… happy!
So I thought I would share my thoughts on how the Irish are faring on this front.
‘Tis the Season to be ….
- Post author By Brendan Walsh
- Post date December 8, 2011
Category: Political economy
Kevin O’Rourke delivered a hugely insightful talk on the crisis and the global situation at a conference in Dublin last week. His presentation is here.
I was asked to write this chapter for a forthcoming RIA volume on Irish foreign policy. A summary:
A country’s foreign policy is largely driven by what it perceives to be in its economic interests. That this does not provide a complete picture is evidenced by the fact that Irish development assistance has never taken the form of tied aid. Nor can the influence of powerful vested interests be discounted. A case can be made that Ireland turned protectionist again once membership of the European Union had been achieved. Agricultural and sheltered-sector interests have sought to stymie the liberalisation efforts of the WTO and the European Commission respectively. A further complicating factor is that a society’s own economic interests can occasionally be miscalculated. Joseph Lee has noted that “while the ‘political’ skills of Irish representatives in negotiating positions are widely acknowledged… there seems to be no comparable criterion for assessing the calibre of conceptualisation of the Irish case.” Irish foreign policy through the years has nevertheless recorded many successes in defending the economic interests of the citizens of the state.
The paper considers the political and economic determinants of Irish trade policy, the evolution of its inward foreign direct investment strategy, and the country’s position on international migration and on the broadening and deepening of European integration. A separate case study focuses on how successive governments have sought to defend and exploit the advantages of Ireland’s low corporation-tax regime in international negotiations.
Karl is quoted here as saying that the Franco-German proposal that we insert borrowing limits into the Irish constitution will not solve our current debt problems. This is obviously correct, as is the point that such an amendment would not have made a blind bit of difference during the bubble years.
There is also the point that a constitutional amendment is a much bigger deal in Ireland than in some other countries, since it can only be changed by means of a new referendum.
Here are two questions:
As per Derek Scally in the Irish Times, is this a taste of things to come, or much ado about nothing?
What are the chances of the Irish government winning such a referendum?
This report from the Guardian is consistent with Thomas Klau’s argument that current eurozone governance arrangements are pushing “democratic debate and voters’ choices to the margins”. It also suggests that in the long run the present way of doing things will prove politically unsustainable, in a union of democratic states. Whether Klau’s preferred solution is likely to come about is another question entirely.