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Abstract
This paper compares the amendments introduced by the Regulation of Lobbying and Oireachtas (Allowances to Members) (Amendment) Act 2023 with the original regulations of the Regulation of Lobbying Act 2015. The study was conducted using the Hired Guns Method for assessing the robustness of lobbying legislation, developed by the Centre for Public Integrity (CPI), allowing findings to be compared with lobbying regulations internationally. The 2015 legislation was introduced after years of tribunals, scandals, unfulfilled political promises, and economic crisis, in an effort to increase the public's trust in politicians, representative institutions, democracy and the wider bureaucracy. The 2023 Amendment came in the wake of a 2020 lobbying scandal. The paper finds that, despite the CPI score remaining unchanged, in-depth examination of the legislation showed that the amendment introduced more rules and sanctions, particularly in relation to designated public officials, and closed off outstanding legislative loopholes.

The abstract of the draft article that the datasets come from states: In democratic societies the role of the education system is seen as crucially important to their development. It is critical in structuring society and in the value of its human and social capital. In particular, the role played by the education system in the creation and reproduction of the governing elites, and its countervailing potential to create a more meritocratic and egalitarian society has been an enduring topic of concern, research and debate. However, many of these debates have been rendered opaque by an inability to quantitatively examine, and directly compare, the influence of elite formation systems over time. To help resolve these issues, we employ elite formation quantitative indices to directly and transparently compare the role of the secondary school system in Ireland in political and judicial elite formation, over its history as an independent country, from 1922 to 2022.

Social contextualist analysis, by contrast to much of the existing research on international negotiations, emphasizes the social and organizational environment in which negotiations take place and the effect that it can have on the decision-making of participants. This paper applies a social contextualist lens to negotiations held to decide upon the form and function of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA). Certain elements of the Architecture, which is one of the central pillars of the African Union (AU), present something of a puzzle for theorists, given the cession of sovereignty they represent on a continent where leaders have traditionally been very protective of their authority. After illustrating the limited value of the most prominent approaches to negotiation analysis, the social contextualist framework is outlined. The analysis incorporates negotiations held to decide upon a number of features of APSA. Its findings rest upon interviews conducted with representatives from AU member states and AU officials, as well as examination of a broad range of primary and secondary documents. In highlighting the significance of factors that are generally overlooked by traditional approaches, a case is made for greater consideration of social contextual factors in analysis of international negotiations.

This article examines the evolution of our understanding of the critical junctures concept. The concept finds its origins in historical intuitionalism, being employed in the context of path dependence to account for sudden and jarring institutional or policy changes. We argue that the concept and the literature surrounding it—now incorporating ideas, discourse, and agency—have gradually become more comprehensive and nuanced as historical institutionalism was followed by ideational historical institutionalism and constructivist and discursive institutionalism. The prime position of contingency has been supplanted by the role of ideas and agency in explaining critical junctures and other instances of less than transformative change. Consequently, the concept is now capable of providing more comprehensive explanations for policy change.

This article examines the evolution of our understanding of the critical junctures concept. The concept finds its origins in historical intuitionalism, being employed in the context of path dependence to account for sudden and jarring institutional or policy changes. We argue that the concept and the literature surrounding it—now incorporating ideas, discourse, and agency—have gradually become more comprehensive and nuanced as historical institutionalism was followed by ideational historical institutionalism and constructivist and discursive institutionalism. The prime position of contingency has been supplanted by the role of ideas and agency in explaining critical junctures and other instances of less than transformative change. Consequently, the concept is now capable of providing more comprehensive explanations for policy change.

This article examines the impact of economic crises on macroeconomic policies in the United States (US), Mexico, Ireland, and Sweden at the start of the 1980s, framed within the context of the policy change literature. These countries are selected for examination as they encompass presidential, parliamentary, republican, constitutional monarchical, federal and unitary systems of governance. Two are European states and two are from the Americas: two are large economies while two are small.

