Producing globalisation: the politics of discourse and institutions in Greece and Ireland

The book scrutinises the nature of the interplay between hegemonic discourses and national institutional settings. The focus is on globalisation. How can we study globalisation in a way that transcends the material/ideational rift? How did globalisation resonate and/or dominate in different national contexts? What was the role of national political economies and domestic institutions in this process? What role did specific institutional actors played in it? How are we to explain the nature of the interplay between globalisation and states? To answer these questions, the book focuses on the post-Cold War period and investigates how the hegemonic discourse of globalisation emerged into two different national politico-economic systems, that of Greece and Ireland (a Mediterranean and an Anglo-Saxon political economy respectively). Instead of taking globalisation as granted, the purpose is to explore how political actors produced the phenomenon of globalisation. Thus, the analysis is based on an examination of the discourses, policies and strategies of key, national institutional actors (including political parties, social partners and the press).