Impact of Government Intervention on Employment Change and Plant Closure in Northern Ireland, 1983-97

Harris R. and Trainor M. (2007) Impact of government intervention on employment change and plant closure in Northern Ireland, 1983-97, Regional Studies 41, 51-63. Financial assistance to manufacturing industry is an important element of the industrial development policy in Northern Ireland. This paper uses the individual plant-level records of the Annual Respondents Database (ARD) for the Northern Ireland manufacturing sector (1983-97) matched to the plant-level details of financial support provided by the Industrial Development Board to examine the effect of selective financial assistance (SFA) on employment change and plant closure. It is found that SFA concentrated on protecting existing, rather than new, enterprises in terms of employment change. Using a hazard model, it is found that the receipt of SFA significantly reduced the probability of plant closure by, on average, between 15 and 24%.

The Hand of Government in Shaping Accounting and Reporting in the UK Charity Sector

Accounting in the UK charity sector has changed massively over the last 25 years, with various stakeholders influencing what has occurred. Using insights from stakeholder theory, and interviews with a number of key actors, this article focuses on the influence of one definitive stakeholder – government – in developing a regime of quality accounting and reporting in the sector. In particular, the evolution of the Statement of Recommended Practice for charities is explored. It is argued that a much tighter and more meaningful regime of accounting and reporting has been encouraged by government, amongst other stakeholders, and this has led to a more accountable and healthier charitable sector.

Select Document: Sir George Radcliffe’s “Original of Government” (1639) and Absolutist Political Theory in Stuart Ireland

A seventeenth-century manuscript miscellany, which once belonged to Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh, contains a short treatise on the origins of government by Sir George Radcliffe. Radcliffe was legal assistant to Sir Thomas Wentworth, lord deputy of Ireland (from January 1640 earl of Strafford and lord lieutenant). The treatise insisted on the divine origin of all human political power and implied that the best form of government was absolute monarchy, in which the monarch was free of all human law and subject to divine restraint alone. It will be suggested below that the composition of this treatise can be dated to the summer of 1639. This introduction will offer an outline of Radcliffe’s education and political career, explain the genesis of his treatise on government, point out some pertinent aspects of its argument, and finally assess the document’s significance.

The Democratic Dynamics of Government Consultations. Speaking Freely and Listening Properly

There is a growing use of consultation and e-consultation procedures by governments. This chapter seeks to examine the role of consultation as part of a new technology of government. Consultation on policy development can reinvigorate democratic engage- ment but often it can silence views through a sort of participatory disempowerment; it can loosen the democratic anchorage of the public service within the state. The chapter develops a governmentality perspective interrogating what participation, democratic engagement and free speech mean in this context, and how ideas of publicness are constructed, managed and controlled. The focus is on the nature of consultation, its relationship to ideas of free speech and speaking freely, and its potential to empower subaltern counterpublics which can formulate oppositional interpretations and urge alternative conclusions. The aim is to develop an idea of the democratic adequacy of the consultation process and draw out a sense of how democratic engagement here can be structured – for good or ill.

WTO government procurement rules and the local dynamics of procurement policies: A malaysian case study

This article examines efforts to create binding international rules regulating public procurement and considers, in particular, the failure to reach a WTO agreement oil transparency in government procurement. The particular focus of the discussion is the approach taken by Malaysia to these international procurement rules and to the negotiation of an agreement on transparency. Rules governing public procurement directly implicate fundamental arrangements of authority amongst and between different parts of government, its citizens and non-citizens. At the same time, the rules touch upon areas that are particularly sensitive for some developing countries. Many governments use preferences in public procurement to accomplish important redistributive and developmental goals. Malaysia has long used significant preferences in public procurement to further sensitive developmental policies targeted at improving the economic strength of native Malays. Malaysia also has political and legal arrangements substantially at odds with fundamental elements of proposed global public procurement rules. Malaysia has, therefore, been forceful in resisting being bound by international public procurement rules, and has played all important role in defeating the proposed agreement oil transparency. We suggest that our case study has implications beyond procurement. The development of international public procurement rules appears to be guided by many of the same values that guide the broader effort to create a global administrative law. This case study, therefore, has implications for the broader exploration of these efforts to develop a global administrative law, in particular the relationship between such efforts and the interests of developing countries.

