Social Partnership and Democratic Legitimacy in Ireland

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Social Partnership and DemocraticLegitimacy in IrelandPaul Teague a & Jimmy Donaghey aa School of Management, The Queen's University Belfast , Belfast,Northern Ireland, BT7 1NN, UKPublished online: 28 Mar 2009.

To cite this article: Paul Teague & Jimmy Donaghey (2009) Social Partnership and DemocraticLegitimacy in Ireland, New Political Economy, 14:1, 49-69, DOI: 10.1080/13563460802671246

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Social Partnership and DemocraticLegitimacy in Ireland

PAUL TEAGUE & JIMMY DONAGHEY

Social partnership has been operating in Ireland since 1987 and has attracted muchinterest for two reasons. First, it has attracted attention due to its association withthe significant turnaround in the fortune of the Irish economy since 1987. Second,social partnership surviving in an economy without the so-called ‘preconditions ofcorporatism’ has attracted much attention. In particular, considerable discussionhas taken place on the nature of the social partnership regime. Much of thisdebate has related to the economic consequences of social partnership and awide range of views can be found on this matter, ranging from the positive tothe strongly negative. The merits of these respective views have been thoroughlyexplored to the point of exhaustion.1 However, a debate that needs further exam-ination is the political consequences of social partnership, particularly in relationto whether or not it has been positive or negative for representative democracy.

Thus far, the democratic consequences of social partnership have been inter-preted in two broad ways. One view is that social partnership has been a maligninfluence on Irish democracy as it undermines the role of representative democ-racy and, in particular, elected politicians. The other view is that social partnershiphas enriched Irish democracy by deepening deliberative democracy in the country.The purpose of this article is to examine this debate by investigating the demo-cratic legitimation of social partnership. It dissents from the two prevailing per-spectives on the topic and instead adopts a more pragmatic view of thedemocratic legitimacy of social partnership. On the one hand, it is argued thatsocial partnership and representative democracy have positively combined toproduce political and economic benefits. On the other hand, it is suggested thatit is probably too strong to claim that social partnership has built an elaboratesystem of deliberative democracy in the country.

The article is organised into four main sections. The first section sets out thenature of the Irish system of social partnership and the debate about its democraticconsequences. The next section assesses the argument that social partnershiphas had negative consequences for the Irish system of representative democracy.After this discussion, the impact of social partnership on economic performanceis evaluated as this will have a strong bearing of the ‘output legitimacy’ of the

New Political Economy, Vol. 14, No. 1, March 2009

Paul Teague and Jimmy Donaghey, School of Management, The Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast

BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland, UK.

ISSN 1356-3467 print; ISSN 1469-9923 online/09/010049-21 # 2009 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13563460802671246

New Political Economy, Vol. 14, No. 1, March 2009

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arrangement. The following section examines the claim that social partnershiphas ushered in a new system of deliberative democracy in the country. Theconclusions bring together the arguments of the paper.

The democratic debate about the model of Irish social partnership

Corporatism and its offspring social pacts are well-established features of manyEuropean democratic systems.2 However, the Irish model of social partnershiphas distinctive institutional features and stands apart from traditional models ofcorporatist industrial relations.3 Whereas traditional corporatist arrangementsusually consist of representatives from producer groups, in particular tradeunions and employers associations, and government, the Irish system of socialpartnership also incorporates wider civil associations that articulate the interestsof the voluntary and community sectors, as well as the agriculture sector. Inpractice, this broad membership base has resulted in distinctive negotiating pro-cedures being used to conclude national social agreements. Whereas corporatistdeal making normally involved tripartite negotiations between union, employersand government, the Irish model of social partnership involved a ‘four room’negotiating procedure.

The main negotiating room, which consists of the main employer (IBEC – IrishBusiness and Employers Confederation) and trade union organisations (ICTU –Irish Congress of Trade Unions), is where the pay component of a national agree-ment is negotiated. The business room is made up of business organisations suchas the Small Firms Association and the Chambers of Commerce of Ireland whichare not involved in the pay negotiations. The agricultural room consists of repre-sentatives of the agricultural community. The community room is made up of avariety of groups that represent the voluntary and community sectors. The nego-tiating process to reach a national social agreement starts with an open sessionwhere the participants set out the matters they wish to see addressed. Then, amultitude of bilateral sessions are held involving the different rooms on differentsubjects. The Department of An Taoiseach (Prime Minister) holds togetherthis complex and fast-moving chain of negotiations. It is also responsiblefor turning the variety of individual bilateral deals that are made into a coherentdocument as the basis of the envisaged national social agreement. The social part-nership agreements that have emerged from this process not only establishnational pay awards for the majority of the workforce, but also the broad policyframeworks for a range of economic and social matters.4

Sharply contrasting views exist about the democratic consequences of thismodel of social partnership. One argument is that social partnership is a negativeinfluence on democracy as it weakens the capacity of elected politicians to makeeconomic and social policy.5 In this view, social partnership is viewed as invadingthe territory of representative democracy and holds that only those who areaccountable to the electorate should be responsible for governing the country.This is a rehearsal of classic, pluralist democratic theory which argues represen-tative government must be supreme and that interest groups should not be givenspecial status within the polity.6 National social partnership agreements whichgive trade unions and employer organisations privileged access to government

Paul Teague & Jimmy Donaghey

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and influence over the direction of public policy, in return for wage moderationand industrial relations stability, are regarded as a distortion of proper democraticpractice.

An alternative argument is that the regime of social partnership has actuallystrengthened democratic practice by deepening deliberative democracy in thecountry.7 In this view, purely representative forms of democracy weaken activecitizen engagement in public decision making.8 Alternatively, deliberative democ-racy is seen as opening up political institutions so that citizens can directly influencethe rules bywhich they have to live.9 In addition to promotingwider participation, itis argued deliberative democracy encourages less confrontational and adversarialforms of political decision making: political dialogue which involves peopledefending their position through the use of evidence and reasoned argument is con-sidered a much superior form of democratic practice.10 Exposing the strengths andweaknesses of different positions is seen as creating the possibility of decisionsbeing reached on the basis of consensus, resulting in more meaningful collabor-ations being forged between the participants.11 Thus, from the standpoint of delib-erative democracy, the Irish model of social partnership is far from an insidiousprocess that devalues democracy. On the contrary, it is viewed as a process thatenhances the Irish political system.

The core argument of this article is that these two alternative views are flawedbecause they misrepresent the contribution social partnership has made to thelegitimacy of Irish democracy. Democratic legitimation relates to the degree ofpopular support and engagement political institutions enjoy with citizens. FritzScharpf suggests that democratic legitimation has two dimensions.12 The firstdimension is what he terms input oriented legitimacy, which refers to mechanismsand procedures that are used to link political decisions with citizens’ preferences.The other is output oriented legitimacy which refers to the capacity of democraticprocesses to realise tangible outputs such as economic and employment growth,as well as high social standards. According to Scharpf, polities that have highlevels of input and output legitimacy normally enjoy high levels of democraticlegitimation.13

The argument of the article is thus twofold. First, the claim that social partner-ship is harmful to Irish democracy is regarded as underestimating the contributionthis process has made to the output side of democratic legitimation in Ireland:social partnership has helped ensure that Irish democracy is not an empty vesselby contributing positively to economic and employment growth. Alternatively,the view that social partnership has established a strong deliberative dimensionto Irish democracy is regarded as over-estimating the impact of this systemon the input side of democratic legitimation: social partnership has led to newpublic policy experiments, but these have not led to the principles of deliberativedemocracy being embedded in the country to any significant extent. Both thesearguments are developed more fully below.

