Maura Adshead

THE MOVE FROM GOVERNMENT TO GOVERNANCE: Irish development policy's paradigm shift

English This article examines the evolution of Irish development policy, suggesting that it illustrates significant changes in government at both national and sub-national level. It is argued that pressures for change have arisen both beyond and below the national level of administration, as a result of reforms to Structural Funding at the European Union level and the growth of community initiatives at sub-national level.The chief consequence has been a redefinition of development policy which has impacted upon the structure of government, as well as the substance and style of policy delivery. Irish development policy now embraces social as well as economic policy objectives, and its implementation relies on the cooption into the policy arena of new actors and agencies, representing different interests in the development process. As a consequence, the design and direction of development policy now places greater emphasis on increased negotiation, partnership and subsidiarity. The extent of the change is characterised as a move towards governance in Ireland, and by doing so, the work seeks to develop the use of this term in a comparative context.

An Advocacy Coalition Framework Approach to the Rise and Fall of Social Partnership

Abstract The advent of Social Partnership in response to deep economic crisis and the dissolution of Social Partnership in response to deep economic crisis creates something of a conundrum for studies of public policy. Though it is typically assumed that external crises pre‐empt major policy change, the Irish case is counter‐intuitive. If Social Partnership was acclaimed as the successful response to the economic crisis of the 1980s, why was it not used as such in response to the economic crisis of the 2008/9. If Social Partnership was not an effective means to manage macro‐economic policy, why did it last so long? Whilst alternative political narratives may offer answers to these questions, they do not offer any conceptualization of the policy process as a whole and the determinants of policy change. This article uses recent and revised Advocacy Coalition Framework approaches to examine the evolution and dissolution of Social Partnership, applying the framework’s insights into crisis and policy change as a means of explaining the rise and demise of Irish Social Partnership.

EU cohesion policy and multi-level governance outcomes in Ireland: How sustainable is Europeanization?

This paper presents a study of the Irish experience of EU cohesion policy, with a view to exploring what the Irish case can tell us about the conditionality of state’s adaptation to EU policy values and practice. Using Bache’s (2008) framework for the analysis of Europeanization, Multi-Level Governance and Cohesion policy, the paper finds that Europeanization has resulted in a reorientation of domestic policies, practices and preferences in the Irish case, but the consequence has been the creation of Multi-Level Governance Type II not I (Börzel and Risse, 2003). The governance changes that have occurred have been ad hoc and messy, and central government’s response to them has been short-termist and financially expedient. This raises concerns about the sustainability of knowledge transfer impacts from Irish Multi-Level Governance and partnership projects within the formal system of Irish government. More generally, it suggests that if the desired impacts of EU Cohesion policy are to be sustainable in the longer-term, more attention needs to be given to effectively measuring and explaining EU policy influence, so that we might begin to understand how it can be supported and sustained in a variety of state contexts.

Problem-Based Learning and Civic Engagement—Shifting the Focus of Learning in Public Policy Education

This article describes the development of an innovative teaching method to help political science students deepen their comprehension of public policy through engaging with real world scenarios. It describes the development of a constructivist learning environment (CLE) (Jonassen, 1999 ) for students in a postgraduate public policy module, fashioned by integrating a problem-based learning (PBL) approach with civic engagement processes. The article concludes by examining the potential of this approach as a teaching method and reflecting on student and staff feedback as well as on benefits described by partner organizations and the broader public.

Ireland’s National Anti-Poverty Strategy as New Governance

’Governance’ has, allegedly, taken pre-eminence over ‘government’ because of the concept’s capacity to ‘cover the whole range of institutions and relationships involved in the process of governing’ in a manner that ‘links the political system with its environment, and may complete the project of making political science more policy-relevant’ (Peters and Pierre, 2000: 1). Notwithstanding the diversity of governance scholarship, the term has become a useful metaphor for a series of recognised trends in contemporary government behaviour concerning policy architecture, policy process, issues of accountability and the role of the state.