A History of Women in Ireland, 1500-1800

The first general survey of the history of women in early modern Ireland. Based on an impressive range of source material, it presents the results of original research into women’s lives and experiences in Ireland from 1500 to 1800. This was a time of considerable change in Ireland as English colonisation, religious reform and urbanisation transformed society on the island. Gaelic society based on dynastic lordships and Brehon Law gave way to an anglicised and centralised form of government and an English legal system.

The origins of the Irish hospitals' sweepstake

This article examines the two main reasons for the setting up of the Irish sweepstakes in 1930; the financial crisis facing voluntary hospitals and the tradition of using sweepstake gambling to raise funds for charitable purposes. Such gambling, although technically illegal, was prevalent and widely tolerated during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The change of government that accompanied Irish independence in 1921 led to much confusion surrounding the law on gambling and large-scale sweepstakes proliferated during the early 1920s, many of them selling tickets illegally in Britain. At the same time the Irish voluntary hospitals faced a financial crisis that threatened their future, brought about by the adverse impact of war-time inflation on the value of their endowments, the emigration of supporters of the Protestant voluntary hospitals after independence, the political upheaval of the revolutionary period, the decline in fees from medical students and the increasing cost of and demand for hospital treatment. This article provides a detailed account of the enactment of the sweepstake legislation and of the first sweepstake on the 1930 Manchester November Handicap.

The Mixed Fortunes of Irish Unions: Living with the Paradoxes of Social Partnership

We assess the fortunes of Irish unions since 1980 and, in particular, focus on the period of national social partnership since 1987. We argue that, structurally, unions have been weakened by a sharp decline in union density levels. In addition, labor law reform has not been as permissive as unions desired. However, on the other hand, we highlight that union membership in Ireland has never been higher and unions exert a strong influence over many areas of government policy. In conclusion, we argue that continuing with social partnership is the most viable option for Irish unions, though significant gains in union power are unlikely to happen.

Consociationalism and the evolution of political cleavages in Northern Ireland, 1989-2004

Political cleavages are often understood as deriving from either deep-rooted social divisions or institutional incentives. Contemporary Northern Ireland provides a test of the mutability of apparently entrenched cleavages to institutional change. Research undertaken before the ceasefire in the 1990s found noticeable asymmetries in the patterns of cleavage within the unionist and nationalist blocs. Within the unionist bloc, economic 'left-right' issues formed the main ideological division between the two major unionist parties. This contrasted with an ethno-national source of ideological division between the two nationalist parties. The emergence of a consociational form of government structure since then has demonstrated the ability of institutional incentives to swiftly reform some aspects of party competition however. As evidence of this, we show that between 1989 and 2004 there was little change in the sources of support for Sinn F�©in relative to the SDLP, but the influence of left-right ideology within the unionist bloc was negated as the influence of ethno-nationalism dramatically increased.

More-than-human histories and the failure of grand state schemes: sylviculture in the New Forest, England

As James Scott’s Seeing Like a State attests, forests played a central role in the rise of the modern state, specifically as test spaces for evolving methods of managing state resources at a distance, and as the location for grand state schemes. Together, such ambitions necessitated both the elimination of local understandings of forest management – to be replaced by centrally controlled scientific precision – and a narrowing of state vision. Forests thus began to be conflated with trees (and their timber) alone. All other aspects of the forest, both human and non-human, were ignored. Through the lens of the 18th and early 19th century New Forest in southern England, this paper examines the impact of government attempts to shift the focus of state forests from being remnant medieval hunting spaces to spaces of income generation through the creation of vast sylvicultural plantations. This state scheme not only reworked the relationship between the metropole and the provinces – something effected through systematic surveys and novel bureaucratic procedures – but also dramatically impacted upon the biophysical and cultural geographies of the forest. By equating forest space with trees alone, the British state failed to legislate for the actions of both local commoners and non-human others in resisting their schemes. Indeed, subsequent oppositions proved not only the tenacity of commoners in protecting their livelihoods but also the destructive power of non-human actants, specifically rabbits and mice. The paper concludes that grand state schemes necessarily fail due to their own internal illogic: the narrowing of state vision creates blind spots in which human and non-human lives assert their own visions.