Are Good Industrial Relations Good for the Economy?

Recent US microeconomic analysis indicates that good industrial relations might improve firm performance. Of late, it has also been claimed that the benefits of industrial relations quality - proxied inversely by a strikes variable - could also extend to the macroeconomy. Using cross-country data, we find that, independent of other labor market institutions, a lower strike volume is associated with lower unemployment. Although there is a separate line of causation running from unemployment to strikes, our analysis suggests that this is not dominant. That said, support for the notion that macro performance owes something to good industrial relations is, however, weakened once we formally control for strike endogeneity.

‘Towards a Green New Deal on the Island of Ireland: from economic crisis to a new political economy of sustainability’

This article begins from the assumption (which may seem controversial to many) that anyone who thinks that our current economic crisis is a temporary blip until ‘normal service’ (i.e. a return to ‘business as usual’) is resumed, profoundly misunderstands the severity and significance of what’s happening to the global economy and its impacts on the future prosperity of the island of Ireland. The economic recession represents nothing short of a re-structuring of the global economy and the creation of a new dispensation between governments, markets and citizens. The full implications of the re-regulation of the market, with the state bailing out and part nationalising the financial sector in both jurisdictions on the island (as in other parts of the world) have yet to be seen, but what we are witnessing is the emergence of a new economic model. Those who think we can, or even ought to, return to the pre-2008 economic model, are gravely mistaken. The current economic downturn marks the end of the ‘neo-liberal’ model and the beginnings of the transition (an inevitable transition, this article will argue) towards a new low carbon, renewable, green and sustainable economy and society.

‘Towards a Concrete Utopian Model of Green Political Economy’

Much of the thinking about the appropriate ‘political economy’ to underpin sustainable development has been either utopian (as in some ‘green’ political views) or ‘business as usual’ approaches. This article suggests that ‘ecological modernisation’ is the dominant conceptualisation of ‘sustainable development’ within the UK and other ‘developed’ Northern polities and most corporate/business interests, and illustrates this by looking at some key ‘sustainable development’ policy documents from the UK Government. While critical of the reformist ‘policy telos’ of ecological modernisation, supporters of a more radical version of sustainable development need to also be aware of the strategic opportunities of this policy discourse. In particular, the article suggests that the discourse of ‘economic security’, which can be attached to a radicalised notion of ecological modernisation, ought to be used as a way of articulating a radical, robust and principled understanding of sustainable development, which offers a normatively compelling and policy-relevant path to outlining aspects of a ‘green political economy’ to underpin sustainable development.

Ireland

‘Islands constitute natural unities; sea channels constitute natural divisions’. So wrote Kevin Howard (2006: 9) with particular reference to the two largest islands of the British Isles: Great Britain and Ireland. However, at the time of writing, the political unity of Great Britain is being called into question, while Ireland has been divided since the 1920s. Part of the island of Ireland is united not with the rest of the island, but with Great Britain across the other side of the ‘natural division’ that is the Irish Sea, for Ireland’s history, development and political structures have long been moulded by Great Britain. The journey to this ‘unnatural’ unity and the associated division of Ireland forms the material for this chapter.

Green Political Economy: beyond orthodox undifferentiated economic growth as a permanent feature of the economy

This chapter outlines the main features of green political economy and the principal ways in which it differs from dominant mainstream or orthodox neoclassical economics. Neoclassical economics is critiqued on the grounds of denying its normative and ideological commitments in its false presentation of itself as ‘objective’ and ‘value neutral’. It is also critiqued for its ecologically irrational commitment to the imperative of orthodox economic growth as a permanent feature of the economy, compromising its ability to offer realistic or normatively compelling guides to how we might make the transition to a sustainable economy. Green political economy is presented as an alternative or heterodox form of economic thinking but one which explicitly expresses its normative/ideological value bases (hence it represents a return to ‘political economy’, the origins of modern economics). Green political economy also challenges the commitment to undifferentiated economic growth as a permanent objective of the human economy. In its place, green political economy promotes ‘economic security’ as a better objective for a sustainable, post-growth economy. The latter includes the transition to a low-carbon energy economy, and is also one which maximises quality of life (as oppose to formal employment, income and wealth), and actively seeks to lower socio-economic inequality. Green political economy views orthodox economic growth as having passed the threshold in most ‘advanced’ capitalist societies beyond which it has undermined quality of life and at best manages rather than reduces socially and ecologically damaging inequalities.

The struggle for safe staffing levels in the USA: A political economy of evidence-based practice

This paper examines the debate over nursing staff to patient ratios through the lens of Marxist political economy, arguing that the owners and controllers of healthcare in the USA have a vested interest in opposing mandated minimum ratios, while those involved in carrying out nursing care have a vested interest in their implementation, which coincides with the interests of patients. We examine how evidence-based practice articulates with social power, and proceed to interrogate the research methods used to generate evidence for practice, noting that randomised controlled trials are not suitable for evaluating nurse/patient ratios, which means that observational studies are the primary source of evidence. Representatives of nursing managers have used the fact that observational studies, while demonstrating an association between high ratios and poor outcomes, have not established a causal relationship, to support their argument that there is not sufficient evidence for the imposition of mandatory ratios. We argue that the precautionary principle provides firm justification for mandatory ratios, unless and until a causal relationship has been disproved. We conclude that those involved in the generation of evidence have to choose between technical arguments about the inferiority of observational studies, or emphasising their sufficiency in triggering the precautionary principle.<br/>

New Ways of Looking at the State Apparatus and the State Archive in Nineteenth Century Ireland: Curiosities from that Phonetic Museum - Royal Irish Constabulary Reports and their Political Uses, 1879-91

This essay seeks to contextualise the intelligence work of the Royal Irish Constabulary, particularly in the 1880s, in terms of the wider British and imperial practice and, as a corollary, to reflect upon aspects of the structure of the state apparatus and the state archive in Ireland since the Union. The author contrasts Irish and British police and bureaucratic work and suggests parallels between Ireland and other imperial locations, especially India. This paper also defines the narrowly political, indeed partisan, uses to which this intelligence was put, particularly during the Special Commission of 1888 on 'Parnellism and crime', when governmentheld police records were made available to counsel for The Times. By reflecting on the structure of the state apparatus and its use in this instance, the author aims to further the debate on the governance of nineteenth-century Ireland and to explore issues of colonial identity and practice. The line of argument proposed in this essay is prefigured in Margaret O'Callaghan, British high politics and a nationalist Ireland: criminality, land and the law under Forster and Balfour (Cork, 199