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A ‘Banana Republic’ Without the Bananas? Political Economy, Irish Exceptionalism and Mary Daly’s Sixties Ireland

Mary E. Daly’s analysis within Sixties Ireland is a useful corrective to simplistic and selfcongratulatory narratives concerning the place of the ‘long 1960s’ within modern Irish social and economic history. Daly’s interesting discussion covers the period between the First Programme for Economic Expansion (as well as membership of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) in 1957 and Ireland’s entry into the Common Market in 1973. The book is particularly strong concerning interest groups lobbying. Daly outlines, in a highly persuasive fashion, how ‘auction politics’ arrived in Ireland and how squabbles within the civil service (and other public bodies) hindered effective policy formulation and implementation. Daly is excellent in discussing the role of interests and ‘auction politics’ in explaining the pace and direction of change. The ambition and scope of Sixties Ireland ensures that it will undoubtedly serve as a launch pad for many a future Ph.D. thesis as well as providing a core text on undergraduateand postgraduate-level modules in modern social and economic history. Furthermore, students of applied economics, political science, and sociology will also find much to pique their interest. Nevertheless, this reviewer had some reservations, to be discussed in more detail at the end of this review article; for example, Daly is weak on explaining the role of ideas in explaining the evolution of economic policy. Daly’s analysis nevertheless can provide a building block towards constructing an institutional rather than exceptionalist analysis of how economy, state and society was reshaped. Daly, however, appears at points to suggest ‘a middle ground’ between Lee’s exceptionalist argument (i.e. that Ireland uniquely underperformed economically due to among other things perverse incentives) and more recent critiques of the exceptionalist argument. Daly accepts that her focus on tradition and continuity for instance chimes with Lee’s discussion of the way Ireland was shaped by the tenacity of the possessor over the performance ethos (p. 11). Sixties Ireland is the product of over a decade’s work, as the book’s acknowledgements note, the book’s gestation was delayed by Daly’s role as Principal of the UCD