Bulletin

Issue: November/December 2007

News

Ireland shows the way on globalisation

Conference convenor Dr Ridden, left, with Dr Philip Bull, Director, IUEU Centre, La Trobe; Professor Bronwen Walter, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge; Dr Colin Barr, Ave Maria University, Florida, USA ; and

keynote speakers, Professor Laffan and Dr Rebecca Pelan, University College, Dublin

IF IT IS TRUE that the upsurge of interest in Irish and ethnic identity in Australia is a ‘form of resistance to globalisation’, it has reportedly bypassed the home country from which so much of this Antipodean phenomenon emanates.

According to Irish political scientist Professor Brigid Laffan, in Melbourne recently to address the 15th Irish- Australian Conference at La Trobe University, the global outlook from the emerald isle itself is quite the opposite.

Ireland, according to Professor Laffan, is one of the great success stories of globalisation, and an economic role model for other small states – partly as a consequence of its membership of the European Union (EU), but particularly because the Irish people and polity have not resisted globalisation.

‘The Journal of Foreign Affairs does a globalisation index every year and in 2001-02 Ireland was the most globalised country in that index. It’s now fallen to about fourth, but Ireland has an extraordinarily open economy. It lives on its relations with the rest of the world.’

Professor Laffan says this is because Ireland opted in the 1960s to move from protectionism to export-led economic growth. ‘It is also partly because of our membership of the EU. There’s very significant American and multi-national investment in Ireland.

‘This is probably one of the success stories because Ireland’s a country that was open to globalisation and benefited from it, so you tend not to get the antiglobalisation forces you get in many European countries where there are fears that jobs will go.

‘Sometimes you do get that rhetoric, because jobs are now migrating from Ireland to central Europe and to Asia, but the evidence is that we’re still creating jobs – it’s just that there are some jobs we won’t get to keep.’

While there was a sense of the potential impact such dramatic global changes might have, from the Irish point of view globalisation was perceived as opportunity rather than threat.

‘I think it’s even partly because of the historical experience of emigration. There is a sense that there are Irish everywhere in the world; that Ireland may be small but we’re part of a bigger global network.’

Professor Laffan – Jean Monnet Professor of European Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations and Principal of the College of Human Sciences at University College, Dublin – is one of the world’s foremost
scholars of the European Union.

In her address she previewed her next book – her 12th on the European Union. While at La Trobe, Professor Laffan also talked with undergraduate students in Irish history. The unit is taught by Irish historian Dr Jennifer Ridden, recently appointed lecturer in Modern European History, who was also convenor of the conference.

Dr Ridden says contributions to the conference offered new ways of thinking about how the Irish deal with the crossnational structures of Empire and Europe – indicating the evolution of a more nuanced understanding of what it meant to be Irish in a colonial context, and what it means today.

She says two of the more important presentations were those exploring the development and expansion of an Irish Catholic Empire, and transformations in Irish nationalism at the turn of the 20th century, which probed changing interactions between Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.

Professor Laffan was in Australia as guest of Vice-Chancellor, Professor Paul
Johnson, and the La Trobe University- based Innovative Universities European
Union Centre, one of three in Australia. It is funded by the European Union and six Australian universities: La Trobe, Macquarie, Newcastle, Murdoch, Flinders and Griffith.