This book analyzes privatization in Ireland, a European economy that has experienced rapidly changing fortunes over the last thirty years. It examines the effects of privatization in terms of corporate performance, public finances and the distributional aspects of privatization including the impact on employment and share ownership.

Provides a ground breaking and unique analysis of the development of Public Private Partnerships internationally, with a detailed focus on the rationale behind their introduction and outcomes in Ireland.

Over recent years, education systems across the globe have experimented with the concept of the autonomous school. This takes a variety of forms and the schools involved have different titles, such as charter schools in the USA, academies in England, free schools in Sweden and independent public schools in Australia. As this radical trend in policy gains momentum, Inside the Autonomous School considers whether the model is achieving its desired aims. Drawing on evidence from an in-depth, longitudinal study of an academy located in an urban district in England, this book traces the various developments which took place in the school on its journey from ‘failing’, to achieving an inspection rating of ‘outstanding’. The authors present a rich, first-hand account of the impacts that various policies and practices have had on the autonomous school and at the same time, situate their accounts and analyses within a wider national and international context. This leads them to consider what can be done to ensure that school autonomy consistently promotes excellence and equity within education systems. A fascinating read and invaluable resource for practitioners, researchers and policy makers in the field of education, Inside the Autonomous School sheds much needed light on an increasingly established policy which is set to have far-reaching effects.

This book examines in-depth what is perhaps the test case for globalization: the Irish Republic. Not only is Ireland hailed as the most globalized economy in the world, but its transformation into the Celtic Tiger in the 1990s is seen to demonstrate how nations can flourish in the new global economy. By implication, if other countries are to emulate Ireland's success they too must submit to the exogenous forces of globalization.

This book provides a critical and theoretically-informed assessment of the nature and types of structural change occurring in the Irish welfare state in the context of the 2008 economic crisis. Its overarching framework for conceptualising and analysing welfare state change and its political, economic and social implications is based around four crucial questions, namely what welfare is for, who delivers welfare, who pays for welfare, and who benefits. Over the course of ten chapters, the authors examine the answers as they relate to social protection, labour market activation, pensions, finance, water, early child education and care, health, housing and corporate welfare. They also innovatively address the impact of crisis on the welfare state in Northern Ireland. The result is to isolate key drivers of structural welfare reform, and assess how globalisation, financialisation, neo-liberalisation, privatisation, marketisation and new public management have deepened and diversified their impact on the post-crisis Irish welfare state. This in-depth analysis will appeal to sociologists, economists, political scientists and welfare state practitioners interested in the Irish welfare state and more generally in the analysis of welfare state change.