Europeanisation And New Patterns Of Governance In Ireland

To what extent did Europeanisation contribute to Ireland’s transformation from "poor relation" to "peer idol"? This book examines how Europeanization affected Irish policy-making and implementation and how Ireland maximized the policy opportunities arising from membership of the EU while preserving embedded patterns of political behavior. It focuses on the complex interplay of European, domestic and global factors as the explanation for the changing character of the "Celtic Tiger." The authors demonstrate that, although Europeanization spurred significant institutional and policy change, domestic forces filtered those consequences while global factors induced further adaptation. By identifying and assessing the adaptational pressures in a range of policy areas the book establishes that, in tandem with the European dimension, domestic features and global developments were key determinants of change and harbingers of new patterns of governance.

The book addresses the impact of the European Union (EU) on subnational mobilization in small unitary states. Located at the intersection of contributions from the literatures on multilevel governance and Europeanization, this book offers a new theoretical framework to account for state rescaling processes in small unitary states. By means of a comparative analysis of eight small unitary states in Europe, this book shows that the impact of the EU on subnational mobilization is filtered through domestic mediating factors which can lead to three possible outcomes: decentralization, recentralization or no change. The book offers a balanced combination of analytical clarity and the richness of empirical accounts in a wide diversity of case studies. It sheds a new light on the ‘hybrid nature’ of the European polity and demonstrates that member state governments have remained the most important pieces of the European puzzle. Overall, it arrives at two conclusions: first, that we are witnessing a ‘transformation of the state’ rather than its demise; second, the notion of a ‘Europe of the Regions’ in small unitary states was no more than a ‘damp squib’. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Regional & Federal Studies.

A comparative assessment of the factors influencing administrative adjustment to European policy.

Why has global tax governance been politicized and how can we explain the varying intensity and content of public debates? This book offers an integrated theory of the politicization of international institutions and a detailed account of how the institutional design and policy output of tax governance by the EU and OECD have developed over time. Offering the first in-depth empirical analysis to compare politicization across international institutions, it blends institutionalist explanations that focus on the growing authority of international institutions, and sociological and political economy approaches that take into account domestic context. Exploring why and how international institutions have become increasingly contested in the 21st century, this book will be of particular interest to the scholars of the transfer of authority from the nation-state to international institutions, and the societal repercussions and political struggles that connect these processes. Researchers in the fields of political science, international relations, sociology, and political communication will also find it useful and insightful.

This book builds upon our knowledge of the far-reaching economic, political and social effects of the Euro crisis on the European Union by providing a unique study of European identities. In particular, it considers the impact on the construction of European identities in political and media discourse in Germany, Ireland and Poland—three countries with profoundly different experiences of the crisis and never before compared in a single study. Offering an original insight into the dynamics of identity change at moments of upheaval, the author argues that political and media actors in the early stages of the crisis drew on long-standing identities in order to make sense of the crisis in the public sphere. European identity discourses are thus resilient to change but become central to legitimising and contesting bailouts and further economic integration. As such, the author challenges the commonly held view that identities change dramatically at times of crisis but argues that this very resilience helps to understand the EU’s current divisions. The study of identity during the Euro crisis sheds important light on the prospects for European solidarity as well as on the future of the single currency as an identity-building project. The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in the fields of EU politics, comparative European politics, and identity politics.

Leading Irish academics and policy practitioners present a current and comprehensive study of policy analysis in Ireland. Contributors examine policy analysis at different levels of government and governance including international, national and local and in the civil service, as well as non-government actors such as NGOs, interest groups and think tanks. They investigate the influential roles of the European Union, the public, science, quantitative evidence, the media and gender expertise in policy analysis. Surveying the history and evolution of public policy analysis in Ireland, this authoritative text addresses the current state of the discipline, identifies post-crisis developments and considers future challenges for policy analysis.

The book explores how implementation strategies engage sub-national, regional and local actors in the promotion of sustainable development. Following the obligations incurred at the Rio Earth Summit and the related UNCED process, European states began to produce sustainable development strategies in the 1990s. Implementation efforts are increasingly using ‘new’ governance arrangements, including: use of public/private partnerships new policy tools policy transfer and benchmarking policy networks and involvement of stakeholder groups and institutional capacity enhancement. The editors, whom are leading experts on the subject, explore the nature, extent and characteristics of the new governance arrangements that have been put in place to implement sustainable development strategies and initiatives at the sub-national levels. They also examine the approaches that sub-national governments adopted towards the mobilization of ‘stakeholders’ in these initiatives and what type of non-governmental actors have become involved. In Pursuit of Sustainable Development will be of interest to students and researchers of politics, development, geography, planning and social policy.