DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES Bringing Politics Back Into Varieties of Capitalism: Shaping Ireland’s Productive Capacity

necessarily reflect those of the Geary Institute. All errors and omissions remain those of the author. 1Introduction It has become almost too easy to take issue with the analytical framework provided by Hall and Soskice’s now classic varieties of capitalism model (Hall and Soskice 2001). On the one hand, most countries fall somewhere between their examples of pure types, Germany as a model of coordinated market economies, the USA of liberal market economies, and indeed a third model, of mixed (or state-led) market economies, has gained in credibility (Molina and Rhodes 2007). On the other hand, their innovative focus on the logic of coordination at firm level has been queried from diverse angles (Hancké et al. 2007). Among the critiques are those arguing that a firm-level focus privileges producer interests excessively, and that it downplays conflicts between employer and employee interests as well as within and across sectors. Such an approach also risks being too static, and omitting the negotiated, discursive, and ideational aspects of the production and reproduction of social interactions (Blyth 2003; Schmidt 2006). Its country-specific focus is relatively indifferent to the international situation of states and the interplay between domestic and international economic and politica