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Hardiman, Niamh
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Hardiman, Niamh
Official Name
Hardiman, Niamh
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Now showing 1 - 10 of 51
- PublicationLegitimating fiscal stabilization : Ireland in comparative perspective(University College Dublin. Geary Institute, 2008)
; ; 534 - PublicationGovernance and State Structures‘Governance’ denotes the various ways in which economic and social coordination is secured to implement rules and to produce collective goods. As this involves actors engaging within institutional contexts, it has a structural as well as an actor-centred dimension. State structures matter for analysis of governance because government itself matters. The analysis of governance in this sense converges wi th core preoccupations of comparative political economy, involving engagement between organized interests in a specific domestic and international institutional context. This chapter takes a more selective approach and focuses specifically on the significance of state structures for explaining cross-national variations in processes of securing coordination and implementing rules within the domestic political context , where the underlying concern is with the provision of collective goods in the form of stable administrative systems and effective government.
417 - PublicationThe politics of fiscal effort in Spain and Ireland : Market credibility versus political legitimacyAusterity measures in response to Eurozone crisis have tended to be conceived, debated, and implemented as if only the technical parameters of budget management mattered. But policies that impose budgetary hardships on citizens, whether in the form of increased taxes or cuts to public spending go right to the heart of voter expectations about what it is both appropriate and acceptable for governments to do. Pro-cyclical measures that worsen an already difficult situation in a recession run counter to deep-seated norms and expectations in European countries, built up over decades of democratic governance, whereby governments are expected to provide offsetting protection for their citizens against the vicissitudes of the market. If austerity measures are held to be unavoidable in response to market turbulence, and especially if this view is underwritten by international authorities, new challenges of political legitimation are likely to arise. These issues are explored through the experiences of Spain and Ireland.
716 - PublicationFiscal politics in time: pathways to fiscal consolidation, 1980-2012The comparative study of debt and fiscal consolidation has acquired a new focus in the wake of the global financial crisis. This leads us to re-evaluate the literature on fiscal consolidation that flourished during the 1980s and 1990s. The conventional approach segments episodes of fiscal change into discrete observations. We argue that this misses the dynamic features of government strategy, especially in the choices made between expenditure-based and revenue-based fiscal consolidation strategies. We propose a focus on pathways rather than episodes of adjustment, to recapture what Pierson terms 'politics in time'. A case-study approach facilitates analysis of complex causality that includes the structures of interest intermediation, the role of ideas in shaping the set of feasible policy choices, and the situation of national economies in the international political economy. We support our argument with qualitative data based on two case studies, Ireland and Greece, and with additional paired comparisons of Ireland with Britain, and Greece with Spain.
355 - PublicationThe politics of fiscal effort in Ireland and Spain: market credibility versus political legitimacyAusterity measures in response to Eurozone crisis have tended to be planned and implemented as if only the technical parameters of budget management mattered. But policies that impose budgetary hardships on citizens go right to the heart of voter expectations about what it is both appropriate and acceptable for governments to do. Pro-cyclical measures that worsen an already difficult situation in a recession run counter to deep-seated norms and expectations in European countries, built up over decades of democratic governance, whereby governments are expected to provide offsetting protection for their citizens against the vicissitudes of the market. Moreover, if austerity measures are viewed as externally imposed by international authorities, new kinds of challenges to political legitimacy are likely to arise. While Greece is commonly seen as a critical test case, this chapter explores these issues through the contrasting experiences of Spain and Ireland.
153 - PublicationGoverning the Irish economy: a triple crisisThe international economic crisis hit Ireland hard from 2007 on. Ireland’s membership of the Euro had a significant effect on the policy configuration in the run-up to the crisis, as this had shaped credit availability, bank incentives, fiscal priorities, and wage bargaining practices in a variety of ways. But domestic political choices shaped the terms on which Ireland experienced the crisis. The prior configuration of domestic policy choices, the structure of decision-making, and the influence of organized interests over government, all play a vital role in explaining the scale and severity of crisis. Indeed, this paper argues that Ireland has had to manage not one economic crisis but three – financial, fiscal, and competitiveness. Initial recourse to the orthodox strategies of spending cuts and cost containment did not contain the spread of the crisis, and in November 2010 Ireland entered an EU-IMF loan agreement. This paper outlines the pathways to this outcome
1894 - PublicationPaying for the Welfare State in the European PeripheryThis exploratory paper outlines an approach to the evolution of the tax state in four countries: Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Greece. It is motivated by our interest in a cluster of countries that are all too often excluded from comparative studies in political economy. Both the volume and the composition of tax revenues in these four countries display somewhat different patterns from those of the wealthier European countries. Their systematic exclusion may distort comparative generalizations in important ways. We focus here on three analytical themes that merit further exploration. Each of them helps us challenge the conventional understanding of the dynamics of tax policy. The first is that of timing. These four countries were late welfare developers, which meant that the demands placed on the tax capacity of the state is at variance with trends elsewhere, with implications for the constraints and opportunities available to their governments. The second concerns the specific domestic political economy mechanisms involved in these countries’ tax choices, which can be opened out using perspectives drawn from fiscal sociology. The third theme concerns the international political economy, and suggests that the economic and financial vulnerability of countries on the 'periphery' may influence many aspects of their policy choices, including the size of their tax state and the composition of their revenues. This preliminary version of our work focuses on the experiences of Spain and Ireland; further work on Portugal and Greece will follow.
186 - PublicationThe politics of economic adjustment in a liberal market economy : the social compensation hypothesis revisited(University College Dublin. Geary Institute, 2008-02-04)
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