst), austerity measures were chiefly administered through municipal and regional mechanisms. A great deal has been written since the crisis, about the way austerity was experienced, governed, resisted and urbanised. This volume considers these issues anew, by reflecting on the multi-faceted and shape-shifting concept of “collaboration”. It reflects on the theme of collaborative governance, considered from the perspective of resisting austerity, or otherwise finding ways to circumvent or move beyond it. The insights we draw about collaboration are directed towards locating agency found or created in urban arenas, for resisting or transcending austerity. The book draws on insights into austerity governance from comparative research conducted in Athens, Baltimore, Barcelona, Dublin, Greater Dandenong (Melbourne), Leicester, Montreal and Nantes.
  • Between Realism and Revolt: Governing Cities in the Crisis of Neoliberal Globalism.
    dc.title: Between Realism and Revolt: Governing Cities in the Crisis of Neoliberal Globalism. dc.contributor.author: Davies, Jonathan S. dc.description.abstract: Between Realism and Revolt explores urban governance in the “age of austerity”, focusing on the period between the global financial crisis of 2008-9 and the beginning of the global Coronavirus pandemic at the end of 2019. It considers urban governance after the 2008 crisis, from the perspective of governability. How did cities navigate the crisis and the aftermath of austerity, with what political ordering and disordering dynamics at the forefront? To answer these questions it engages with two influential theoretical currents, Urban Regime Theory and Gramscian state theory, with a view to understanding how governance enabled austerity, deflected or intensified localised expressions of crisis, and generated more-or-less successful political alternatives. It develops a comparative analysis of case studies undertaken in the cities of Athens, Baltimore, Barcelona, Greater Dandenong (Melbourne), Leicester, Montreal and Nantes, and concludes by highlighting five characteristics that cut across the cities, unevenly and in different configurations: economic rationalism, weak hegemony, retreat to dominance, weak counter-hegemony and radically contagious politicisations.
  • Reflecting to Rebuild and Strengthen Professional Development A Collection of ‘Post-Online’ Conversations
    dc.title: Reflecting to Rebuild and Strengthen Professional Development A Collection of ‘Post-Online’ Conversations dc.contributor.author: Cartwright, Edward; Chapman, Gary; Davies, Jonathan S.; Gordon, Genevieve; Harman, Brian; Koenig, Brett; Lancastle, Neil; Lishman, Ros; Malan, Karen; Guarneros-Meza, Valeria; Nizalov, Denys; Orazgani, Ali; Orr, Russell; Omar, Paul; Saunders, Roger; Virmani, Swati; Allen, Thomas dc.description.abstract: This monograph is a multi-authored collection consisting of our faculty’s post-online reflections. The objective was to gather thoughts and discussion around teaching and research during COVID-19. We aim to build and explore around ‘lived experiences’ to provide a reference point to help Continuous Professional Learning and Development (CPLD) activities. The section on ‘digital diaries’ consists of dialogues from staff categorised into varied themes. In the testimonies, staff have reflected around their challenges, targets, strengths, familiarity and how they managed to overcome difficulties and achieve goals. A special section, from the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity (CURA), is devoted to identifying how pandemic has intensified research challenges, highlighting the funding, time and location constraints on academic research. dc.description: The file attached to this record is the author's version
  • From crisis to catastrophe: The death and viral legacies of austere neoliberalism in Europe?
    dc.title: From crisis to catastrophe: The death and viral legacies of austere neoliberalism in Europe? dc.contributor.author: Standring, Adam; Davies, Jonathan S. dc.description.abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic is a global event, but what became apparent almost immediately was that while the virus seems indiscriminate, vulnerability and the capacity to mitigate its impact are not spread equally, either between or within countries. Years of austere neoliberalism in Europe have exacerbated inequality and precarity, acting as a ‘pre-existing condition’ onto which the virus has now landed. The question we ask is: when the pandemic subsides, can the underlying conditions of contemporary neoliberalism remain? And what may replace it? dc.description: Open access article
  • Governance: Mature Paradigm or Chicken Soup for European Public Management?
    dc.title: Governance: Mature Paradigm or Chicken Soup for European Public Management? dc.contributor.author: Davies, Jonathan S.; Chorianopoulos, I. dc.description.abstract: Sørensen and Torfing assert that “governance” has become a highly influential paradigm, able to influence the conduct of governing and thus contribute to improving our economies and societies. In responding, we take issue with this pivotal claim, arguing that governance is rather a parochial and decaying paradigm, which failed to improve the way societies and economies were governed.

