ASSESSING THE EUROPEANISATION DIMENSION OF THE NATIONAL ANTI-POVERTY STRATEGY IN IRELAND

Since the mid-1990s ‘Europeanisation research’ has increasingly acknowledged that the process is a two-way street: the impacts and effects of Europeanisation may comprise both ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ dynamics, and may involve both vertical and horizontal dimensions of change in national governing styles. Nowhere is this interdependency more apparent than in the advent of the Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) that emerged from the Lisbon European Council (23-24 March 2000). The method, which is not conceived as a means to achieve harmonisation, is designed to help member states to progressively develop their own policies whilst achieving greater convergence towards the main EU goals. This chapter presents a case study of the evolution of Social Inclusion policies in Ireland, embodied in the National Anti-Poverty Strategy (1997-2007) and National Action Plans for Social Inclusion that have been implemented to date. In order to develop a fuller understanding of the Europeanisation effects on processes of domestic governance in Ireland, this paper examines the dynamics of (social inclusion) policy learning at domestic and EU levels. It evaluates the extent to which the OMC provides an efficient platform for policy learning and looks at the outcomes in terms of actual results regarding poverty reduction and social protection in Ireland.