Pushing austerity: state failure, municipal bankruptcy and the crises of fiscal federalism in the USA

By way of a critical exploration of austerity politics in the USA, the paper examines the means by which the Wall Street crisis of 2008 has been translated into a state crisis, especially for the state at the subnational and urban scales. It examines the strategies, rationales and tactics adopted by advocates of austerity measures, which amount to a sustained effort to socialize, rescale and ‘dump’ the costs of the economic crisis. These manoeuvres are transforming the operating environment for state and local government in the USA, and they are remaking the terrains of urban politics at the same time.