View a full listing of Professor Jonathan Davies's publications and outputs.

Key research outputs

Davies J S, Bua A, Cortina-Oriol M and Thompson E. 2020. Why is Austerity Governable? A Gramscian Urban Regime Analysis of Leicester, UK. Journal of Urban Affairs. 42(1): 56-74. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2018.149015

Davies J S. and Chorianopoulos I. 2018. Governance: Mature Paradigm or Chicken Soup for European Public Management?  Critical Policy Studies. 12(3): 360-366.

Bayırbağ  M K, Davies J S, and Münch S. 2017. “Interrogating Urban Crisis: The Governance and Contestation of Austerity in Cities”. Urban Studies. 59(4): 2023-2038.

Davies J S. 2017.  Governing in and Against Austerity: Lessons from Eight International Cities.  http://cura.our.dmu.ac.uk/2017/08/16/dissemination-report-governing-in-and-against-austerity/.

Davies J S, and Blanco I. “Austerity Urbanism: Patterns of Neoliberalisation and Resistance in Six Cities of Spain and the UK”. Environment and Planning A. 49(7): 1517-1536. Open access at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0308518X17701729.

Davies J S,  Jørn Holm-Hansen, Vadim Kononenko & Asbjørn Røiseland. 2016. Network Governance in Russia – an Analytical Framework, East European Politics, 32(2): 131-147.

Davies J S and Spicer A, 2015, “Interrogating Networks: Towards an Agnostic Perspective on Governance Research”. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 33(2): 223-238.

Davies J S and Msengana-Ndlela L G, 2015, ‘Urban Power and Political Agency: Reflections on a Study of Local Economic Development in Johannesburg and Leeds’, Cities: The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning, 44: 131-138.

Davies J S, 2014,‘Coercive Cities: Reflections on the Dark Side of Urban Power in the 21st Century’. Journal of Urban Affairs. 36(S2): 590-599

Davies J S, 2013, ‘Just do it differently? ‘Everyday making, Marxism, and the struggle against neoliberalism’, Policy & Politics 41(4): 497-513. 40th Anniversary special edition.

Davies J S, 2012, ‘Network Governance Theory: A Gramscian Critique’. Environment and Planning A, 44(11), 2687 – 2704.

Davies J S and Pill M, 2012, “Hollowing Out Neighbourhood Governance? Rescaling Revitalization in Baltimore and Bristol” Urban Studies, 49(10), 2199-2217.

Davies J S, 2011, Challenging Governance Theory: From Networks to Hegemony.  Bristol, Policy Press.  Research monograph published 28th September 2011.  

Davies J S   'The Governance of Urban Regeneration: A Critique of the 'Governing without Government' Thesis', Public Administration, 80 (1), 2002, 301-322. 

Davies J S  'Urban Regime Theory: a Normative-Empirical Critique', Journal of Urban Affairs, 24, 2002, 1-17. 

Davies J S (2001) Partnerships and Regimes: The Politics of Urban Regeneration in the UK (Aldershot, Ashgate). ISBN 0 7546 1681 9.

Evans M G and Davies J S (1999) Understanding Policy Transfer: A Multi-Level, Multi-Disciplinary Perspective.  Public Administration 77(2) 361-385.

Research interests/expertise

Critical approaches to governance, public policy and urban studies. Governing and contesting austerity.  Applications from prospective PhD students and visiting fellows welcome in these areas.

Areas of teaching

Governance and public policy

Qualifications

DPhil (York)

Honours and awards

DMU Oscar for Oustanding Contribution to Research Excellence, 2017.

