Now showing 1 - 10 of 12
  • Publication
    From Tiger to PIIGS: Ireland and the use of heuristics in comparative political economy
    (Wiley, 2014-10-28) ;
    This article analyses the consequences of the narrative construction of the group of countries that has been grouped as 'PIIGS' (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) for their sovereign debt risk rating. Acronyms for groups of countries can provide a useful shorthand to capture emergent similarities in economic profile and prospects. But they can also lead to misleading narratives, since the grounds for use of these terms as heuristic devices are usually not well elaborated. This article examines the process whereby the 'PIIGS' group came into being, traces how Ireland became a member of this grouping, and assesses the merits of classifying these countries together. The contention is that the repetition of the acronym in public debate did indeed shape the behaviour of market actors toward these countries. It is argued that this involved a co-constituting process: similarities in market treatment drives PIIGS usage, which in turn promotes further similarities in market treatment. Evidence is found of Granger causality, such that increased media usage of the term 'PIIGS' is followed by increased changes in Irish bond yields. This demonstrates the constitutive role of perceptions and discourse in interpreting the significance of economic fundamentals. The use of acronyms as heuristics has potentially far-reaching consequences in the financial markets.
    Scopus© Citations 20  544
  • Publication
    Power, ideas, and national preferences: Ireland and the FTT
    (Taylor & Francis, 2018-11-02) ;
    European countries have been required to formulate a national preference in relation to the EU Financial Transaction Tax. The two leading approaches to explaining how the financial sector makes its views felt in the political process – the structural power of the financial services sector based on potential disinvestment, and its instrumental power arising from direct political lobbying – fall short of providing a comprehensive account. The missing link is how and why policy-makers might be willing to adopt the priorities of key sectors of the financial services industry. We outline how three levels of ideational power might be at work in shaping outcomes, using Ireland as a case study. We argue that background systems of shared knowledge that are institutionalised in policy networks generated broad ideational convergence between the financial sector and policymakers, creating a policy paradigm over the priorities of industrial policy in general. Against that backdrop, debate over specific policy choices (policy instruments and policy settings) can leave room for a wider range of disagreement and indeed political and ideational contestation. Irish policymakers proved responsive to industry interests in the case of the FTT, but not for the reasons normally given.
    Scopus© Citations 9  504
  • Publication
    Tangling with the Troika: ‘domestic ownership’ as political and administrative engagement in Greece, Ireland, and Portugal
    This paper analyses variation in the degrees of difficulty involved in negotiating and implementing loan programmes with the international lenders in Greece, Ireland, and Portugal. All three countries displayed high degrees of ultimate compliance with fiscal consolidation and structural adjustment conditionality, but the pace of implementation varied significantly. This paper argues that ‘domestic ownership’ of the loan programmes is a key determinant of outcomes, understood in terms of two dimensions: negotiating capacity and implementation capacity. Empirical evidence confirms that these concepts provide a strong explanatory framework for understanding variation in relations between national governments and the international lenders.
    Scopus© Citations 15  388
  • Publication
    Ordering Things: The Irish State Administration Database
    (Taylor and Francis, 2012) ;
    New theoretical approaches to the state have posed challenges for the comparative analysis of the organizational features of states. The analysis of state bodies and state agencies has largely been confined to the sub-discipline of public administration, and has been resistant to the systematic classification that has made progress possible in other areas of comparative politics. This article argues that there is much to be gained by reconceptualizing state bodies in a comparative context. This paper profiles the classification system underlying the construction of the Irish State Administration Database (ISAD). This paper sets out a new approach to conceptualizing the organizational and functional features of states. ISAD not only provides a valuable research resource for work on the Irish state, but also can provide a framework for building a comparative research agenda.
      553Scopus© Citations 11
  • Publication
    Exploiting conditionality: EU and international actors and post-NPM reform in Ireland
    (SAGE Publications, 2019-04-10) ;
    Between 2008 and 2015, Ireland undertook unprecedented and systemic public sector reforms in a polity not traditionally considered a prominent reformer. While some of these reforms comprised part of the loan programme agreement with EU and international actors, many others did not. This article argues that the crisis in Ireland provided a window of opportunity to introduce reforms that political and administrative elites had previously found difficult to implement. The authority of the Troika was invoked to provide legitimacy for controversial initiatives, yet some of the reforms went further than the loan programme strictly required. A number of these concerning organisational rationalisation, the public service 'bargain' and transversal policy coordination are considered here. Agreements were negotiated with public sector unions that facilitated sharp cuts in pay and conditions, reducing the potential for opposition to change. The reform effort was further legitimated by the reformers' post-New Public Management, whole-of-government discourse, which situated considerations of effectiveness and efficiency in a broader framework of public service quality and delivery.