Social partnership and representative democracy

Representative democracy is viewed as an indispensable aspect of modern politi-cal systems, as it gives rise to accountable government and acts as a bulwark

Social Partnership and Democratic Legitimacy

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against unjust, if not tyrannical, political decision making.14 Citizens are endowedwith a range of political rights which they usually exercise freely. Governmentsthat pursue policies that are not in line with the preferences of citizens can bevoted out of office. These features of representative democracy are withoutquestion hugely impressive. Those who argue that social partnership is damagingIrish democracy are concerned that the positive features of representative politicalinstitutions are being eroded by social partnership. While this concern is wellintentioned, it is a standpoint that is not fully robust. The first point to make isthat although representative democracy has great strengths, it is also widely recog-nised as having shortcomings.15 For a start, competitive representation, based onelections, tends to give citizens only walk-on parts in political decision making,especially with the rise of cabinet government almost everywhere.16 In theory,political campaigns before elections are seen as a time when people can deliberateand develop preferences, but this process has been distorted by the advent ofbig-budget negative campaigning and political spin.17 In addition, even amongardent defenders of representative democracy, it is recognised that politicalapathy, low voter turn-out and widespread distrust of politicians means thatcompetitive representation is far from vibrant.18

A second point to make against those who argue that social partnership is havinga negative impact on Irish democracy is that they are ignoring the experience ofcontinental Europe. Very few of these countries have pristine forms of representa-tive democracy. In many cases, extensive corporatist policy networks coexistalongside representative democratic institutions.19 A wide literature suggeststhat corporatist networks complement and enhance representative democracy.20

For example, Colin Crouch argues that corporatism can enhance representativedemocracy in three ways.21 First, it can aid representative institutions to reachtheir stated goals. Second, it can be more ‘goal-focussed’ than parliamentarysystems. Third, where the legitimacy of representative institutions is weak, itcan provide added dimensions to democratic legitimacy. Thus, there is a strongbody of opinion that suggests arrangements such as social partnership and repre-sentative democratic institutions need not be in collision and, in many instances,can be mutually reinforcing.22 Critics of the impact of social partnership on theIrish parliamentary system appear to pay this point insufficient attention.

Moreover, a credible argument can be made that Irish social partnership andrepresentative institutions in Ireland have been complementary. Until the early1980s, the Irish political system stood apart from other European democraciesin two important respects. One was that political parties were not divided alongleft/right ideological lines:23 the two main parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, areboth regarded as being centre-right parties and the main centre-left party, theLabour Party, usually occupied a non-challenging third place in elections.24

The other was that Fianna Fail, which functioned as much as a populist party asa Christian democratic party, dominated Irish politics, governing for all but 7years between 1933 and 1981.25

With the main political cleavage in the country not being class-based, thepolitical and social conditions did not emerge for a north European-style corpora-tist arrangement.26 Moreover, as the country has a proportional representationvoting system, Fianna Fail governments were prone to using clientelism and


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populist policies to maintain their dominant political position.27 As the party’selectoral bloc began to shrink during the 1970s, mainly due to fading memoriesof the bloody civil war in the early years after the formation of the statefrom which the party emerged, so the use of populist policy making becamemore pronounced. As a result, important macroeconomic policy decisions weremade for short-term electoral advantage rather than for the long-term benefitof the country: taxes were cut and public expenditure was increased in an effortto retain political office. Paradoxically, these cavalier macroeconomic policies,which led to public debt and inflation rather than economic growth and employ-ment, weakened the electoral base of Fianna Fail.

By the turn of the 1980s, the Irish party political scene had changed quiteradically. Electoral constituencies had become more fluid, resulting in no oneparty being able to gain an overall majority in elections. In 1981 and 1982,three general elections were held. Eventually, some modicum of stability wasachieved in 1982 when a non-Fianna Fail coalition government was formedbetween Fine Gael and Labour, ruling until 1987. However, the attempts by thisGovernment at addressing the severe economic crisis failed due to a combinationof inappropriate polices and social unrest: the coalition government had simplyreplaced populist economic governance with incompetent economic govern-ance.28 By the late 1980s, there was a growing demand, not to mention growingneed, for a government that would pursue economic policies that would notonly be in the long term benefit of the economy, but would also enjoy widespreadsupport. One way this policy menu could have been delivered was through stronggovernment, as occurred in Britain under the Thatcher governments, but thisoption was effectively ruled out by the fragmentation of the party political system.

Thus, the only credible option open to the country was for a coalition or weakgovernment to pursue an economic programme which enjoyed the support ofmost, if not all, political and social constituencies. A weak Fianna Fail governmentwas returned to power in 1987 and, realising that economic policies for short-termelectoral advantage were no longer an option, it set about building a social partner-ship arrangement that would lead to the pursuit of consensus-based economicpolicies.29 For their part, unions supported the strategy in large part due to afear of a Thatcher-like attack. Not only was this strategy supported by employersand unions, but it also enjoyed the support of the second largest party, Fine Gael,in the so-called ‘Tallaght Strategy’ where Fine Gael committed to supporting thegovernment where it was in broad agreement with its direction. This proved adecisive moment in Irish politics as a new macroeconomic framework wascreated for the Irish economy. Partisan economic policies, particularly thosedesigned to deliver short-term electoral advantage, were eschewed.30 Instead,macroeconomic policies had to be in line with the long-term vision for theeconomy supported by all social constituencies.

Since 1987, as demonstrated by Table 1, five political parties have been partof governments which have overseen the negotiation of social partnershipdeals (June 2007 saw the Green Party becoming part of a coalition governmentwith Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats31 and, thus, the sixth partyinvolved in implementing the deals). A characteristic of all governments duringthe social partnership era is that, apart from a three-year period (1994–97),


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Fianna Fail has been the major partner in office. To a large extent, the party has beenobliged to act differently from previous Fianna Fail administrations, as they had towork with other parties in government. Social partnership was a way of cementingthe relationship between political parties in coalition governments. Social part-nership, playing an important role in developing economic policies, reduced thepotential for policy-making conflict between parties making up the government.The most difficult time could have been the change from the Fianna Fail/Labourcoalition to the Fine Gael/Labour /Democratic Left32 ‘Rainbow Coalition’ in1994. However, this transfer was eased by social partnership becoming associatedwith the growing economic success of the country, which made it difficult forany political party to propose the dissolution of the arrangement.