Best paper award for paper presented at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Urban Affairs Association, April 2002: Davies J S 'Partnerships versus Regimes: Why Regime Theory Cannot Explain Urban Coalitions in the UK', Journal of Urban Affairs, 25, 2003, 253-269. 

Warwick Business School Excellence in Publishing Award, 2004:  Davies J S (2004) Conjuncture or Disjuncture? An Institutionalist Analysis of Local Regeneration Partnerships in the UK. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 28(3) 570-585.

Membership of external committees

Elected member of the Governing Board of the Urban Affairs Association (UAA) (2014-17 and 2017-2020)

Chair of the UAA Publications Committee (2018-2020)

Member of the UAA Publications Committee (2015-present)

Member of the UAA Journal of Urban Affairs Strategic Development Committee

Member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Urban Affairs

Member of the ESRC Peer Review College

International Corresponding Editor - Urban Studies Journal (2017-2019)

Membership of professional associations and societies

Political Studies Association (UK)

Urban Affairs Association (USA)

Professional licences and certificates

 

Projects

We were funded by the ESRC to study collaborative governance under austerity in eight cities - Athens, Baltimore, Barcelona, Dublin, Leicester, Greater Dandenong (Melbourne), Montreal and Nantes.  In July 2017, we published a report for respondents and stakeholders, for discussion at local commissions to be hosted in each participating city. This can be downloaded in English, French, Greek and Spanish from the CURA blog.

Recent research outputs

Standring A, and Davies. J S. 2020. From crisis to catastrophe: The death and viral legacies of austere neoliberalism in Europe? Dialogues in Human Geography. Published online before print, on 10th June 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820620934270.

Davies J S, Bua A, Cortina-Oriol M and Thompson E.2020. Why is Austerity Governable? A Gramscian Urban Regime Analysis of Leicester, UK. Journal of Urban Affairs. 42(1): 56-74. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2018.1490152

Davies J S. and Chorianopoulos I. 2018. Governance: Mature Paradigm or Chicken Soup for European Public Management?  Critical Policy Studies. 12(3): 360-366.

Davies J S, 2018. Managing Austerity: Insights into Spatial Governance from an English City. Lo Squaderno, 47. 23-26.

Davies J S. 2018. “Urban Regime Theory” in Turner, B S et al (eds), The Encyclopaedia of Social Theory.  Oxford: Wiley.

Bua, A. Davies, J. S., Blanco I, Chorianopoulos I, Cortina-Oriol M, Feandeiro A, Gaynor, N, Griggs S, Howarth D and Salazar, Y. 2018. The Urban Governance of Austerity in Europe. In Kerley R, Liddle J and Dunning P, (eds), The Routledge Handbook of International Local Government. Routledge.  280-296. ISBN: 978-1-138-23472-7

Current research students

Jonny Ball (2019-2022)

Externally funded research grants information

Principal Investigator: ESRC funded consortium project (ES/L012898/1), Collaborative Governance under Austerity: An eight-case Comparative Study. £435,131 - April 2015-July 2018.

External advisor: Norwegian Research Council funded project led by the Norwegian Institute of Urban and Regional Research, studying network governance in Russia (2013-2016).

Winner: Urban Studies Foundation and Urban Studies seminar series competition 2013 - Lead Applicant: £19,304 to host conference “Interrogating Urban Crisis” 9-11 September 2013 at De Montfort University. 

Investigator: Spanish Research Council funded consortium led by the Autonomous University of Barcelona, studying austerity governance in Spain and the UK (2012-15).

Principal Investigator: £45,000 from the ESRC for ‘Interpreting the local politics of social exclusion (2004-5).

Co-applicant for £500,000 as part of a multi-institution research consortium led by Mike Geddes (Warwick) to deliver ODPM national evaluation of Local Strategic Partnerships (2002-5).

Professional esteem indicators

Elected member of the Urban Affairs Association Governing Board: March 2014-March 2017. Re-elected for second term April 2017-March 2020. See http://urbanaffairsassociation.org.

Advisor to the UK Labour Party's Community Wealth Building Unit. 2018 -