      611Scopus© Citations 13
  • Publication
    Fiscal politics in time: Pathways to fiscal consolidation in Ireland, Greece, Britain, and Spain, 1980-2012
    (Cambridge University Press, 2015-05) ; ;
    The comparative study of debt and fiscal consolidation has acquired a new focus in the wake of the global financial crisis. This paper re-evaluates the literature on fiscal consolidation that flourished during the 1980s and 1990s. The conventional approach to explanation is based on segmenting 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 capture 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. Our conclusions suggest that the conventional literature, by excluding key political variables from consideration, may distort our understanding and result in misleading policy prescription.
      694Scopus© Citations 13
  • Publication
    Reforming the Westminster Model of Agency Governance: Britain and Ireland after the Crisis
    Conventional understandings of what the Westminster model implies anticipate reliance on a top-down, hierarchical approach to budgetary accountability, reinforced by a post-New Public Management emphasis on re-centralizing administrative capacity. This paper, based on a comparative analysis of the experiences of Britain and Ireland, argues that the Westminster model of bureaucratic control and oversight itself has been evolving, hastened in large part due to the global financial crisis. Governments have gained stronger controls over the structures and practices of agencies, but agencies are also key players in securing better governance outcomes. The implication is that the crisis has not seen a return to the archetypal command-and-control model, nor a wholly new implementation of negotiated European-type practices, but rather a new accountability balance between elements of the Westminster system itself that have not previously been well understood. 
    Scopus© Citations 18  335
  • Publication
    State Retrenchment and Administrative Reform in Ireland: Probing Comparative Policy Paradigms
    (Taylor and Francis, 2016) ;
    Policy choices in response to crisis may carry consequences both for distributive outcomes and for the future policy capacity of the state itself. This paper uses conceptual heuristics to interpret policy practice. It examines the underlying policy paradigms shaping Irish government decisions in the aftermath of the European financial and economic crisis. Drawing on comparative political economy literature, it distinguishes between two such paradigms – market-conforming and social equity – and applies them to three reform themes: reconfiguration of public budgets, the public service pay bargain, and the organizational profile of state competences. The findings entail lessons for understanding the malleability of policy choice, and how state policy choices in response to crisis are framed and implemented.
    Scopus© Citations 17  671
  • Publication
    The European Context of Ireland’s Economic Crisis
    (Economic & Social Research Institute, 2010) ;
    The current economic crisis has hit all European countries hard, but some are much more severely affected others. The problems manifest in European peripheral countries, especially Ireland, Spain, and Greece, have roots in domestic policy mistakes. However, the European context of these policy profiles also needs to be taken into account. The creation of the Euro initially yielded large credibility gains for the weaker economies, extending low interest rates across the Eurozone. But it also introduced a set of perverse incentives toward fiscal expansion which were supposed to be managed at domestic level. Weak European coordinating capacity meant there were few effective external disciplines on national decision-making. The sanctions built into the Stability and Growth Pact proved more controversial and therefore less constraining than originally envisaged. The problems accumulating in the weaker economies made them particularly exposed to crisis when the downturn came. The crisis is not merely one of peripheral economies' policy errors, but extends to the design of European decision-making and the management of monetary union. These issues are explored with reference to the Irish case: the crisis of the Irish and other peripheral economies points to a crisis at the heart of European politics.
      829
  • Publication
    Pathways from the European Periphery: Lessons from the Political Economy of Development
    The European economic crisis need not be considered as a problem that is sui generis. Drawing on literature from the political economy of development that centers on finance and monetary policy, we show that the economic vulnerabilities and policy predicaments facing the European periphery share many similarities with problems encountered by middle-income developing countries. Three main concerns guide our discussion: the politics of credible commitment, the significance of state capacity for stabilizing credibility, and the challenges of maintaining democratic legitimacy during times of financial volatility. Our analysis of the dynamics of hard currency pegs and monetary unions draws on lessons from the classic Gold Standard and on more recent experiences of financial crises in emerging markets. We consider how these may apply to the Eurozone periphery, before drawing out some implications for the problems of core-periphery relationships in European Monetary Union.
    Scopus© Citations 6  439