Thus, social partnership was an integral part of the new Irish macroeconomicframework as it created a new bargain between political parties, employers andtrade unions and benefited each. It provided much needed legitimacy for govern-ment economic policies, delivered industrial relations stability and wage moder-ation for employers, and trade unions were institutionally recognised as animportant influence in Irish society.33 Thus, every political party involved in gov-ernment had an interest in ensuring that social partnership was a success. At the

TABLE 1. Irish governments since 1987

Social Partnership

Agreement

Year

concluded

Government Government

size

Political

direction

Programme for

National

Recovery

1987 Fianna Fail minority

government

81/166 seats Right of centre

Programme for

Economic and

Social Progress

1990 Fianna Fail/

Progressive

Democrat Coalition

83/166 seats

(independent

TD as Ceann

Comhairle gave

effective majority

government of

83/165)

Right of centre

Programme for

Competitiveness

and Work

1993 Fianna Fail/Labour

Coalition

101/166 Centrist

Partnership 2000 1996 Fine Gael/ Labour/

Democratic Left

Coalition

85/166 Centrist

Sustaining Progress 2000 Fianna Fail/

Progressive

Democrat Coalition

81/166 plus support

from four

independents

Right of centre

Programme for

Prosperity and

Fairness

2003 Fianna Fail/

Progressive

Democrat Coalition

89/166 Right of centre

Towards 2016 2006 Fianna Fail/

Progressive

Democrat Coalition

90/166 Right of centre


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start, social partnership was about pulling Ireland back from the economic abyss,but, as times improved, it became associated with economic success. As a result,social partnership has become a symbol of how to conduct economic policy incontemporary Ireland. Political parties, employers and trade unions recognisethat it would be a huge gamble to walk away from this arrangement. This wasexemplified over the summer of 2008 when all parties, facing an increasinglyhostile global economic environment, participated in highly protracted nego-tiations to reach an eighth national wage agreement: none of the parties wantedto be the first to walk away from the arrangement. Thus, the Programme forNational Recovery, the first national social agreement signed in 1987, can beseen as Ireland’s equivalent to the 1959 Bad Godesburg programme in WestGermany or the 1906 December Compromise in Sweden: a mutually reinforcingdynamic was created between the party political system and the main industrialrelations actors. On the one hand, this dynamic constrained the actions of allthe parties. On the other hand, each party recognised that their interests werebest served within the arrangement. This positive interaction has been a decisivefactor in the longevity of social partnership.

Thus, the actual evolution of social partnership has depended on positive inter-actions it has hadwith the Irish political system. However, the relationship betweensocial partnership and representative democratic institutions does not end here.As Scharpf rightly points out, the health of any democratic system, including itsrepresentative institutions, is dependent on it being able to meet the economicand social expectations of its citizens.34 Below it is argued that social partnershiphas made a positive contribution to Irish economic development with a range ofpositive spillovers for nearly all aspects of the political system.

Social partnership and economic performance

The national social partnership process has contributed in various ways to specta-cular employment and economic growth rates enjoyed by the country since thelate-1990s. One of the core economic functions of centralised pay deals is to mod-erate pay deals so that profits can grow, thus creating the conditions for high invest-ment levels.35 On the whole, social partnership has created this dynamic within theIrish economy. Figure 1 demonstrates that real wages increased continuouslyduring successive social partnership agreements. However, the figure also showsthat the rate of increase is far below the rate of productivity increases. Even allow-ing for such practices as transfer pricing bymultinationals, which inflate output andhence productivity figures, productivity rates have clearly outstripped wage ratesduring the social partnership era. Thus, while real wages were rising, unit labourcosts were falling. Falling unit labour costs do lead to the share of wages in nationalincome falling and the share for profits rising. However, whereas an explosion inmoney wages can cause havoc in a small open economy, wage moderation can beenormously advantageous.

The regime of wage moderation produced a number of gains for the Irisheconomy. First, it made Ireland an even more attractive place for inward invest-ment. Foreign direct investment was undoubtedly attracted to Ireland by thelure of high profits due to the 10 per cent corporation tax level for foreign-owned


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firms.36 This has now risen to 12.5 per cent for all companies, which is still extre-mely low compared to most other European Union (EU) member states. The largenumber of multinationals locating in the country, many of which were high-techcompanies, significantly increased the production of skill-intensive goods.37

Normally, a more skill-intensive industrial structure increases demand for highlyqualified labour that puts upward pressure on wages. Higher wage demands canreduce profits and impair growth and thus place in jeopardy the attractivenessof the country as a site for inward investment. The national social partnershipagreements addressed this potential problem by ensuring that wages increased ata moderate rate. In all likelihood, pay increases for private sector workers,particularly in the foreign-owned sector, would have been higher in absence ofthe wage agreements.38 Thus, the combination of a low rate of corporation taxand wage moderation transformed Ireland into a highly attractive location forinward multinational investment.

The social partnership regime has also helped deepen the country’s economicand political integration inside the EU.39 National wage agreements, for example,have made a positive contribution to Ireland’s entry into and membership ofEuropean monetary union. Price stability and sound public finances have beencentral concerns of macroeconomic policy in most member states since the earlynineties. Countries with independent central banks and seriously conservativecentral bankers were considered to have macroeconomic credibility.40 The designof monetary union in Europe, particularly the creation of an independent Europeancentral bank and making the control of inflation as its almost exclusive remit,was heavily influenced by this thinking. Unquestionably, this thinking wasdominant, but other, not unimportant, thinking also existed which suggested thatmacroeconomic credibility required more than fiscal and monetary orthodoxy.

FIGURE 1. Productivity and earnings changes, 1987–2006.


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In the Delors Report, for instance, which was the blueprint used to set up the singlecurrency, good labour market performance and responsible industrial relationsbehaviour were also considered important factors in making a macroeconomicregime credible. On this view, there was little point making central banks indepen-dent if other potential sources of inflationary pressure and unruly economicbehaviour remained unchecked.

Thus, to enhance their reputation as viable monetary union players, mostmember states not only adopted orthodox ‘credible’ macroeconomic policies,but also sought to build orderly wage determination systems. The emergenceof Social Pacts in many member states was the result.41 Ireland was part of thistrend as national social agreements signed in the run up to entry into monetaryunion explicitly stated that wage increases and bargaining behaviour should notin any way compromise the country’s chances to being part of the single currencyclub. In particular, The Programme for Competitiveness and Work, which ranfrom 1993 to 1996, as well as Partnership 2000, which covered the years1996–2000, explicitly mentioned that the wage agreements were designed to beconsistent with the Maastricht criteria for joining European monetary union.This was not simply an espoused commitment as Figure 2 shows that moneywage growth closely followed the path prescribed by the agreements. Moreover,the real wage depreciation that occurred due to falling unit labour costs placed thecountry in a highly advantageous position as it strengthened its competitivenessposition vis-a-vis other members in the Eurozone.

