'Protecting the most vulnerable' in an economic crisis: a participatory study of civil society organisations in Ireland

The shifting contours of collective bargaining in the manufacturing sector in the Republic of Ireland: Government, employer and union responses since the economic crisis

“…From 2009, the centre-right Fianna Fáil–Green Party coalition government (defeated in the February 2011 election) imposed a range of austerity measures in an attempt to stem the crisis. The first casualty was the consensus corporatist approach embodied in social partnership as the government imposed unilateral policies rather than collectively negotiated solutions (Carney et al, 2012; McDonough and Dundon, 2010). In effect, social partnership began to unravel in the talks on a new deal in 2008 and this signalled a shift from national to enterprise-level collective bargaining.…”

Les rapports entre l’État irlandais et ses citoyens après la crise : quelles orientations ?

“…Pour répondre à cette crise de confiance, la recherche d'une démocratie plus délibérative et participative a récemment fait surface en Irlande 36 . Ce changement de paradigme reflète ainsi un « appétit pour un renouveau démocratique 37 » après deux décennies où une partie des acteurs de la société civile a pu prendre part aux discussions dans le cadre des accords tripartites, et après que le gouvernement a opté, en 2010, pour un programme d'austérité diminuant les salaires de la fonc-tion publique et réduisant la protection sociale afin de baisser le déficit public et soutenir les banques 38 .…”

John Macnicol , Neoliberalising Old Age, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2015, 242 pp., pbk £25.83, ISBN 13: 978-1-107-53554-1.

“…Given the historical slant in each chapter, one expected to see analysis of some obvious analogies such as the operationalisation of ageism and that of sexism; a concept with strong empirical and theoretical foundations. Also, in the same chapter, the author neglects an important aspect of neoliberal retrenchment; the practice of pitting one marginalised group against another in a race to compete for their narrow slice of the ‘public resources’ pie (Carney, Dundon and Ni Leime 2012). All of these ‘interpretative problems’ point to a deeper epistemological challenge which is not directly acknowledged; that there are problems with how ageing societies construct knowledge of old age.…”