Legitimacy gaps, taxpayer conflict, and the politics of austerity in the UK

Abstract

Research Highlights and Abstract Examines how fiscal deficit reduction has been legitimated in the United Kingdom Uses focus groups with taxpayers in order to explore how members of the public make sense of the fairness of austerity measures Highlights how participants consistently identified themselves as hardworking taxpayers who face a high tax burden due to redistribution to undeserving poor and rich others Argues that this leads to a ‘legitimacy gap’ in state redistribution that austerity measures can be seen to close Following the 2008 financial crisis, fiscal deficit reduction has become the name of the game for many Western states. This article uses focus group data to explore the legitimation of austerity in the United Kingdom. It is argued that fiscal consolidation speaks to real concerns citizens have over unfair redistribution to supposed ‘undeserving’ groups. The undeserving rich and poor are stigmatised during times of austerity since they are assumed to take more than they give from the public purse—leaving taxpayers, the assumption goes, to pick up the bill. By speaking to this legitimacy gap between prudent normative expectations and the lived experiences of state profligacy, fiscal consolidation can appear to speak to the interests of ‘the taxpayer’—a group conceptualised as a sense of group position that arises from collective sense-making rather than a pre-given constituency.