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Drawing on almost 20 years of Liam Leonard's research in the field, The Sustainable Nation: Politics, Economy and Justice provides a detailed case study of a modern European state's tumultuous development through first decades of the Millennium. As the Republic of Ireland experienced an initial phase of accelerated growth, followed by a dramatic economic downturn, the nation's attempts to expand its infrastructure was met with resistance from communities concerned about local environments. The Sustainable Nation: Politics, Economy and Justice looks at some of the conflicts that emerged as part of the Irish people's attempts to achieve a sustainable form of development. Other issues such as the rise of a multicultural and globalized society as well as issues of social justice are also explored within this study. This book represents a culmination of Leonard's research on Ireland which began at the turn of the Millennium. The book provides an in depth and up to date study on Ireland's growth and the substantial changes experienced there during the last two decades.

This book is based on research and observations undertaken for the author's PhD thesis at the National University of Ireland, and represents a case study of national and regional campaigns against both the Irish state's Regional Waste Management Plans and the corporate sector's attempts to develop waste incinerators or dumps in various parts of Ireland. This book provides an in depth account of the mobilizing patterns and framing processes of community campaigns which emerged in the wake of the Irish state's introduction of regional plans for waste management, which included plans for municipa

The Environmental Movement in Ireland examines key themes in Irish environmental politics, including the main components that have come to define such events, and incidents of environmental collective action in this country during forty years of growth and development. The author analyses the mobilisation and framing processes undertaken in these disputes, locating them in the context of a wider rural identity that has shaped grassroots environmentalism in the Irish case.

A notable feature of the recent political landscape has been the increasing incidents of confrontation between grassroots and elites. These conflicts have occurred in the wake of the declining relevance of the traditional left-right dichotomy, and have been exemplified by the campaigns of opposition led by environmental groups against the globalised corporate sector. This article will examine how new forms of political expression may arise from the environmental movements' utilisation of the new technologies of communication as a strategic tool in their campaigns of protest.

This article will examine a significant area of interest in Irish political sociology: the emergence of a social movement into politics and eventually government. The focus of the article will be on the transitions of the Irish environmental movement and Green Party. It will examine the background to this transformative process from the establishment of Comhaontas Glas from the Ecology Party in 1986 through to the moment when this process culminated in the Green Party taking its place as a junior partner in the Coalition Government in 2007. This process will be shown to represent a success for the politically pragmatic 'relos' over the socially emotive 'fundis' of the Greens at a time when the wider environmental movement has moved in the opposite direction. One of the key areas of analysis for the paper will be an application of Foucault's concept of political power to the processes which transformed the activist-based green movement into a viable coalition partner within a neo-liberal government. The paper will also examine the consequences of this transition in the context of Foucault's understanding of power as something fluid which emerges from the identity framing of 'discursive formations', rather than emanating out of the imposition of institutional hegemony. The paper concludes with an assessment of the impact of the Green Party's participation in government for its leadership and members, in the wake of contentious issues such as the two Lisbon Treaty referendums, and the coalition's bailout of the neo-liberal banking system.

Ireland has witnessed a succession of community-based responses to regional episodes of ecological degradation in recent years. This paper will argue that the basis for these disputes is the Irish state's neo-liberal and neo-corporatist policy framework, which favours accelerated and reckless infrastructural development while excluding community concerns about health and environmental issues.