Skip to main content

MacCarthaigh

Dr Muiris MacCarthaigh

Lecturer in Irish Politics

PhD University College Dublin

Contact Details:
+44 (0)28 9097 3886

Room 023.01.005

m.maccarthaigh@qub.ac.uk

 

Teaching Areas

My recent teaching concerns Irish politics and government, public administration and management, legislative studies and regulatory governance. I currently convene the MA Module on Ireland and Europe, and teach on the Level 1 Module on Britain and Ireland in Comparative Perspective. 

 

Research Interests

My current research interests relate to the politics and practice of state retrenchment, issues with which I am involved in a number of international research networks, and with a particular focus on the Irish case.  As well as the areas I teach in, I have ongoing interests in the study of state agencies, political-administrative relationships, corporate governance and institutional reform, accountability studies, and various other aspects of public governance and policy. Some projects with which I am currently involved include:

How States Retrench in Crisis: This work is concerned with the implications of economic crisis for the politics and organizational shape of the state.  It links to collaborative work in association with the FP7 COCOPS initiative 'The financial crisis in the public sector' (Prof. Tiina Randma-Liiv, Tallinn, and Prof. Walter Kickert, Rotterdam) and the ESRC funded ‘Shrinking the State’ project (Prof. Chris Skelcher, Birmingham and Prof. Matthew Flinders, Sheffield).

Autonomy and Control of State Agencies: Within public management research, my most recent work concerns the autonomy and accountability of public sector agencies or ‘quangos’, and I have collaborated with research teams from across Europe as part of a European Science Foundation funded network (COST-CRIPO) on this issue. More recently, with colleagues from this network, we have begun examining longitudinal aspects of state bureaucracy using time-series datasets on public organisation. This work emanates from my post-doctoral research in 2009-10 at the UCD Geary Institute, which resulted in the production of the Irish State Administration Database (www.isad.ie).

Some of my research papers on these and other topics are available at http://ssrn.com/author=516678. 

For 2013-14, I am a Visiting Lecturer at the UCD Geary Institute (http://www.ucd.ie/geary/), and am also an Associate Fellow of UCD’s Centre for Regulation and Governance (http://www.ucd.ie/reggov/).

 

Supervision

I am happy to supervise dissertations and theses allied to my teaching and research interests as outlined above, as well as related fields.

 

Selected/Recent Publications

Books

2012 Governing Ireland: From Cabinet Government to Delegated Governance (edited with Eoin O’Malley). Dublin: Institute of Public Administration. 312p.

2010. The Houses of the Oireachtas: Parliament in Ireland (edited with Maurice Manning). Dublin: Institute of Public Administration. 520p.

2010. Autonomy and Control of State Agencies: Comparing States and Agencies (with Verhoest, K.; Roness, P.G.; Verschuere, B. & Rubecksen, K.). London: Palgrave. 328p.

2008. Government in Modern Ireland. Dublin: Institute of Public Administration.240p.

2007. Recycling the State: The Politics of Adaptation in Ireland (edited with Katy Hayward). Dublin: Irish Academic Press. 246p.

2005. Accountability in Irish Parliamentary Politics. Dublin: Institute of Public Administration. 368p.

 

Peer-reviewed journal articles

2012. Co-guest editor with Paul G. Roness of the International Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 35 (12), Special issue on ‘Mapping Organizational Life Cycles.’

- Analyzing longitudinal continuity and change in public sector organizations (with Paul G. Roness), pp.783-82.

- Mapping and understanding organizational change: Ireland 1922-2010,pp.795-807.

- Mapping public sector organizations:  An agenda for future research (with Paul G. Roness and Külli Sarapuu), pp.844-51.

2012. Politics, policy preferences and the evolution of Irish bureaucracy: A framework for analysis. Irish Political Studies Vol. 27 (1), pp.23-47.