Conceptualising Europeanisation: Policy Networks and Cross-National Comparison

With the odd exception (Wallace, 2000), the term ‘Europeanisation’ has come to be used in reference to the impact of the European Union (EU) across member states (Bulmer and Burch, 1998). Assessing the nature of this impact is, however, extremely problematic. The EU does not present a single over-arching ‘European principle of organization’ that we might examine for evidence of its influence. Analysis of change within European states also runs into the problem of separating out ‘Europeanisation’ from other equally plausible variables. Finally, assuming that these difficulties can be overcome, there remains the methodological problem of how to compare the impact of the EU and/or Europeanisation in quite differently constituted national state forms. The point of this article is to try to elucidate a framework that avoids these problems. Taking the focus of analysis to the meso level, the policy networks approach is utilised to provide comparative characterizations of cross-national policy-making processes, supported by a theory of political integration to explain variation and change in alternative national policies arising as a consequence of Europeanisation. The article concludes by deploying a number of propositions from neofunctionalism in order to provide precise expectations about the effects of political integration on the institutional and political organisation of member states.

Immigrant Women’s Experiences of Acculturative Stress: Ordinary Privileges, Overt Discrimination, and Psychological Well-Being

We examined the relation of two acculturation stressors, exclusion from ordinary privileges and overt discrimination, to two indicators of psychological well-being (i.e., psychiatric symptoms and satisfaction with life) among a diverse sample of immigrant women living in Ireland (N = 174). We grouped our sample into “visible” immigrant women of color and “nonvisible” White immigrant women. As expected, visible immigrant women reported more experiences of overt discrimination and fewer experiences of ordinary privileges than did nonvisible immigrant women. The associations of belonging to a visible immigrant group with both psychiatric symptoms and satisfaction with life were each mediated through ordinary privileges and overt discrimination. The magnitude of the two indirect effects was equal for psychiatric symptoms, but for satisfaction with life, the indirect effect through ordinary privileges was stronger. After accounting for ordinary privileges and overt discrimination, the average score for satisfaction with life was higher for visible immigrant women than for nonvisible immigrant women. These findings suggest that visible immigrant women experience exclusion from ordinary privileges to a greater extent than nonvisible immigrant women and that this type of exclusion is at least as detrimental to psychological health as more overt forms of discrimination. Our findings demonstrate the importance of attending to discrimination of both visible and nonvisible immigrants and highlight the importance of ordinary privileges to immigrants’ well-being in their countries of destination. We discuss implications for future research and social policy.

Who’s left in the wake of Irish austerity?

With the sole exception of Iceland, the downturn in the Irish economy in 2007 and 2008 was the most severe of any experienced by an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development member state. In Ireland, the crisis was widely understood to have five key dimensions: a banking crisis, a public finance crisis, an economic crisis, a social crisis and a reputational crisis. This article examines the political impact of that crisis, focusing in particular on the impact that austerity politics has had upon the evolution of the Irish left. The article traces the political responses to crisis inside and outside the Dáil and examines their potential to support the growth of anti-austerity politics in Ireland.

Having it all? Transferring community-oriented research principles to teaching and learning to develop better university engagement

Abstract There are increasing demands on universities to develop more meaningful linkages with local communities – from government, from citizens and taxpayers, and from students. But the incorporation of community-oriented praxis into the university mission is not straightforward and requires a significant re-orientation away from ‘traditional’ organizational norms regarding teaching and research. Where community practice involves students, there is a burgeoning literature on situated learning, service learning and problem-based learning; but where community practice relates to research, the literature tends to be very much more disciplinary oriented and the sources are commensurately disparate. Discussions about community perspectives, however, are typically located in another set of literatures altogether. In order to address this deficit, this article reviews the literature on community-oriented research with the intention of providing a more holistic view of the common concerns and issues that arise when universities move their work into communities. This article reveals that – despite different disciplinary origins – the varied literature on community-oriented research illustrates the evolution of consistent principles for good practice. Moreover, it argues that community-oriented research principles provide praxis guidelines for university engagement in communities that are often absent in the literature on teaching and learning or civic engagement. The article then presents a case study of the evolution an integrated institutional response, which combines community-oriented research approaches to teaching and learning and civic engagement, being developed at the University of Limerick, Ireland.

Walking the walk? Critical reflections from an Afro-Irish emancipatory research network

In this article the authors, who are both collaborators in this project, reflect on the challenges faced in developing and sustaining an emancipatory research framework approach to our research network in the context of radically shifting ideals and objectives for higher education in all partner institutions. The article is focused around interview data and evaluations from all participants in the project: these include the over-arching research coalition between our institutional, public and community stakeholders; as well as the research partnerships on the ground, where individual projects are being carried out. We note that despite quite different institutional contexts and conditions, we are able to trace a common narrative as well as a set of common concerns regarding our efforts to build capacity, deliver research outputs and develop emancipatory research praxis within our network.