Overall, the wage determination system introduced by social partnership mustbe considered a success, though not an unmitigated one. The wage moderationregime that has been maintained under successive agreements has kept unit labourcosts under control, which is extremely important to small open economies, asPeter Katzenstein first emphasised in his seminal book, Small States in WorldMarkets.42 Thus, social partnership has made a contribution to the creation ofa macroeconomic regime that helped create the Irish economic success story.Economic performance since the early 1990s has been nothing short of spectacular.In the late 1990s, economic growth rates reached 10 per cent. Although growth rates

FIGURE 2. Manufacturing wage increases compared to agreement.


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slowed in 2008, even in 2007 they remained higher than most other EU memberstates. Since the early 1990s, Ireland has had a runaway job generation machine,with the numbers in employment doubling from one to two million. In 2007, thecountry had an unemployment rate of 4 percent, the second lowest in the EU,which stood in sharp contrast to the 17 percent per cent jobless figure in 1987when the first social partnership deal was signed. Ireland had become renownedfor its emigration record, which involved thousands upon thousands leavingevery decade in search of a better life elsewhere. Now, Ireland is a major importerof labour, with the ‘new Irish’ making up 12 per cent of the labour market.43

However, even though these outcomes are impressive, social partnership hasbeen strongly criticised for incorporating Irish labour into a neoliberal approachto the Irish economy.44 On this view, social partnership has been complicit withor even an active agent in the growth of inequality within Irish society. A closeexamination of the evidence, however, suggests that this view is not fully convin-cing. For sure, the social partnership period has witnessed a significant downwardshift in the wage share of national income. From 1986 to 2001 the adjusted wageshare fell from 70.7 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 54.2 per cent. Incomparative terms, the EU average in 2001 was 67.2 per cent. Thus, profits levelshave increased substantially under social partnership.

A more opaque trend emerges about the distribution of earnings and incomeunder social partnership. In terms of the 90th and 10th percentile ratio in wagedistribution between 1990 and 1994, this ratio averaged 4.06, but declined to3.97 between 1995 and 1999 and by 2005 stood at 3.57. Thus, under social part-nership Ireland has not followed other countries like the UK in experiencing anincrease in wage inequality. However, this decrease in wage inequality must beviewed in the context that Ireland still has amongst the highest rates of earningsinequality in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD): the rate is substantially above other EU member states, even thoughthese countries have experienced recent increases in wage dispersion. Thus, inthe late 1980s, earnings inequality was comparatively high in Ireland and thishas been moderated, but not significantly reduced, during subsequent nationalagreements.

With regard to income inequality, the share of disposable income of people inthe bottom three deciles of the income distribution declined from 13.8 per centof disposable income in 1987 to 13.5 per cent in 2000: the share for those in thefourth to ninth deciles increased from 60.3 to 62.1 per cent, and the top decile’sshare decreased from 25.9 to 24.4 per cent. These figures suggest that middleearners have fared marginally better than other income groups under socialpartnership, perhaps benefiting disproportionately from the tax reductions intro-duced by several national agreements. These also suggest that while those at thebottom of the income ladder have seen their relative poverty increase over theperiod, the scale of the gain is not significant, which suggests that the socialorder in Ireland has not changed a great deal since the early 1990s.45 Clearly itwould be misleading to say that social partnership produced the so-called CelticTiger or that it has brought about a more egalitarian society, but it was a majorpart of the growth regime and has not witnessed any substantial increases ininequality.


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Overall, the above assessment suggests that far from undermining representativedemocracy, social partnership has been used, first and foremost, to deliver themain economic priorities set by elected politicians. When the Fianna Fail Govern-ment engineered the establishment of the Programme for National Recovery, thefirst social partnership agreement in 1987, it was virtually admitting that it was tooweak to govern on its own: it needed the active support of employers and tradeunions to help restore economic stability, improve competitiveness and advancekey economic priorities such as membership of European monetary union. Socialpartnership contributed to the meeting of all these economic objectives. At nopoint was the social partnership process used to challenge the main tenets of Govern-ment economic strategy or to engender vast changes in Irish social structures. Thus,the claim that social partnership has undermined the legitimacy of representativedemocracy appears to be more rhetoric than substance.

Social partnership and deliberative democracy

The big strength of deliberative democracy is that it encourages the design ofpolitical arrangements that give citizens a greater direct role in the formationand delivery of public policies.46 Political and economic empowerment, whichallow citizens to exercise greater control over their working and personal lives,are the by-words of deliberative democracy. Deliberative democracy is consideredto lead to a superior form of decision making for four reasons.47 First of all theemphasis placed on open dialogue may unlock untapped knowledge about thestrengths and weaknesses of existing methods of doing things. Second, thoseinvolved in the policy-making process have the opportunity to acquire new skillsand greater know-how about particular policy methods. Third, the promotion ofcollaborative and joint action may induce a richer mode of decision making, byencouraging participants to justify the positions they adopt with high qualityreasoning. More informed, better thought out decisions not only foster sharedunderstandings between the different participants, but also deepen the widerlegitimacy of policies. Fourth, the encouragement of consensus-building and trust-enhancing modes of interaction may atrophy the boundaries between the differentconstituencies that are involved in a policy network. New relationships of inter-dependence may emerge that strengthen the collaborative ethos of the process.

This is an impressive catalogue of benefits, but like representative democracy,deliberative democracy has its downside. Political arrangements, that are establishedto give communities and citizens greater influence over political decision making,are frequently considered flawed because they are not fully representative.48 More-over, deliberative forms of democracy are considered to run the danger of creatingfragmented government as it tends to hamper the emergence of aggregate ‘publicinterest’ policies.49 Thus, deliberative democracy should not be considered a one-way street, leading only to positive benefits. It can also have negative consequences,something which is not always recognised in the literature on social partnership anddeliberation in Ireland.

In the literature, social partnership is considered to have embedded deliberationwithin the Irish democratic system, thereby enhancing the input dimensions toIrish democratic practice in a number of ways.50 One is by creating more open


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forms of policy making, which involve all relevant stakeholders at every stage ofthe policy process. Another is the formation of shared understandings across arange of social and political constituencies about the challenges facing modernIreland and how these can be addressed. A third has been the creation of astrong, decentralised dimension to public polices, which encourages the inclusionof local civic and community associations in the formation and delivery of policiesdesigned for their respective areas. A fourth is the launch of policy innovations ona range of economic and social issues.51 There is no doubt that a range of insti-tutional changes have occurred during the social partnership era with the intentionof strengthening democratic deliberative practice within the Irish political system.

As already outlined, the institutional framework of Irish social partnership ismuch broader than traditional European corporatist systems, in terms of boththe participating groups and the areas covered. Table 2 shows that in 1987 therewere seven different groups involved in the process (including three agriculturalrelated groups), but this had expanded to twenty by the signing of Partnership2000 in 1996. Specialist business interests and representatives of the communityand voluntary sectors are among those interests brought within the process. Otherinstitutional innovations have taken place to incorporate these groups into thepolicy making process on particular matters and to create a decentralised, localdimension to the delivery of economic and social programmes. Thus, considerableeffort has been made to deepen deliberative democratic practice in Ireland duringthe social partnership era. However the question is whether the institutionalchanges introduced have led to a superior form of policy making and democraticpractice in the country? To establish some insight into this question the function-ing of two aspects of the institutional arrangements of social partnership, workinggroups and local partnerships, are examined in greater detail below.

