From Spatial Keynesianism to Post‐Fordist Neoliberalism: Emerging Contradictions in the Spatiality of the Irish State

Abstract

Abstract:The transition from Fordism to post-Fordism has been accompanied by profound changes in the spatiality of west European states. The hierarchical, top-down and redistributive structures that typified the Fordist welfare state have been replaced by more complex spatial configurations as elements of economic and political power have shifted both downwards to subnational territorial levels and upwards to the supranational level. A major debate has developed around the nature of these emerging forms of state spatiality and of the processes underpinning their formation. This paper examines how these processes have operated in the particular case of the Republic of Ireland. Here, the spatiality of the state was founded on a peculiar post-colonial combination of a localised populist politics and a centralised state bureaucracy. While this arrangement was quite suited to the spatial dispersal of industrial branch plants which underpinned regional policy in the 1960s and 1970s, it has become increasingly problematic with the more recent emergence of new trends in the nature and locational preferences of inward investment. This is reflected in the profound conflicts that have attended the formulation and implementation of the National Spatial Strategy, introduced in 2002. The result is a national space economy whose increasing dysfunctionality may now be compromising the very development model upon which Ireland's recent spectacular economic growth has been built.

Deepening Neoliberalism, Austerity, and Crisis

“…The greatest decline came in the areas most exposed to foreign competition such as 'textiles, clothing and footwear, and chemicals and metal' (Kennedy et al, 1988: 242). Indeed, during the 1970s, established indigenous industry contracted significantly following entry into the European Union (EU) (Breathnach, 2010). This ultimately led to the marginalisation of domestic industry to areas of the economy that had natural shelter from foreign competition such as construction, cement making, as well as the food and drink industries.…”

Placing Neoliberalism: The Rise and Fall of Ireland's Celtic Tiger

“…As opposed to an ideologically informed project, such as those implemented by Thatcher in the UK and Reagan in the USA during the 1980s (see Harvey, 2007), Irish neoliberalism was produced through a set of short-term (intermittently reformed) deals brokered by the state with various companies, individuals, and representative bodies, which cumulatively restructured Ireland in unsustainable and geographically 'uneven' ways. Breathnach (2010) argues that the tension between the overwhelming concentration of employment and population in the east of the country and the political, clientelistic motivation towards 'balanced regional development' has resulted in an inability on the part of the state to make spatially selective decisions in order to plan strategically for economic growth. During the Fordist period, in which Ireland operated as a branch-plant manufacturing centre, this resulted in an extreme form of industrial decentralisation-manifested during the 1970s by the state's construction of 'advance' factories in 156 locations-but was signifi cantly exacerbated from the 1980s onwards, once services became the main source of employment growth.…”

“…The result is that Irish politics is marked by a triumph of local politics over party and national politics (see Collins and Cradden, 1997). This has been combined with a highly centralised bureaucracy inherited from the former British colonial administration (Breathnach, 2010(Breathnach, , page 1186. Moreover, local politicians wield power in ways which have actively subordinated the Irish planning system.…”

Creating City-region Governance Structures in a Dysfunctional Polity: The Case of Ireland’s National Spatial Strategy

“…An explanation of the historical origin of these features of Ireland's peculiar system of government has been advanced elsewhere by the present writer (Breathnach, 2010). When it achieved political independence in 1922, the new Irish state inherited a conservative and highly centralised state bureaucracy from the colonial period, while its new parliament was largely populated by adherents of one or other of the two populist political parties which emerged from the post-independence split in the Sinn Féin party which had led the independence movement.…”