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Altres ajuts: ESRC/ES/L012898/1 ; This paper explores neoliberalisation and its counter-currents through a six-case study of austerity urbanism in Spain and the UK. Applying Urban Regime Theory it highlights the role of urban politics in driving, variegating and containing neoliberalism since the 2008 crash. Variegated austerity regimes contribute to strengthening neoliberalism, but with limits. Welfarism survives austerity in felicitous circumstances. And, where contentious politics thrive, as in Spain, it holds out the potential for a broader challenge to neoliberalism. In contrast, austerity regimes in the UK cities are strongly embedded. The legacies of past struggles, and differing local and regional traditions form an important part of the explanation for patterns of neoliberalisation, hybridization and contestation.

Networks have rapidly become the dominant trope in governance theory and practice. While scholarship highlights important benefits, there has been insufficient systematic interrogation of the potential pathologies in network governance. This paper addresses the lacuna. We begin by discussing different kinds of network analysis and distinguishing the specific claims of network governance theory. We then pull together the scattered critically oriented literatures on the topic, identifying major problems with network modes of governance: hypocrisy, distrust, marketization, subjugation, antiproceduralism, fragmentation, and 'netsploitation'. We finally argue for a more agnostic approach to governance research, capable of taking account of these pathologies and thereby putting networks in their place. This means avoiding the fetishization of particular modes of governance and giving more careful attention to the settings in which they each can be useful.

The neighbourhood has been a prominent terrain for revitalisation in recent times, and also for studies by scholars debating the significance of networked governance as the means of public service co-ordination, democratic voice or social control. This study of the governance of neighbourhoods in Baltimore and Bristol suggests that there may be a need to rethink these perspectives, as Bristol begins to converge with Baltimore on the terrain of exclusionary city governance, neighbourhood disinvestment and self-help. If the study is representative, it may point to a retreat from neighbourhood governance and the possibility that, in the era of austerity, economically 'unviable' neighbourhoods face abandonment.