Working groups52

The first national agreement, the Programme for National Recovery, signed in 1987,was very much a crisis management strategy to stabilise the economy: wages,public expenditure, employment and national debt dominated the agenda. Therewas virtually no wider public policy dimension to the agreements. It was notuntil the Programme for Competitiveness and Work in 1993 that broader policyissues such as organisational change, education, public sector modernisation,housing and road strategy figured prominently in national social agreements.Since then the influence of the social partnership process on public policy hasgrown steadily to the point that it now touches upon nearly every aspect of econ-omic and social governance.

The high point of the interaction between social partnership and the policyprocess came in 2000 when the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness set up 65working groups to develop policies, or at least make recommendations for action,on particular economic and social themes such as childcare, pension reform andfinancial participation.53 Membership of these specialised working groups wouldbe drawn from government officials and representatives of the traditional social part-ners as well as specialised interest groups.54 The anticipation was that the workinggroups would promote a superior form of policy making as the different social


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TABLE 2. Participating groups

Programme for National Recovery

(1987–1990)

Programme for

Economic and Social

Progress (1990–1993)

Programme for

Competitiveness

and Work (1993–

1996)

Partnership 2000 (1997–2000), Programme for

Prosperity and Fairness (2000–2003), Sustaining

Progress (2003–2006), Towards 2016 (2006–)

Type of

group

ICTU ICTU ICTU ICTU Trade union

Federation of Irish Employers (FIE) FIE employers

Confederation of Irish Industry CII Business

IBECa IBEC Employers

Construction Industry Federation

(CIF)

CIF CIF CIF Employers

Small Firms Association Business

Chambers of Commerce of Ireland Business

Irish Tourist Industry Confederation Business

Irish Exporters Association Business

Irish Farmers Association (IFA) IFA IFA IFA Agricultural

Irish Co-operative Society (ICOS) ICOS ICOS ICOS Agricultural

Macra Macra Macra Macra Agricultural

(Table continued)

Socia

lPartn

ership

andDem

ocra

ticLegitim

acy

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TABLE 2. Continued

Programme for National Recovery

(1987–1990)

Programme for

Economic and Social

Progress (1990–1993)

Programme for

Competitiveness

and Work (1993–

1996)

Partnership 2000 (1997–2000), Programme for

Prosperity and Fairness (2000–2003), Sustaining

Progress (2003–2006), Towards 2016 (2006–)

Type of

group

Irish Creamery and

Milk Suppliers

Association

(ICMSA)b

ICMSA ICMSA Agricultural

Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed Community

National Women’s Council of Ireland Community

National Youth Council of Ireland Community

Protestant Aid Community

St .Vincent de Pauls Community

Council of Religious of Ireland Community

Community Platform Community

Centres For Unemployed Community

aFIE and CII merged in 1993 to form IBEC.bThe ICMSA were involved in the negotiations of the PNR until nearly the end when they withdrew over an issue involving land tax.

PaulTeague&

JimmyDonaghey

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partners, closer to identified social and economic problems, could help devise inno-vative solutions.

Creating smallscale working groups is a classic instrument of deliberativedemocracy as they provide a link between those outside government withdirect, specialised knowledge of a particular matter and those inside government,who are at the helm of public policy decision making.55 While it was recognisedthat different interests would be represented in working groups, the assumptionwas that working group members would adopt a problem-solving mode of beha-viour so that common positions could be forged to advance policy on the particularmatter under discussion. Thus, it was unsurprising that the creation of workingparties under the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness was seen as strengtheningthe deliberative democracy element of the social partnership process.56

One can empathise with this assessment as the formation of the working partieswas a genuine effort to open up public policy making in the country. However,output from the working groups has fallen short of early expectations. Few suc-cessful policy initiatives have emerged from these groups and it is questionablewhether many operated along the principles of deliberative democracy.57 Someworking groups fell at the first hurdle as they could not even agree the nature ofthe problem that was to be solved, for example care of the elderly. Othersfailed to develop workable policy options that enjoyed the support of all constitu-encies represented on the working groups. For example, on childcare, the unionsand the National Women’s Council of Ireland had serious disagreements as towhat form subsidies should take.

The activities of the working group on financial participation are indicative ofthe problems encountered by these bodies. Part of the remit of this group was toinvestigate possible incentives that could be used to encourage a higher take up offinancial participation by organisations. Before the working group first met, thegovernment made it clear to the participating social partners that it wouldprovide tax incentives for any schemes that it proposed. Nevertheless, employersand unions could not reach an agreement on any scheme. Numerous points of dis-agreement emerged between the two sides. No consensus could be reached on thepurpose of financial participation. Whereas employers saw it as an opportunity toprovide tie-in systems for high skilled workers, unions saw it as an opportunity toencourage enterprise partnership. Disagreement also emerged on whether the taxincentives should promote employee share ownership (the employers’ preference)or gainsharing (the trade union option). In the face of these differences, the workof the working group ground to a halt.58 The fate of this working group is repli-cated in other policy areas such as pensions where a joint report was produced,but the body overseeing its implementation was heavily criticised by the unionside for being too focussed on technical issues and not enough on social inclusion.

Some groups were moderately successful, such as the group discussing thefuture of the Local Employment Schemes, but the general picture emergingfrom many of these bodies is that they not only failed to produce concrete propo-sals to solve identified problems, but they were also unable to produce sharedunderstandings on the nature of the problem. Part of the reason why thesegroups failed was that they were deliberating in the shadow of institutions ofrepresentative democracy. For example, employers in the financial participation


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working group had no real incentive to engage in preference-changing dialoguethat would lead to a dilution of its initial position as it was confident that Govern-ment would in any eventuality extend tax breaks to employee share ownershipschemes to placate multinationals in the country. Thus, there was no imperativeon employers to compromise inside the working groups. Another problem withthe creation of the working groups was that it created an administrative nightmarefor many parts of the civil service. Servicing the huge number of working groupsthat were established proved to be a demanding task. Moreover, the snail-like pro-gress occurring in some of the working groups was slowing up policy developmentin some areas of government and creating policy uncertainty in others. Thus,working groups, rather than inventing creative solutions, were introducing bottle-necks into the policy-making process. After trying to operate the system fora number of years, Government decided to end the system quietly in 2005.A bold experiment in deliberative democracy by the social partners and govern-ment had failed to realise early expectations.

