PLACING IRELAND IN A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Some recent publications have raised the question of placing Ireland in a comparative perspective. Three such comparative frameworks are investigated in this paper: advanced capitalist countries, (West)European countries, and finally semi-peripheral European societies. Although not an advanced capitalist economy, Ireland displays the central institutional features of such societies. But on closer inspection, it seems that such features can be attributed to a European institutional framework, rather than to advanced capitalism as such. Furthermore, Ireland is located, in economic terms, in broadly the same position as countries such as Greece, Portugal and Spain. But it has very little in common with them in terms of socio-political characteristics. Ireland provides in that sense a striking illustration of the disjunction which may emerge between a process of capitalist development and institutional development.