At every turn when there has been an imbalance of power, the truth questioned, or our beliefs and values distorted, the change required to restore our nation has always come from the bottom up from our people. - Howard Dean, American politician, and physician who served six terms as the 79th Governor of Vermont. We have had Black Friday, Cyber Monday and sales coming at us from every possible medium the past six weeks.

This article examines the impact of economic crises on macroeconomic policies in the United States (US), Mexico, Ireland, and Sweden at the start of the 1980s, framed within the context of the policy change literature. These countries are selected for examination as they encompass presidential, parliamentary, republican, constitutional monarchical, federal and unitary systems of governance. Two are European states and two are from the Americas: two are large economies while two are small. Each country's response to the crisis affecting it, tempered by historical and political factors, provides an insight into that political economy. These findings enable us compare and contrast the nature of each crisis and the policy responses adopted. The value of such comparison is the perspective it offers, contributing to the goal of building a body of increasingly complete explanatory theory (Mahler 1995).

This article examines the impact of economic crises on macroeconomic policies in Ireland in the late 1950s and Sweden in the early 1980s, framed within the context of the policy change literature. Each of these countries" responses to the crises affecting them, tempered as they were by historical and political factors, provides valuable insights into their political economies. These findings enable us to compare and contrast the nature of each crisis and the policy responses adopted. The value of such comparison is in the perspective it offers, contributing to the goal of building a body of increasingly complete explanatory theory (Mahler, 1995).

This chapter examines the dramatic changes in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions' (ICTU) influence over public policy during the latter half of the twentieth century. The chapter focuses upon the impact economic crises have had on the ICTU's role in policy-making. The chapter concentrates, in particular, upon four periods, the late 1950s, 1970, the early 1980s and 1987, when the ICTU found its influence over public policy radically transformed. By the late 1950s the trade union movement was invited into the policy-making process by a government desperate to revive a sclerotic economy. During the following decade the ICTU played an integral part in the development of economic and social programmes. In 1970, due to concerns over inflation and the increasing level of industrial disputes, the ICTU, initially under government pressure, became a party to centralised bargaining. The National Wage Agreements that the ICTU was a party to during that decade were marked by their integration with government budgetary policy. With active state involvement in industrial relations came ICTU involvement in policy-making. However, by the early 1980s the Irish economy was in serious difficulties again. This, combined with trade union and employer disillusionment that the centralised agreements were not achieving their respective objectives of full employment and low inflation and a new collation government determined to remove the unions from the corridors of power, led to the collapse of the national agreements and ICTU finding itself shut out of the policy-making process. The years afterwards saw the economy continue to stagnate and the ICTU marginalised as a policy-making influence. By 1987, with Ireland teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, a new Fianna Fáil government came to power seeking to promote a three year national pay agreement with the unions and employers, in the hopes of reviving the economy. The ICTU, weakened through marginalisation and membership losses, favoured a return to centralised pay agreements. However, these agreements ultimately came to encompass a wide range of economic/social policy commitments that went far beyond the agreements of the 1970s.

While many of us appreciate some forms of government support, we must take action ourselves in directed steps to tackle our particular challenges and begin to turn the situation around. Facts are the most important thing in business. Study facts and do more than is expected of you. Frederick Hudson Ecker, (1868-1964) longtime president and chairman of Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., then the world's largest, who signed on as a $4-a-week mail boy in 1883

This paper sets out to develop an improved framework for examining critical junctures. This a priori framework is a significant improvement over existing critical juncture frameworks that lack any predictive element. It is an advance for historical institutionalism in particular, and political science in general. After the new framework is set out in detail here, it is tested. The framework is used to examine a number of potential critical junctures in macroeconomic policy, drawn from Ireland, Sweden, Britain, and America in the latter half of the twentieth century

This paper uses the critical junctures framework developed by Hogan and Doyle (2007) to determine if there were critical junctures in privatization policy in Brazil and Argentina at the start of the 21st century. The framework constitutes a rigorous approach to the identification of crisis, ideational change, and policy change. It is used to examine the economic disasters in Brazil in 1999 and Argentina in 2001. Previously, we would have had to wait decades before making such an assessment, as there were few tools with which to identify critical junctures, and these were usually only effective long after the event.