Local area partnerships59

Another dimension to advancing deliberative democracy in Ireland has beenusing partnership bodies for the decentralised delivery of social and economicprogrammes. The first moves towards partnership-based local economic andsocial development came with the establishment of the Area DevelopmentManagement (ADM) initiative as a pilot programme in 1992. This programmewas mainstreamed 12 years later by the 2004 National Development Plan(NDP). As a result of this decision, 38 area-based partnerships were set upacross the country. Each area partnership was obliged to develop a strategicplan to improve local economic and social development, with a particular focuson upgrading disadvantaged communities and groups. These local plans wereassessed and verified by a national partnership board before funds would bereleased for proposed schemes.

A number of benefits were seen as emerging from the creation of area-basedpartnerships. One was that they would provide the opportunity for communitiespotentially affected by a proposed initiative to shape its contents. Giving commu-nities a voice in the design and delivery of public policy was seen as not only a steptowards ‘decentralised empowered governance’, but also as a useful method tocollect information about the capabilities of particular areas to develop andsustain their own economic and social programmes. Another was that theywould increase the scale and variety of practical actions aimed at building worth-while initiatives to improve the lot of disadvantaged communities and individuals.Increasing the amount of practical action to fight social exclusion was consideredas potentially having a cumulative effect with the development of one initiativetriggering intervention on another matter. All in all, areabased partnershipsheld out the promise of generating a greater sense of empowerment in localdisadvantaged areas.

Area partnerships have received a considerable amount of money, approxi-mately E200 million. This money has been used to launch a wide range ofeconomic and social initiatives to tackle social exclusion, including a battery of


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programmes to tackle long-term unemployment, a variety of innovative schemesto improve the position of women in employment and rural transport schemesto reduce the isolation of people in the countryside. The performance of theADM programme has not been extensively investigated, but the assessmentsthat have been carried have on balance been positive.60

A number of benefits are seen to have arisen from the introduction of area-basedpartnerships. First of all, these bodies have led to the creation of new policy net-works at the local level on social exclusion. As a result, a better understanding hasbeen gained about the nature of specific forms of disadvantage and poverty inparticular communities, which has led to improved policy making and delivery.Another benefit of the area partnerships has been to strengthen the internalcapacity of local civic organisations by providing them with extra resources tooperate in a more active way. A further benefit of the partnerships was the creationof new employment support services that helped disadvantaged people obtainjobs. A fourth benefit of the partnership arrangements appears to be the resurrec-tion in some communities of the old Irish concept of meitheal.61 Informal net-works of volunteers, not least from the business community, have developed tosupport local community and enterprise development initiatives.62

These are positive and worthwhile outcomes, which suggest that area partner-ships have been a worthwhile policy initiative, but the evidence also suggests thatarea partnerships have not advanced local civic participation or empowermentto any significant extent. In many areas, area partnerships are run by very ablecommunity leaders with the help of very committed volunteers, but there islittle indication of wider community mobilisation around the design or deliveryof local economic and social programmes. In other words, the area partnershipshave resulted in interesting policy programmes being created, but they havedone less to advance in any meaningful way democratic engagement.63

All in all, serious and persistent attempts have been made to introduce delibera-tive democratic practices through the social partnership process. Attempts havebeen made to include civic association in the design and implementation ofgovernment programmes. Greater emphasis has been placed on building upthe problem-solving capacities of economic and social actors. Better forms ofmonitoring and evaluation have been introduced into Government programmesas a result of the deliberative turn in public policy, but in terms of Scharpf’sinput legitimacy, these efforts have hardly been impressive. The results fromthe experiments in creating working groups have been decidedly lacklustre.Area partnerships have brought benefits, but these should not be overplayed andthey have not enlivened local democracy appreciably. Thus, the evidence suggeststhat too much should not be made of the deliberative democracy initiativesspawned by the social partnership process as these have not seriously challengedthe existing ways of doing things.

Conclusion

Since 1987, a system of social partnership has operated alongside representative,democratic institutions in Ireland. One view is that social partnership has damagedIrish democracy: too much social partnership is seen as leading to a reduced role


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for elected politicians. This zero-sum approach is challenged by this article. It issuggested that social partnership has never pursued economic and social policiesthat are out of line with those of representative institutions. A bifurcation seems tohave developed in the area of labour market policies in advanced capitalist states:either governments withdraw and allow unfettered markets to rule, as in the USAor Thatcher’s Britain, or they resort to social pacts to incorporate organisedlabour and capital to help them achieve their electoral mandates.64 Beforesocial partnership, Irish Governments appeared incapable of pursuing eitherstrategy. During the period of decentralised bargaining in the 1980s, for example,the Irish economy went from bad to worse. The coalition government at the timefound itself in the invidious position of being either unwilling or unable to forcethrough unilateral policy change on the one hand, yet equally unable to bringtogether the representatives of labour and capital to develop a more cooperativestrategy for change on the other hand. Social partnership bought to an end thistime period of incoherence and indecisiveness. Since 1987, successive nationalsocial partnership agreements are considered to have contributed positively toIrish economic performance, which in turn strengthened the output dimension ofdemocratic legitimation in Ireland: social partnership has helped successive govern-ments achieve a level of labour market performance that may not have realised bythem acting on their own. Thus, on this account, social partnership has been good forIrish democracy.

At the same time, claims that social partnership enhanced the input dimensionto Irish democratic legitimation by giving rise to a variety of new governancearrangements are treated more cautiously in this article. Certainly, there hasbeen a consistent effort to introduce innovative policy initiatives, many guidedby the principles of deliberative democracy. However, these have not amountedto a radical new system of governance in the country. Moreover, the outcomesfrom these initiatives have for the most part been limited. In particular, socialpartnership and its relationship with representative democracy at the peak levelappears to function more effectively than the links between deliberative experi-ments and those at lower levels: in Vivien Schmidt’s terms, ‘coordinativediscourse’ seems to function more effectively in Ireland than ‘communicativediscourse’.65 While the importance of social partnership to Irish democracymust be recognised, its role should not be overplayed. A pragmatic viewemerges from this analysis which suggests social partnership and representativedemocracy have combined together in a symbiotic manner which has ensuredthat neither one has triumphed, but each has made a strong contribution to thehuge economic success enjoyed by the country since the early 1990s.

Notes

1. See Paul Teague & Jimmy Donaghey, ‘Why has Irish Social Partnership Survived?’ British Journal of

Industrial Relations, Vol. 47, No. 1 (2009), pp. 55–78, for an overview of the debates.

2. See Philippe Schmitter, ‘Still the Century of Corporatism?’ The Review of Politics, Vol. 36, No. 1 (1974),

pp. 85–131, and Gerhard Lemhbruch, ‘Liberal Corporatism and Party Government’, Comparative Political

Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1977), pp. 91–126, as well as edited volumes such as Wolfgang Streeck & Philippe

Schmitter (eds), Private Interest Government (Sage, 1984) and Alan Cawson (ed.), Organized Interests and

the State: Studies in Meso-Corporatism (Sage, 1985).