2011. Managing State-owned Enterprises in an Age of Crises: An analysis of Irish experience. Policy Studies Vol. 32 (3), pp.215-230

2011. Joined-up government in Ireland: From un-strategic choices to patriotic imperatives (with Richard Boyle). International Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 34 (4), pp.213-220

2011. When, why and how to set up a state agency: The case of the Road Safety Authority (with Paul Turpin). Irish Journal of Public Policy, Vol. 3(2) (web-based only)

2010. Organising for Growth: Irish State Administration 1958-2008 (with Niamh Hardiman). The Economic and Social Review, Vol. 41(3), pp.367-93

2009. The Relevance of Irish Local Government. Studies, Vol.98 (Spring), pp.43-57

2008. Autonomy and Regulation of State Agencies: Reinforcement, indifference or compensation (with Roness, P.; K. Verhoest and K. Rubecksen). Public Organisation Review, Vol. 8, pp.155–174.

 

Chapters in edited books

2013. ‘Informal relationships and de facto independence of the regulator in the Irish telecoms regulatory arrangement’ in Aubin, D. and Verhoest, K. Multi-level regulation in the telecommunications sector: Adaptive regulatory arrangements in Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Basingstoke: Palgrave, forthcoming.

2013. ‘Public Administration and Administrative Reforms in Ireland’ in Asensio, M. and Madureira, C. (eds) Handbook of Public Administration. Lisbon: Instituto Nacional de Administração, forthcoming.

2012. ‘From Agencification to De-Agencification: The changing bureaucratic model’, in O’Malley, E. and MacCarthaigh, M (eds) Governing Ireland: From Cabinet Government to Delegated Governance. Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, pp.128-51.

2012. ‘Ireland’ (with Richard Boyle), in Verhoest, K; Van Thiel, S.; Bouckaert, G. and Laegreid, P. (eds) Government Agencies in Europe and Beyond: Practices and Lessons from 30 Countries. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 40-50.

2012. ‘Governance and Accountability: The Limits of New Institutional Remedies in Hardiman, N. (ed.) Irish Governance in Crisis. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp.24-42

2011. ‘The UnPolitics of New Public Management in Ireland’ (with Niamh Hardiman), in Eymeri-Douzans, J-M. and Pierre, J. (eds) Administrative Reforms and Democratic Governance . London: Routledge, pp. 55-67

2010. ‘The Role of the Houses of the Oireachtas: Theory and Practice’, in MacCarthaigh, M. and M. Manning (eds), The Houses of the Oireachtas: Parliament in Ireland. Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, pp.35-54

2010. ‘Parliamentary Scrutiny of Departments and Agencies’, in MacCarthaigh, M. and M. Manning (eds), The Houses of the Oireachtas: Parliament in Ireland. Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, pp.358-76

2010. ‘Parliamentary Reform’ (with Maurice Manning), in MacCarthaigh, M. and M. Manning (eds), The Houses of the Oireachtas: Parliament in Ireland. Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, pp.432-48

2009. ‘Autonomy of Public Sector Agencies in Norway, Ireland and Flanders: Does politico-administrative culture help us to understand similarities and differences?’(with Verhoest, K and K. Rubecksen) in Roness, P.G. and H. Saetren (eds) Change and Continuity in Public Sector Organizations. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, pp.231-56

2008. ‘Municipal Reforms in Ireland’ (with Mark Callanan), in E. LeSage, J. Garcea and B. Dollery (eds) Municipal Reform in Anglo-American Countries. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp.104-32

2007. ‘Accountability through National Parliaments: Practice and Problems’ (2007) in Raunio, T. and J. O’Brennan (eds), National Parliaments within the European Union: from Victims of Integration to Purposive Actors? London: Routledge, pp. 29-45

2007. ‘The Recycling of Political Accountability’, in Hayward, K. and M. MacCarthaigh (eds), Recycling the State: The Politics of Adaptation in Ireland. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, pp. 201-22

2007. ‘The Mayoralty in the Republic of Ireland’, (with Mark Callanan) in John Garrard (ed.), Heads of the Local State in Past and Present. London: Ashgate), pp. 63-78

 

Other

2012. ‘Debate: Shrinking the Quango State, An International View’ in Public Money and Management, Vol.32 (6), pp.397-99. http://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/pubmmg/v32y2012i6p397-399.html

2011. ‘Discretion’, in Badie, B.; D. Berg-Schlosser and L.A. Morlino (eds) International Encyclopaedia of Political Science. London: Sage.

2011. Fit for Purpose? Challenges for Irish Public Administration and Priorities for Public Service Reform. Institute of Public Administration State of the Public Service Series, Report No. 4, April.