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3. Lucio Baccaro, ‘What is Alive and What is Dead in the Theory of Corporatism?’, British Journal of Indus-

trial Relations, Vol. 41, No. 4 (2003), pp. 683–706; Paul Teague & James Donaghey, ‘The Irish Experiment

in Social Partnership’, in Harry Katz, Wonduck Lee & Joohee Lee (eds), The New Structure of Labor

Relations: Tripartism and Decentralization (Cornell University Press, 2004), pp. 10–37; William

K. Roche, ‘Social Partnership in Ireland and New Social Pacts’, Industrial Relations, Vol. 46, No. 3

(2007), pp. 395–425.

4. Jimmy Donaghey & Paul Teague, ‘The Mixed Fortunes of Irish Unions: Living with the Paradoxes of Social

Partnership’, Journal of Labor Research, Vol. 28, No. 1 (2007), pp. 19–41; Teague & Donaghey, ‘The Irish

Experiment’; Roche, ‘Social Partnership in Ireland’.

5. Joe Durkan, ‘Social Consensus and Incomes Policies’, Economic and Social Review, Vol. 23, No. 3 (1992),

pp. 347–63; Joe Durkan & Colm Harmon, ‘Social Consensus, Incomes Policies and Unemployment’, UCD

Economics Department Working paper, 1996; Seamus O’Cinneide, ‘Democracy and the Constitution’,

Administration, Vol. 46, No. 4 (1998), pp. 41–58; Richard Bruton, ‘Paper on Social Partnership’, http://www.richardbruton.net/cpartnership.asp (accessed 22 January 2008).

6. Robert Dahl, Who Governs? (Yale University Press, 1961); John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, Liberty,

Representative Government (Dent, 1920)

7. Charles Sabel, Local Partnerships and Social Innovation: Ireland (OECD, 1996); Rory O’Donnell, ‘Public

Policy and Social Partnership’, in Joseph Dunne, Attracta Ingram & Frank Litton, Questioning Ireland

(IPA, 2000), pp. 187–213; Baccaro, ‘What is Alive and What is Dead’; Lucio Baccaro, ‘Civil Society

Meets the State: Towards Associational Democracy?’, Socio-Economic Review, Vol. 4, No. 2 (2006),

pp. 185–208.

8. Rory O’Donnell & Damian Thomas, ‘Ireland in the 1990s: Policy Concertation Triumphant’, in Stefan

Berger & Hugh Compston (eds), Policy Concertation and Social Partnership in Western Europe (Berghahn

Books, 2002), pp. 167–89.

9. Archon Fung & Erik Olin Wright, ‘Deepening Democracy: Innovations in Empowered Participatory

Governance’, Politics and Society, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2001), pp. 5–42.

10. James Fearon, ‘Deliberation as Discussion’, in John Elster (ed.), Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge

University Press, 1998), pp. 44–68.

11. John Elster (ed.), Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 1998); John Bessette, The Mild

Voice of Reason: Deliberative Democracy and American National Government (University of Chicago

Press, 1994).

12. Fritz Scharpf, ‘Economic Integration, Democracy and theWelfare State’, Journal of European Public Policy,

Vol. 4, No. 1 (1997), pp. 18–36; Fritz Scharpf, Interdependence and Democratic Legitimation, MPIfG

Working Paper 98/2, September 1998; and Fritz Scharpf, ‘Legitimacy in the Multi-actor European

Polity’, in Morten Egeberg & Peter Laegreid (eds), Organizing Political Institutions. Essays for Johan

P. Olsen (Scandinavian University Press, 1997), pp. 261–88.

13. Scharpf, Interdependence and Democratic Legitimation.

14. Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

15. Paul Hirst, ‘Representative Democracy and its Limits’, Political Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 2 (1988),

pp. 190–205.

16. Carlos Santiago Nino, The Constitution of Deliberative Democracy (Yale University Press, 1998); Joshua

Cohen, ‘Democracy and Liberty’, in Elster (ed.), Deliberative Democracy, pp. 185–231.

17. See Richard R. Lau & Gerald M. Pomper, ‘Effects of Negative Campaigning on Turnout in U.S. Senate

Elections, 1988–1998’, The Journal of Politics, Vol. 63, No. 3 (2001), pp. 804–19; and Kevin Moloney &

Rob Colmer, ‘Does Political PR Enhance or Trivialise Democracy? The UK General Election 2001 as

Contest between Presentation and Substance’, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 17, Nos. 9–10

(2001), pp. 957–68.

18. Philip Pavin & Declan McHugh, ‘Defending Representative Democracy: Parties and the Future of Political

Engagement in Britain’, Parliamentary Affairs, Vol. 58, No. 3 (2005), pp. 632–55.

19. There is a well established field of literature in this area. However, key works include the seminal pieces by

Schmitter, ‘Still the Century’ and Lemhbruch, ‘Liberal Corporatism’, as well as edited volumes such as

Streeck & Schmitter, Private Interest Government and Cawson, Organized Interests and the State.

20. Alan Cawson, Corporatism and Political Theory (Basil Blackwell, 1986); Philippe Schmitter, ‘Democratic

Theory and Neo-Corporatist Practice’, Social Research, Vol. 50, No. 4 (1983), pp. 101–13, 885–928;

Paul Hirst, ‘Can Secondary Associations Enhance Democratic Governance?’, in Joshua Cohen & Joel

Rogers (eds), Associations and Democracy, Vol. 1 (Verso, 1995).


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21. Colin Crouch, ‘Neo-Corporatism and Democracy’, in Colin Crouch &Wolfgang Streeck (eds), The Diversity

of Democracy (Edward Elgar, 2006) pp. 46–70.

22. Charles Maier, ‘Preconditions for Corporatism’, in John H. Goldthorpe (ed.), Order and Conflict in

Contemporary Capitalism: Studies in the Political Economy of West European Nations (Clarendon Press,

1984), pp. 39–59.

23. For most of the period since independence was gained in 1921 from the UK, the key dividing line in Irish

politics was ‘the national question’ which initially was dominated by whether the country was a republic

or the Head of State was the British Monarch. After this was resolved in 1936, postures over the position

of Northern Ireland became the key issue.

24. Peter Mair, ‘The Autonomy of the Political: The Development of the Irish Party Political System’,

Comparative Politics, Vol. 11, No. 4 (1979), pp. 445–65

25. Joseph Lee, Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society (Cambridge University Press, 1989).

26. Niamh Hardiman, Pay Politics and Economic performance in Ireland, 1970–1987 (Clarendon Press,

1988).

27. Richard Sinnoit, ‘Interpretations of the Irish Party System’, European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 12,

No. 3 (1984), pp. 289–307; Thomas Garvin, The Evolution of Irish Nationalist Politics (Gill and Macmillan,

2005).

28. Michael Marsh & Paul Mitchell, ‘Office, Votes and then Policy: Hard Choices for Political Parties in the

Republic of Ireland’, in Wolfgang C. Muller & Kaare Strom (eds), Office or Votes? How Political Parties

in Western Europe make Hard Decisions (Cambridge University Press, 1999).

29. Ray MacSharry & Padraig White, The Making of the Celtic Tiger (Mercier Press, 2000).

30. Michael Gallagher, ‘Politics in Ireland after the 1989 General Election’, Parliamentary Affairs, Vol. 43

(1990), pp. 348–65.

31. The Progressive Democrats is a party caused by a splinter in Fianna Fail in 1985. It generally is viewed as

the most free-market oriented of all Irish political parties. Though as Karen Giland-Lutz, ‘Irish Party

Competition in the New Millennium: Change or Plus ca Change?’, Irish Political Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1

(2003), pp. 40–59, highlights, even at this in comparative terms it is centrist in nature.

32. Democratic Left was a short-lived left-wing party, formed in 1992 to break the link between the Irish

Worker’s Party and paramilitarism. In 1999, it merged with the centre-left Labour party.

33. Donaghey & Teague, ‘The Mixed fortunes of Irish Unions’; Teague & Donaghey, ‘The Irish Experiment’;

Roche, ‘Social Partnership in Ireland’.

34. Scharpf, Interdependence and Democratic Legitimation.

35. Other key functions include preventing leap-frogging, poaching, spreading the costs of economic adjustment

and promoting industrial peace. Jelle Visser, ‘Two Cheers for Corporatism, One for the Market: Industrial

Relations, Wage Moderation and Job Growth in the Netherlands’, British Journal of Industrial Relations,

Vol. 36, No. 2 (1998), pp. 269–92; Lars Calmfors & John Driffel, ‘Centralisation of Wage Bargaining

and Macroeconomic Performance’, Economic Policy, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1988), pp. 13–61.

36. Until 1998, the rate was 32 per cent for indigenous companies.

37. Alastair McPherson & William K. Roche, ‘Peripheral location equals localized labour? Multinationals and

the internationalization of training and development in Ireland’, International Journal of Human Resource

Management, Vol. 8, No. 4 (1997), pp. 369–84.

38. Olivier Blanchard, ‘Comments on: “Catching Up with the Leaders: The Irish Hare” by Patrick Honohan and

Brendan Walsh’, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, No. 1 (2002), pp. 58–66.

39. Rory O’Donnell, Ireland’s Economic Transformation Industrial Policy, European Integration and Social

Partnership, University of Pittsburgh, Centre for European Studies Working Paper No. 2, 1998.

40. Alberto Alesina & Lawrence Summers, ‘Central Bank Independence and Macroeconomic Performance’,

Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Vol. 25, No. 1 (1993), pp. 151–62.

41. See Paul Teague, Economic Citizenship in the European Union (Routledge, 1999); Bob Hancke & Martin

Rhodes, ‘EMU and Labor Market Institutions in Europe: The Rise and Fall of National Social Pacts’,

Work and Occupations, Vol. 32, No. 2 (2005), pp. 196–228; Philippe Pochet & Giuseppe Fajertag, Social

Pacts in Europe, New Dynamics (ETUI/OSE, 2000); Anke Hassel, Wage Setting, Social Pacts and the

Euro: A New Role for the State (Amsterdam University Press, 2006).

42. Peter Katzenstein, Small States in World Markets: Industrial Policy in Europe (Cornell University Press,

1985).

43. Alan Barrett, Adele Bergin & David Duffy, ‘The Labour Market Characteristics and Labour Market Impacts

of Immigration In Ireland’, Economic and Social Review, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2006), pp. 1–26.


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44. Kieran Allen, The Celtic Tiger: The Myth of Social Partnership (Manchester University Press, 2000); Peadar

Kirby, The Celtic Tiger in Distress (Palgrave Macmilan, 2001); Denis O’Hearn, Inside the Celtic Tiger: The

Irish Economy and the Asian Model (Pluteo Press, 1998).

45. See Teague & Donaghey, ‘Why has Irish Social’.

46. Fung & Wright, ‘Deepening Democracy’.

47. Elster, Deliberative Democracy.

48. Marc Hooghe, ‘The Rebuke of Thersites. Deliberative Democracy under Conditions of Inequality’, Acta

Politica, Vol. 34, No. 4 (1999), pp. 287–301.

49. Joshua Cohen & Joel Rogers, ‘Power and Reason’, in Archon Fung & Erik Olin Wright (eds), Deepening

Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance (Verso, 2000), pp. 237–55.

50. Sabel, Local Partnerships; O’Donnell, ‘Public Policy and Social Partnership’; Baccaro, ‘Civil Society Meets

the State’; O’Donnell & Thomas, ‘Ireland in the 1990s’.

51. Rory O’Donnell & Damian Thomas, ‘Partnership and Policy Making’, in Sean Healy and Brigid Reynolds

(eds), Social Policy in Ireland (Oak Tree Press/CORI, 1998), pp. 117–46; NESF, A Framework for Partner-

ship: Enriching Strategic Consensus through Participation (National Economic and Social Forum, 1997);

Sabel, Local Partnerships; Baccaro, ‘Civil Society Meets the State’.

52. See Jimmy Donaghey, ‘Deliberation, Employment Relations and Social Partnership in the Republic of

Ireland’, Economic and Industrial Democracy, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2008), pp. 35–63; and Niamh Hardiman,

‘Politics and Social Partnership: Flexible Network Governance’, Economic and Social Review, Vol 37,

No. 3 (2006), pp. 343–74.

53. Hardiman, ‘Politics and Social Partnership’.

54. Rory O’Donnell & Colm O’Reardon, ‘Social Partnership in Ireland’s Economic Transformation’, in Philippe

Pochet & Guiseppe Fajertag (eds), Social Pacts in Europe – New Dynamics (ETUI, 2000).

55. Fung & Wright, ‘Deepening Democracy’.

56. O’Donnell & O’Reardon, ‘Social Partnership’.

57. Donaghey, ‘Deliberation, Employment Relations’; Baccaro, ‘Civil Society Meets the State’.

58. Donaghey, ‘Deliberation, Employment Relations’.

59. See Paul Teague, ‘Social Partnership and Local Development in Ireland: The Limits to Deliberation’, British

Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 44, No. 3 (2006), pp. 421–43.

60. Ivan Turok, ‘Area-based Partnerships in Ireland: Collaborative Planning in Practice?’, Paper presented at

EURA Conference, Copenhagen, May 2001.

61. Meitheal is an Irish language word without direct equivalent in English that refers to the Irish agricultural

concept of individuals bringing together equipment and labour to save each other’s crops during harvest.

62. Teague, ‘Social Partnership and Local Development’.

63. Benjamin Goldfrank, ‘The Fragile Flower of Local Democracy: A Case Study of Decentralisation/

Participation in Montevideo’, Politics and Society, Vol. 30, No. 1 (2002), pp. 51–83.

64. Kirsten Hamann & John Kelly, ‘Party Politics and the Re-emergence of Social Pacts in Western Europe’,

Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 40, No. 8 (2007), pp. 971–94.

65. Vivien Schmidt, ‘Does Discourse Matter in the Politics of Welfare State Adjustment’, Comparative Political

Studies, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2002), pp. 168–93.


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Documents

Social Partnership and Democratic Legitimacy in Ireland